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A word of caution on buying Type 1's. They've had a million owners and been butchered to death as is evidenced in your photos with all the cheap bling everywhere. That engine is all red flags to me.

For example, look at the overspray from the cheap single stage paint, on the weather stripping around the engine hatch. This is not a restore car. This is car that's been cheaply slapped together, given a cheap paint job, and blinged out to attract an unknowleable buyer. Don't be that family. A real restoration on a '67 would take 10-20k depending on the level of detail, and 4-ish of that would be in the engine alone.

Do you realize how much maintenance a Type 1 takes? Are you prepared to do it, and do you possess the skill, training, and tools? Any idea of the quality of parts that went into that engine....Brazilian? Mexican? German? Chinese? Spanish?

Few engines are as hard to build correctly.......emphasis on CORRECTLY.......as a air cooled VW engine and finding someone who actually knows how to build one is nearly impossible.

You'll be doing or paying to have done, an oil change and a valve adjustment every 3,000mi. If you don't (and even if you do, depending on build quality) it'll suck a valve and grenade the engine.

I would not touch that car with a 10' pole unless I had a very qualified local German independant shop inspect it top to bottom. To me, it looks like a rotary grenade.
 
the bugs 1930s origin..

i heard somewhere that hitler became fascinated with the czech tatra car
and set Dr.porsche to work on coming up with something similar-the "bug"
was the result.Sometimes you will see an early bug in ww2 photos but they
were rare at that time.
 
As an owner of a 70' Bug that runs flawlessly I say if you are going to get a bug, you'd be better off finding one that has been unmolested. Also, in the midwest a lot of bugs rust out. The rust can remain hidden in the heater channels until it's too late.
However, you can get a bug for much less money in California and have it shipped to you. That's what I did. I found a single owner 70' all original bug in SFO and had it shipped here to Houston in a covered trailer. The bug cost $2800, and the shipping was $900. The bug is totally rust free. I could get $5K for it easily around here.
If you get a bug, learn how to work on it yourself. It's not that hard if you put your mind to it and stock up on reference manuals.
Another thing about 67' bugs, they are loaded with 67' only parts. So some parts may be only available at swap meets.

And the MOST IMPORTANT thing of all!
Bugs are known for catching on fire! The FIRST thing you are going to want to do with any bug is to:

Replace all fuel hoses from the tank to the engine.
Relocate the fuel filter from the engine to just behind the fuel tank.
Check and recheck the hole where the fuel line comes through the engine tin into the engine compartment. This is a known chaff point on the hose, and eventually will chaff right through pouring fuel into the engine compartment. You can put an O ring in the hole to slow this process down, but still check it monthly!
 
Tatra and Porsche . . .

Hitler liked cars but knew very little about them - he never even learned to drive. Even so he quickly grasped the great advantages of a high-speed road network linking all parts of Germany together for both military and civilian uses. In most European countries at the time cars were seen as luxuries and even inexpensive cars were heavily taxed. Hitler decided to create a government sponsored car as a propaganda resource to promote his National Socialist party and their vision of the future of the Third Reich.

 

At the time, the original Dr. Porsche (Ferdinand) was a respected and experienced automotive engineer who had mostly worked on expensive cars or race cars. Like many other engineers, he became fascinated by the prospect of putting the engine, transmission, and differential at one end of the car. Very early cars had been this way but as engine size increased it became impractical. However by the early thirties technical advances had made engines smaller and more efficient. Dr. Porsche also really wanted to design a small and inexpensive car but none of his employers had any interest in that. Eventually he started his own engineering company doing consulting work and did some preliminary studies for a small rear engined car. This went nowhere until the German government commissioned a study from him for their small car ("KdF Wagen", for the KdF branch of the government that was in charge of the car). Porsche then adapted his rear-engined design to suit the government requirements. By the late '30s it was pretty well developed, but the Beetle never went into mass production due to the war; all the cars built were hand-made prototypes or promotional cars. The first VW to be mass produced was the military Kubelwagen,  Germany's WWII answer to the Jeep.

