|
|
STEVE'S 1973 VW BUS
Steve's van is a prime example of what happens when the customizing of your vehicle gets a little out of hand.
ABOUT STEVE
Before I go into details about the van you should know a little backround on Steve. He had rebuilt his first engine at age 8, granted it was a 2 horsepower briggs, which he mounted to an old go kart frame we had. Within a week he had developed a small supercharger which effectively doubled the horsepower. So basically he was a power freak from day one. He went on to modifying dirt bikes, street bikes (Both 2 and 4 stroke), then cars. He is very well read on engine principle and design, that coupled with natural mechanical ability and wild imagination makes for some very interesting projects as you will learn as this website develops.
ABOUT THE BUS
This bus started out as a stock westfalia, all the body modifications were made more out of need than for looks. Right now housed in the rear of this beast is a 2.7L Race Prepped Porsche 911 RSR engine coupled to a modified 915 5-speed gearbox. Oh did i forget to mention the custom 10" dia. turbo, and intercooler from a Western Star tractor trailer? This isn't as wild as steve's projects get but it's his daily driver and I'll add the insane stuff when the website is more complete. The engine's bottom end is fairly stock and using a nice set of JE pistons. The cam lobe profiles were designed by steve and cut to his specs. For injection he started with a stock 911 Mechanical injection which was torn down and modified to supply the mass amounts of fuel this beast drinks. He ran the bus for a year without turbo and it ran a 14.5 in the quarter mile even with the tall gears in the porsche tranny (It was bearly into 3rd gear at the traps).
Now the bus has the turbo installed and is running great. As the bus has no injection computer, steve made up an ingenious fuel enrichment circuit that is adjustable in infinite ways and reads the boost pressure from the intake. Unfortunatley we don't have a 1/4 mile time for the bus with the turbo but let me assure you IT IS FAST! What I can tell you is that on "closed road" testing we have hit 275 km/h or 170mp/h using a megellan GPS unit for the speed reading. This doesn't mean that the van won't go faster, we just didn't have the courage to push it any more. The engine had plenty more to go.