Over the weekend I took the back end of the car apart and took out the transmission to investigate a strange clutch noise. Turned out the clutch shaft was not quite central in the bell housing. Fixed that. I hope this will be OK now as I’m heading off with the car club http://www.constructorscarclub.org.nz for a 3000km trip to the NZ far North next week. (It’s summer here!) While it was in pieces I also replaced a CV boot and changed the clutch return spring arrangement… which then interfered with the gear change linkage, so I had to modify it again. Anyway. got it all back together on Sunday OK. When I do this, the driveway gets a bit messy with removed parts. These pix might be of interest to forum visitors. More info at http://www.geocities.com/roadratccc
Cheers, Brian

That car looks like a right giggle to drive!!

I love the road rat!

I've been thinking about doing something similar, only with a Fiat Panda donor.. Should be really, really locost, yet be a lot of fun to drive.

The panda would be good and 4wd would be great fun !!!!!

Lee

Looks like a lot of fun.

What did you need to do to swap the beetle engine around to mid layout? I've heard it's fairly simple, but never seen a good account of what to do, air cooled makes life much simpler in some ways, and engine parts look dirt cheap even in rip off uk.

Hmm, the image of a mid engine beach buggy with a spaceframe chassis just surfaced (again )

I'm hoplessley late responding here. Sorry.
It's very easy to swap on most beetle type transmissions. It's just unbolt the two side plates on the trans and bolt them back again on the opposite sides. There are shimms involved, so be carefull bolting it up incase it goes tight... but it seems that the case machinging on the original parts was very good and if you keep the same shims in place as you swap it, it all works out OK. This all takes maybe half an hour. Only issue I know about is that there are some newer (mexican? barasilian?) cases which are "one sided". These are stronger... but I don't think you can swap them.

From the building perspective.. the VW box is pretty out-dated these days. If you don't need to use it for some other reason, I would suggest using a renault, 2wd subaru or alfa box which gives better ratios and probably more strength.

Cheers, Brian