hey bus freaks,
     
     If any of you dudes remember, a while back I talked about a friend
     of mine who's carrying out the coolest project of ALL time. Let me 
     remind you: He's called Martin and he's puttin' a 911 engine in a 
     23-window Samba - coooeel.
     
     The story so far...
     
     The Samba had been involved in a nasty head-on with another vehicle 
     when Martin bought it. First thing was to put a new front on which he 
     did with his usual expert skill. The chassis looked a bit tired and I
     remember him telling us about how he "kicked" it off the body. Since 
     his intention was to fit a late ball-joint beam up front and IRS on 
     the rear Martin was on the look out for a '73 onwards bus with a good
     donor chassis. One was located and the body "kicked" off it. 
     
     Then came the tricky bit. How do you fit a '74 chassis to a '61 body ?
     Answer: get out the angle grinder,plasma cutter and MIG welder. I few
     mods later and the chassis fits snugly the body. In the back of his 
     mind this sucker was gonna have a big power plant, and it had to be
     air-cooled. There's only one solution to that problem. In comes
     Volksworld November 1994 and in the classified ads. a 2.4 911TV engine
     for sale at a bargain price of 600 pounds! - can be heard running.
     A few days later and it's in Martins possession.
     
     Next problem: what tranny should be used. After playing around with
     various bus trannys the most suitable appeared to be one out of a 
     '80 2.0 Aircooled vanagon with hydraulic clutch and side mounted
     gear selection lever. Oh, and it bolts straight onto the 911 engine
     block!
     
     Question: How do you stop such a fast bus. Answer: fit disks all 
     round. Ok no worries, the disks will go straight on the ball joint 
     front beam and you get some AUDI disk brakes for the rear IRS setup.
     
     Well this is gonna be one mean Samba this summer, so I'll keep y'all
     posted.
     
     Lee.
     
     '64 Samba
     http://146.87.136.48
     l.s.griffiths@physics.salford.ac.uk