 

While Porsche was busy designing his car Hans Ledwinka at Tatra was a couple of steps ahead with his own rear-engined cars.  He'd been at Tatra since the '20s and had proven his own abilities on more conventional cars and so was able to do some radical engineering. In '33 they brought out the Type 77, a very fast if rather unstable car with a rear-mounted, air cooled V8. This was replaced by an improved Type 87 a couple of years later, and by the late '30s he also had a smaller car with an air cooled flat four in production, albeit larger and more expensive than the VW. Clearly, Ledwinka and Tatra were first in production with their designs but he was quite aware of what Porsche was doing with the VW project. Many years later Tatra sued VW and did win some money, but it is really difficult due to the conditions in the '30s to ascertain who was copying who.

 

When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia many officers tried to "requistion" any V8 Tatras they could as the cars were among the fastest on the road outside of exotic luxury cars. Eventually they were forbidden to do so by the German military, not of out consideration for the real owners of the cars, but because the combination of a swing axle rear suspension, lots of power, and poor roads often proved fatal for inexperienced drivers. 

 

After WWII ended Tatra continued Type 87  production for awhile until the Czech Communist Party decided that they didn't need to make a luxury car and should concentrate on their very well engineered trucks. This lasted a few years, supposedly until a few Czech party big-wigs were forced to buy Soviet cars. They then put Tatra back in the big-car business, albeit without Ledwinka who had left the country. The result was the 603, built from the late '50s into the '70s. With its split rear window, little tailfins, and rear air cooled V8 it was one of the oddest luxury cars in the world, and was often chauffer driven. It was also pretty well engineered and made and some are still on the road today.

 

Photo is of a Type 77, a bit Beetle-esque but much, much larger!

[this post was last edited: 4/26/2011-00:47]

hydralique++4-26-2011-00-46-43.jpg
 
Cool,thanks for that info hydralique-sure can tell you are a bigtime gearhead LOL.
i like the 603 tatra-looks so "eastern bloc" russian ladas are the only"east bloc"
cars i have personal experience with...
Back to bugs,heard that though the original volkswagen engine was only something
like 25hp,it was designed to run at maximum power for hours-actually pretty
impressive for 1930s small car engineering!
 
Great history lesson!

Thanks for writing all that up, and the photo!! That Tetra is a gorgeous machine. Love the detail of the front windshield. I'd love to see an air cooled V-8....and more so, I'd love to hear one light up and run.

IMO, the Type 1 is probably one of the finest cars ever designed and built. It's almost impossible to appreciate what great cars they are, unless "you" have a chance to drive, or ride in one that's either 100% bone stock and original, or one that's a full blown rotisserie near concourse restoration. Pretty amazing little piece of engineering and they do not disappoint. Sadly, finding one worthy of that statement is almost impossible.
 
tatra v-8

overhead cam, and with the cams spaced far apart,the tatra v8 actually kinda
resembles the v8 in my porsche 928! outside and under each cylinder bank of
the tatra v8 are two belt-driven squirrel cage blowers to blast cooling air
over the cylinders and heads,probably has an oil cooler radiator too.
A much later(1998) tatra v8 i seen had a ducted axial fan in the center of the
"vee"to provide the blast of cooling air
 
Tatra made cars until the very late '90s, and toward the end they did some improvements and upgrades to their traditional engineering. One of them was reportedly overhead cams, but the classic air-cooled V8 with dual fans tucked under the cylinder heads isn't overhead cam, but rather a nice pushrod hemi-head design. There is one fellow here in LA who has a couple of them, his "driver" being a late '60s/early '70s 603, and the other being a rare and much older Type 87. I've seen them both running and they do have a very distinctive sound with a small V8 beat but with some typical air-cooled clattery noises. One time I accidently drove down his street, not realizing it until I spotted the 603 parked outside his house.

