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What Stan said- neither distribute the air well and one side cools significantly better than the other. They look neat (the center mount especially!), but if you want your engine to last a long time you'll stay with a more traditional fan housing. The sand buggy crowd really likes them, as they're polished and take up less real estate, and you'll get guys that say they work fine, but engine life for them is a few hours a season (at most), and a lot of these guys are constantly redoing their engines for more power so they never see the damage done. Look inside either a genuine VW or aftermarket 36hp shroud and you'll see the turning veins. Al

Carlos,

If you're looking for a shroud, the 36 hp models everybody uses (from Scat, EMPI, etc.) are hard to beat. No shortage of guys on theSamba will advocate for a stock shroud (as if good used ones are laying around in every scrap yard in America), but to just buy something that will work, these shrouds are pretty hard to beat.

If you want the best, Raby's Type 1 DTM is now sold by LN Engineering. I've got this one, but they are something like $600 now, which is just insane for a chunk of fiberglass with a few bits of aluminum pop-riveted inside.

Ultimate Powdercoat sells the 36 hp shrouds with all of the attendant widgets and whatnots with an array of options-- thermostats, flaps,  "hoover-bits", sled tins, doghouse extensions for Type 4 coolers, etc-- all powdercoated to your specs. I did this for the 2110, and I've been very pleased with the results. It's not short money, but you get a lot of pieces for the same money as a DTM.

The 911 shrouds get a horrible rap on theSamba, but I honestly think somebody somewhere could make one work. Danny Piperetto runs on on his Spyder, and it seems to work adequately. They look like a million bucks.

There's a guy out east making dual-inlet 550 shrouds out of sheet-metal that would be the ultimate if I were doing a Spyder (which I'm not, at least as of right now). It's big money-- $2K or something, but is as cool as it gets.

... or you could do what every builder in the US does and just bolt a $150 Chinese 36 hp doghouse shroud with no flaps, no sleds, no deflectors, no extra-capacity coil cooler, no nothing, and be happy. They seem to work OK for the vast majority of applications. If you are running less than 9:1 compression, they seem to be perfectly adequate. If a guy has difficulty controlling oil temperatures, the problem is likely somewhere else.

If you're looking at the $150 Chinese-made ones that Stan recommended, you might look, instead at a $150 used, later German shroud for the VW 1,600 that has all of the internal vanes and doo-dads you want, ready to accept the larger oil cooler tower and a thermostat link.  If you want New Old Stock, they're $200.

113119025QW at bugcity.com

https://www.bugcity.com/shop/s...tm?pquery=fan+shroud

These are the later, flat-top shroud, not the domed one from a 36hp.

Gordon,

I started reading your reply, and immediately thought, "here we go again…". But then I kept reading-- that's the first time I've ever seen somebody actually link to an OE German shroud actually available for purchase today without combing through used garbage in online classified ads of various websites. Generally (and as I said above) every time this topic comes up, somebody pipes up about the original shrouds being better. That's all well and good, but in large swaths of this country, there haven't been any VW's for 25 years, so directing people to "just go to a junkyard" is pretty useless. Linking to something actually available for purchase is a real service to the hobby. I really hope it's what they say it is.

Thank you very much! 

Last edited by Stan Galat
Art posted:

Dummy question......

36HP = doghouse shroud?  If not pictures please.

Not dumb at all. Yep: what's available from Scat, EMPI, et al is a hybrid shroud which combines the shape of a 36 hp shroud with a wider (late) fan and the separate oil-cooler "doghouse".

It's actually one of those things that gets a bad reputation, but it is pretty darn good in reality. 

Thanks, Stan....     Just trying to keep these little cars going as long as I can and have had very good service from Bug City so I feel confidant that I'm not leading people astray.

Lenny C., Danny P. And I all endorse them a lot.  They're great to talk with on the phone, too.  If you don't see it on their web site, call 'em and talk with them - they may have It anyway and they really know what they're talking about.  They're like a VW version of the "Unobtanium" guys for 356 parts.

That said, original used and NOS parts ain't gonna last forever, folks, and we're seeing an End of Life scenario unfolding, now.

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

Re the 911 style shroud/fan- I seem to remember reading that the fan took a chunk more hp to drive than the type 1. Another thing is I don't think there's any way to close off the air when the engine is cold, and this presents wear problems, as it then takes longer than necessary for the engine to reach operating temps. The biggest issue, though, is the uneven air distribution (and cooling) between the front and rear cylinders.

One man's quest to improve a Bergmann shroud

The link to one of Stans recommended sources..

http://www.awesomepowdercoat.com/index.html

Per my experience-  Good guy took with, and has used German shrouds as well as new ones, Mexican ones, etc....  a complete tin kit is top notch from him.

also, great instructional / educational / step by step videos posted on YouTube by the owner of Awesome powdercoat.  These were truly educational for me... a great resource.

cheers,

Last edited by Lfepardo

 

To me I like and have in stalled in my Speedster the stock Vw  Tins and  orginal VW Thing Shroud where you can make the flaps or fins  blow cold air on the cylinders  with the Bus Doghouse cooler  which is wider than a stock 1600 Vw Bug motor with the Gene Berg Tin Kit  for the rear of Shroud to make VW Bus Doghouse cooler fit with external 92 Oilcooler and fan and thermostat my Speedster for long cruising only gets up to 200 degrees hot.  The after market Shroud have no fins and are useless to me!  Fiberglass later looking  Porsche  Shrouds look good but donot blow enough air on all the cylinders.  Just my 2 cents! 

Last edited by Kawika55

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