News from the salt

Burly has been kind enough to update us on the happenings at speedweek at Bonneville!

So in his words:

just returned from a couple of days at Bonneville for the annual SCTA/BNI Speedweek and the salt was in excellent condition. Speedweek is the BIG event with over 500 entries but is only for high speed racers. Five VW poweredentries competed and while the race is still going on, I thought you might like some news on the event.



Bob Stahls 157 MPH fuel injected Bug had the misfortune of a missed shift at 130 mph plus when his son-in-law was making a licensing pass. Hitting second from third instead of fourth resulted in a blown motor and three spins. Fortunately the car did not hit any salt pockets, did not roll and was undamaged except for the motor.



Keith Pedersen likewise experienced a motor failure in the Manghelli/Pedersen Rabbit Pick-Up but it was while they were going through the speed traps at over 186 miles per hour ! Even with the problem they were elated as this was a twenty mile per hour jump from their record speed set last fall at hte World Finals and indicates more speed to come. Perhaps they will be the first under 2 liter street VW over the 200 mile per hour mark in the near future.



The Burns family came from Tennessee with the Ghia to try out the salt. Talor made a first pass at 121 while spinning through the lights after experiencing handling problems. After adjustments, brothere Zach made runs in the mid-one twenties. Talor returned the nex day to go 133 and then Zach took the Ghia(2.0 big block with dual carbs) to it's top speed of over 142 miles per hour. Needless to say, they enjoyed a great first Bonneville adventure.



The Chilsons, father Bob and son Dan resolved last years transmission problems in the water cooled lakester and at last note had made a pass just a notch over 200 miles per hour. Hopefully the rest of the week will see even greater speed.



Long time racer Larry Monreal was back out on the salt with his sons and Jim Bradshaw attempting to set another VW record with the turbo Rabbit powered Ghia. Larry had been racing at Bonneville for sixty years and was the featured racer in this years Speedweek program with a nice two page article. At eighty four years of age, he is still very active in overseeing the racing operation and was rewarded with a trip to impound and a possible new record. We will have to wait out the rest of the week to see if he was successful.

Closer and closer.

Not much to update these days as the car is coming along swimmingly. A second tranny had to be obtained and cleaned but that did not seem to warrant a post. Once the rear end is installed, wheels are obtained and new front shock bartered for the car is more or less ready to roll. Of course there are some finishing touches but really we just want to drive the damn thing again! We do have a boat load of cool old ads and article from Australian car mags that we need to scan and share with every one. But we seem to get interrupted by the barley pops and good food.

The Monaro motors/Mr. Motorhead engine is in its initial prep stage but the end of this project seems a long way off.

Well back to the grind!

Well it is done... almost

Well we here at the OSS have almost finished the restoration of our Monaro Motors Dual SU carburetor kit and if the bastard 61 gets finished any time soon it will be installed on our OG 1958 36hp motor. Not sure how much HP gain this kit will produce, though we did read some where that it jumps up to 41hp!

There is a motor in the works specially built for this kit and will be show cased next spring when the build is complete!

Interesting little Gauge.

The more we look at the little devil the more we think that this is one of the coolest gauges we have come across in a long time. It's an old rally gauge that tell your cars acceleration and deceleration G's. Not sure how accurate it would be but i looks SWEET!

On an interesting side not to the 1957 Mobilgas Rally in Australia, article bellow, Lukey Mufflers placed an ad congratulate them on there win! Wonder if they were running a Lukey 4 tip??

VW racing in 1957

Here is a little article from 1957 that show that the VW Beetle was able to keep up in "some" forms of racing with it counter parts. Enjoy the read!!

Other Vintage Speed Blogs and whats been going on.

We here at the OSS are getting back in to the swing of things. The bastard 61 beetle is almost drivable, not finished as it may never reach that point, but it will be on the road soon. We have a motor in the works, Aircooled Research is building a to spec: 1300cc 36hp based short block that we will top off with the Monaro Motors Dual SU carb kit(picture of our kit to come). Not to mention all the searching and parts diving we have been up to in the last few months.

What we are looking for today though is links to other vintage speed VW sites, even vintage speed Porsche sites! If you know of any that we don’t have listed submit a link in the comments field under this post.

Thanks

OSS