hydralique++4-26-2011-23-58-21.jpg
 
<span style="font-size: medium;">Here’s the tail, very cool IMO! The Tatra shares one oddity with the Lancia Flaminia Berlina; they are the only two cars I know of that combine a column shift linkage with a manual transaxle mounted at the rear of the car. The Flaminia also has a pushrod hemi engine, albeit a V6 mounted at the front.</span>

<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>

<span style="font-size: medium;">I once asked the owner of this car how it handled if you overcooked it a little in a corner. He looked at me for a moment, then said it wasn’t easy to do but he did once take a freeway transition ramp a bit too fast in the rain, and although he didn’t lose control he admonished himself to never, ever do that again! </span>

hydralique++4-27-2011-00-06-20.jpg
 
Thanks for more photos!!

Love the details on the Tatra! The split back glass and air intak scoops are a real treat.

That '70 Beetle is fantastic!

Growing up we had a '63, and then a '68 Type 3 wagon and after that, a '70 Wagon. That was in Alaska, and the '70 was real sweet because it had the gasoline powered heater.

There are a handful of original mid-60's Beetles running around here, and I see them from time-to-time. Gorgeous. When I was working for the local German independant back in about '94, the owner purchased a '67 from it's original owner. It was nearly perfect. He had to have the fenders straightened and painted because the owner was elderly and had started pranging the car on stuff. Other than that, he had a set of bias-ply's installed, and found a vendor for original tan running board mats (the car was tan) as the car would have had when new. That car was amazing to drive......rock solid, quiet, and it drove straight as an arrow. It was beautiful at 65mph on the free. Just put a huge smile on my face.
 
The Samba is great. VWVortex.Com is also excellent, although I'm there for the water cooled stuff and not the air cooled.

I have a pretty lengthy post on the Samba from when I resurrected a '92 Eurobarge (Eurovan) for my wife's uncle.
 
TDIClub.com is a great resource for VW diesel owners, and if you own a later model diesel you will need advice at some point, trust me - the cars are a really strange combination of good, hell-for-stout engineering peppered with embarrassing crappy stuff.
 
Yep, been to the TDi forms as well, and I agree, some of the stuff on them is just, well, disappointing....to say the least. They seem to dip into "check engine light" hell fairly easily, and diagnosing them is killing me. A few months ago, I sent one of my customers to the dealer because I apparently wasn't man enough to figure the thing out. Check engine light stayed out for a couple months, came back on again, and I just told them to take it back to the dealer. I'd already wasted enough time for free, screwing with it.
 
I have joined the Samba club.

WOW. Thats one big site! love it! I know they can help with restoring the dashboard and wheel to originals!

Discovered that the 67 year was also particularly rarer than others, and was one of the widest beetles.
 
Ross-Tech . . .

If you do any work on an OBDII VW product then Ross-Tech's VCDS (formerly Vag-com) is the best $250 you'll ever spend, and they do support their product. The software is free but you have to buy the interface from them for your laptop, or try to build one yourself - if you do that then no support from them. VCDS has saved my ass more than once. My own Golf received a new engine courtesy of VW after the junky Romanian built Garrett turbo cratered at 64K and shoved shrapnel through the engine. I had to pay out of pocket for a new timing belt, tensioner, and rollers because those weren't part of the warranty - given that it took them 7 weeks to fix it they should have included all that crap but they didn't. 10,000 miles later the CEL went on one afternoon and the engine developed a funny buzzing at about 1800 rpm - sounded like a loose heat sheild - but the car ran fine. Even so, I drove home gingerly and plugged the laptop in to see VCDS diagnose erratic injection pump timing. Usually this means the pump is on it's way out, not what I wanted to hear, but I wondered if perhaps the dealership had left the three pully adjustment nuts a bit loose when they re-timed the pump for the new engine. The next morning I opened up the timing belt cover to take a look and discovered a slack timing belt with a longitudinal split through it! I was horrified that it might have jumped time and spent two days on pins and needles waiting for $350 worth of timing tools to arrive from Metalnerd on the east coast. Thank goodness it hadn't jumped time, but had I ignored the CEL it would have in short order. The culprit turned out to be VW's embarrassingly cheap tensioner - the locating tab had broken off, fallen on the pulley as the tensioner unloaded and then put the little split in the belt. So I got to replace the nearly new belt and tensioner I had just paid for, not much fun as you have to take that 3-piece engine mount off and remove the power steering reservoir and replace all the torque to yield bolts. I did a little write up on TDIclub and of course the usual VW fan-boys claimed the dealership had installed it wrong - which would be hard to do on an engine stand - until one of their "gurus" who had done countless timing belt jobs wrote that he had the exact same thing happen to him with a brand new tensioner on a customer's car. In his case it was worse as it broke immediately and they bent a valve . . . ouch! 

