Australian Kamei replica build.

Hi all, been lurking 'round these parts for some time now and it's about time I declared what I'm up to.

I've had it in my head to make me a Kamei replica of my very own for some years now.

I must confess I was was a little jealous when I found out that I wasn't the first to think of the idea and that in fact several people had already built other replicas, including Mike.

Being located in Australia where there's only about 5 MK1s being raced I think this will be a pretty unusual and special thing.

My exposure the car came initially from the Tamiya model kits. I have both the 1/24th plastic model and the 1/12 RC versions as well as a recently acquired Spirit slot car.

I've been racing a MK1 for a few years now having rediscovered the passion for racing VWs I had in my early 20's. My weapon of choice back in the early 90's was a '65 beetle powered by an 1835 cc motor with twin Weber DCNs.

Several years of home ownership and company cars followed before I reverted to type and found my way back to Volkswagen, encouraged by a new partner Jodie who is perhaps crazier about VWs than I am.

But to get back on topic - I've been building myself a new race car based on a '76 two door LS model MK1. In the UK you'd call it a swallow tail. This will be, externally at least, a replica of the Kamei car.

This is an abridged history of the build to date. Detailed build thread is over at my regular haunt VW Watercooled

http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/forums/f55/another-wreck-another-race-car-23140.html



I had the body chemically stripped





Then did the inevitable rust repairs



And some seam welding



before having a rollcage built into the shell







Here's how it sits at the moment



I'm taking 2 weeks off over the Christmas break and painting this thing.

Big shout out to Mike has been really helpful and worked to get this build officially Kamei sanctioned by Uwe himself.

 

would love to have space to do something like this. looks good , waiting to see paint colours .
what engine going in something in same era

 

Flat out at the moment finishing off the body work.

Light weight racing number plate lights!









Got the tail all flattened out, it was a bit wavy around the number plate and there were a few screw holes I had to weld up.

Corner of one of the tail light recesses was rusted out so I had to fab a new piece in too.



I hated dong it but I had to cut a hole in the floor for the transponder mount.






Interior is pretty well prepped now, I'm pretty sick of applying seam sealer.

Note the seat frame area, I put some reinforced captive nuts in there for the harness crotch strap. I also welded in the circular plate between them to add strength to that section of the floor. The other plates are just glued i with seam sealer the way the factory did it.

6 bolts in the footwell are for the pedal box.



Got the front arches bolted up today.

Nerve wracking stuff cutting up brand new fibreglass guards.

 

More pictures of arches.









Front spoiler seems to be cast for different guards, it's going to take some fettling to make it fit properly, but that can wait till after the painting.

Really need the car on it's wheels to set the height anyway.



Popped a rear guard on for a photo.



This took some courage. These would be amongst the last MK1 guards to come out of Performance Trim.



Trimmed off the lower inch of the front valance, it was too tatty to fix and I didn't need it.

Left the corners on to support the guards, I'll reinforce those tomorrow.

 

Notched the chassis for drive shaft clearance today.



Used some welding wire to transfer shapes.





Welded in 3mm plate.







Tiny grinder is awesome!

 

Used some old CVs to form the steel into shape.

 

From just 6 posts, this thread is going to be great

Mini air grinder - never seen one, though I guess it is Dremel-ish, albeit at 90 degrees?

Love the detail on fabrication technqiues, the welding wire, the CVs. So simple, yet sometimes not easy to see a plan! Keep the detail coming

 

Cheers Chris,

I've been working on the car on and off since 2008, there's 37 pages of prior work back home at VWWatercooled. I'll post updates to both forums from now on.

http://www.vwwatercooled.org.au/forums/f55/another-wreck-another-race-car-23140.html

That is a 65mm Grinder. I got it as a kit at a trade show. It's really versatile and bridges the gap between the dremel and the 100mm air straight grinder.

Kit came with cut off discs, sanding pads, grinding wheels and even flapper discs.

My local panel supplies shop keeps most of the consumables in stock.



Product page http://gngsales.com.au/products/details/heavy-duty-angle-grinder-kit-08119k/

My other favourite grinder is my cordless Ryobi 115mm grinder.

 

loving the metal fab , really looking rforward to more pics.

 

Wow, this is going to be one awesome thread to watch. Cant wait for more updates.

 

Engine will be a 16 V 2.0 ABF I pulled out of a Toledo.

I'll start the rebuild once I'm clear of the body work.

Plan is to keep it under 2000cc to remain in a sub 2 Litre class.

Generally speaking the intent is to build it NA, high compression, ITBs and all the usual head and bottom end stuff to go with it.

I'm new around these parts, so by way of explanation, you'll find that I generally only write about stuff I've actually done. Planning is always a couple of months ahead of the write ups. I don't like to speculate, nor am I prone to "opinion shopping". My partner Jodie and I are pretty much a VW scene unto ourselves. We have 5 other VWs too.

There are big plans for the ABF you'll hear about it when I've managed to pull it off.

Getting performance gear for ABF/MK1 here in Australia is nigh on impossible.

 

I'll resurect some of the prior work to bring this thread up to date.

Here's the chapter on the rear beam.

 

nice whats the roll bar home made or bought?

 

Roll bar is an Autotech unit. 28mm tubular.

http://www.autotech.com/product/swaybars/10-525-1028K.html?fromcat=mk1-rabbit

I've got a matching one for the front. 25mm hollow.

http://www.autotech.com/product/swaybars/10-425-1025GK.html?fromcat=mk1-rabbit

The diagonal braces are from SCCH

http://scch-heads.com/viewpart.php?id=43

 

loving the work . Where did you get the toe-link towers?



EDIT : See them on the SCCH site now.

 

Fantastic fabrication Peter. Looking like a truly awesome build and like i said earlier, cant wait for updates.

 

I painted the engine bay today.