 

Most of the CELs on my car have been glow-plug related; the system seems to have been designed for laboratory conditions  rather than real-world conditions and any difference in resistance between the plugs will turn it on. I finallly relented and installed a new harness so hopefully this will cure that, especially since you have to remove the battery, battery box, air box, and cut open the wiring harness all the way to the firewall to do it.

http://www.ross-tech.com/vcds/tour/main_screen.html
 
VW"squareback"

around 1980,one of my teachers had a Ca.1973 squareback and just loved it-
said it was a bit of a "sleeper"as it's performance was quite a bit higher
than it's unassuming appearance suggested,especially in the twisties-could
give MGs,fiats,datsuns,and other 4cyl foreign sporty cars a real workout,
could even bug 'vettes,jags,porsches in the twisties-they would pull ahead on
the straights,but he could catch back up in the squareback when things got
twisty again.BTW the squareback was that certain'70s shade of orange...
 
Squareback You Said?

We have a 70'Square. It's currently sitting in our garage awaiting work. It needs new brakes and engine. The engine runs pretty good, but it's got a hole in the case.
If you heard it run, you'd never guess it had this defect.

Starting in 1968, VW made fuel injection standard on the Squareback. It is a very complex system and a lot of VW dealers here in the U.S. never quite learned how to work on it. It's the Jetronic-D system, the same as used in Porches of the time.

Usually when someone had problems with their FI system, the dealer out of frustration just carbed the engine. It's hard to find a Square with working FI.
Mine is one of those. Once again, it's a totally unmolested VW.

I emptied the gas tank and removed the battery before I put it in our garage about 3 years ago. One of these days.....

Years ago I had a 66' Square nice car and did handle very well on the road. I made the mistake of putting Dunlop tires on this Square. The sidewalls are so weak that past 55 mph, the car is all over the road. If you put the toe of your shoe on the rim and your heel on the ground and push just slightly, you'll move the entire car back & forth about 6 inches. On the 70' Bug, I bought some BF Goodrich Silvertown radials on it and the sidewalls are much stiffer and I don't have any handling problems with it all the way up to 70mph. And that's the fastest I've driven it.

whirlcool++4-29-2011-13-24-53.jpg
 
squareback engine packaging

i'm always impressed when i see a squareback engine how VW managed to cram
that aircooled flat four along with accesesories into that small space under
the rear floor of the square-it's almost like they designed an engine package
of "x"dimension,then scrunched it down to 3/4 scale.I can imagine some of
those dealer"carburator conversions"had some vapor lock and heat soak problems
with the lack of ventilation in that tightly packed engine compartment...
On the other hand,with the cooling blower now on the end of the crank,no more
roasted engines from a loose or broken belt.
My 1971 saab 99 also had basicly the same injection system as on the square as
an option-mine did not have it,but i salvaged a pair of '73 injection systems
and might one day install on mine for kicks(BTW my 99 has a 1980 engine as the
original triumph built 1.85L had been run out of oil and blown up when i got
the saab)i popped the covers off one of the '73 ECUs and enjoyed looking over
all the "moonshot era"tech with metal seimens and telefunken transistors!
 
D-Jetronic was the first successful mass produced electronic fuel injection system. It was based on initial development work done here in the US by Bendix working with Chrysler. In '58 Chrysler, with great fanfare, introduced the "Electrojector" injection system as a very pricey option on several car lines, though due to the cost it was mostly applicable to the Chrysler 300. Somewhere between 15 and 50 cars were made with the system, but it didn't work well and almost all of them were converted back to carburetors by Chrysler. They washed their hands of the concept, and with nobody else in the US being interested (GM of course had their own mechanical Rochester injection system that actually worked), Bendix sold the patents to Bosch. Bosch knucked down and spent many years developing it before introduction.

 

D-Jetronic was still a bit of a handful when first introduced in the late '60s on a variety of cars - Saab, VW, Volvo, Mercedes, and Citroen were early adopters. Part of the problem was dealership ignorance, and part of it was just that the system was pretty complex and had some wear items like an extra set of points in the distributor. Eventually they solved most of the problems  and it worked OK, albeit not well enough to last beyond the mid-70's when it was replaced by a new electronic system (L-Jetronic) and a new low pressure mechanical system (K-Jetronic). Both the L and K Jetronics are big improvements on D-Jetronic, but D was well made and if maintained properly the systems seem to last forever. 

 

Pic below is of a '73 Citroen with D-Jetronic . . . lots and lots of intake plumbing, wiring, and little electrovalves. They managed to get slightly better fuel mileage when compared to the normal Weber carbs and a small but useful increase in power, showing that D-Jet could be  impressive when working correctly as the Webers themselves are pretty good. I think they were too scared of what American dealership mechanics might do when confronted with this, so Citroen only sold the carbureted version here.

 

CFZ, I've always liked the 99. When I ran a later 900 Turbo with the twincam engine I often wondered if it would be possible to squeeze one of those into a 99 because the 99 is both prettier and quite a bit lighter . . . what a cute little rocket that would make!

hydralique++4-30-2011-04-07-3.jpg
 
16v saab turbo in earlier 99

once i did see an '80 99that had an '86 16v turbo installed-looked like it all
fit in good,install was fully operational and drivable but a couple details
hadn't been tended to yet-intercooler was in place,but didn't have provision
for airflow(i suggested a little fan,renault fuego turbo style)and also the
tach was not hooked up because owner hadn't figured out how to hook it to the
multi coil ignition system.
 
opinions on Porsches? -> just crap, not worth it

While car enthusiasts may be of different opinions, my personal experience with Porsche cars is more than disappointing. One of my friends owns a 911. I had the doubtful pleasure to be on the back seat at one of those "rides". Not that the back seat was more than overcrummy, not that the noise of the back mounted engine was making me deaf - it was just that ackward feeling that the heat of the back mounted motor was roasting me alive. Never have I felt such inconvenience, never has a car make me sigh in relief when getting out of it. Porsches are a pain in the ass if you are not an "uber-rich" couple with no luggage at all.
May people choose whatever style they like in cars, but Porsche most probably isn't my way to go. Absolutely disgusting in all which ways conceivable, a shame to be looked at. A total "yikes" thing. A shame. (More so since I am German and I have to live with this pejudiced scourge). I say no. (No meaning NO) Porsche? Get a life!
 
Oh to have....

...had the option of that Maserati V6 engine in a DS....

 

Hydraulique....you should post the pic of the SM that engine bay belongs too.....
 
Whirlpolf . . .

<span style="font-size: medium;">You are the only other adult man I know of to have actually squeezed into the back seat of a 911! In my case it was an ‘80s model owned by my sister’s then BF, all I can say is thank goodness it was a convertible with the top down and the journey was very short. Porsche never intended those rear seats to house adults, only children or luggage (which is why they fold down). This is one of the reasons the classic Type 901 based 911 is so compact: it is really a two-seater car. It’s hard to make a rear-engine car with really good space efficiency because even after you take the engine out of the front there is a lot of stuff there that must be accommodated, like steering mechanisms, big wheelhouses that push the front suspension inboard, footwells for the driver and front passenger, heating and air conditioning systems, etc. etc. So, having some space for luggage and such behind the seats has been a feature of many rear engine cars. One reason the Squareback (as pictured above) has always been my favorite Beetle-based VW car is that it’s the only one with easily accessible space in the rear.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>

<span style="font-size: medium;">Ronhic, I photographed that injected SM locally at a club event and mainly took engine shots as there can’t be more than a few injection models in the US. The injection system has always fascinated me and I’ve spent lots of time figuring out the various components. This<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>car is owned by Jerry Hathaway, proprietor of SM World and one of the most experienced SM experts anywhere. It is a completely original car and this is the only time I’ve ever seen it on the road. It has the swivel lamps and the “RR” plastic wheels. Swivel lamps weren’t sold here, but some lucky owners have fitted them to US spec cars so I see them now and then. However the RR wheels are rare anywhere and this is the only set I’ve ever seen here. I think they’re very beautiful and am always amused when I see them mis-identified as alloys in photos. Michelin reportedly produced a final run of the RRs in the ‘80s as spares so they pop up now and then but the prices are stratospheric.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>

<span style="font-size: medium;">The C-114 V-6 is a mixed blessing. It’s actually a rather nice little engine when everything is correct, surprisingly torquey like a DS engine but it will rev happily to 6500 and make power all the way there, unlike a DS. If not maintained properly it quickly reverts to being somewhat spastic as the uneven-fire design of a 90 degree V-6 without split crankpins becomes evident. To keep it happy the left and right bank ignition points must be perfectly synchronized, all four camshafts must be dialed in correctly, and the carbs balanced left barrel to right barrel and from one carb to another. Modern improvements seem to help it a lot, such as improved timing chains that not only last longer but by not stretching keep the valve and ignition timing more precise, and modern electronic ignition systems. There are lots of solutions to the ignition, none of them easy or cheap as uneven-fire distributors aren’t common and the C-114 distributor rotates opposite most of the others. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">There are a couple of videos on YouTube from some guys in Holland who have converted an injected SM to used a modern Megasquirt engine management system that controls not only the injection but also the ignition timing. It’s really impressive, glassy smooth, and makes me think the C-114 was just too far ahead of its’ time as ‘70s electronics weren’t adequate to make it what it should have been.</span>

hydralique++4-30-2011-23-09-0.jpg
 
I used to have....

...a couple of model SM's as a kid....

 

...but now have my dream car currently having some rust cut out of the boot, new external trim fitted and a basic respray...

 

A 1974 Citroen DS 23 Electronic Injection 5 Speed.....with leather interior....

 

We've called her June....after an Australian Actress - June Bronhill who was a Broken Hill (BronHill is a contraction of the city name) girl with talent. The town raised money for her to go and study in the UK, forever grateful, she changed her name....

ronhic++5-1-2011-00-11-18.jpg
 
Yeah, five speed and injected 2347 cc engine. We never got any of that here, just the basic DS21 with either four-speed manual or Citromatic, and it was gone after '72.  I saw a good looking '72 Pallas on the street this week, first time I'd seen a Cit of any sort on the street in months. Motor tested one like yours in '73, pulled 119 mph out of it at the MIRA test track which is pretty amazing for a 2.3 liter four hauling a 3000 lb luxury car. Walter Becchia was the designer of that five main bearing D engine; I think he was a very underrated engineer as his engines always featured good hemi heads and were strong, strong, strong. Before he was at Citroen he was at Talbot-Lago. Talbot-Lago was pretty successful at racing even though they didn't have much budget and so had to keep their racing machines surprisingly clost to their street cars. They were rarely the absolute fastest on the track but were usually competitive and rarely broke. I think much of this was due to Becchia's insistance on good cylinderhead design and stout bottom ends, traits he carried over to Citroen.
 
aaaaah! DS and XM ;-)

now we are talking about convenience, comfortable driving and luxury!
*broadest smile ever*
Comme un bébé dans la crèche.
Marvellous! Where can I sign?
 

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