Reality Check - is this going to far on a replica?

It's easy to get caught up in the details with these, but if it looks cool to you, then go for it.  

If you can adapt that liner to your replica, make it look good and feel good about it, then what the hell - Go do it!

What Lane said. If it floats your boat, do it.

But... if you want to create all sorts of head scratching, I don't think this detail will do that.

Anyone who knows the cars well enough to recognize what those hard lines are, won't be at all fooled into thinking this is a real Speedster with a four-cam. Or even a one-cam. There are a lot of other 'tells' on a VS that they'll spot first - like the fact that the wheel in a VS front wheel well isn't centered in that space, front to back, the way it was on the original cars.

Many of us have moved the external oil cooler for other reasons, though.  From where VS mounts it over the tranny to the driver's side rear wheel well, where much better air circulation lets it do its job a lot better. This move will be much easier to do than what you're proposing and will probably work better, too.

I think I've read speculation here that the stock VW oil pump doesn't make enough pressure for such a long run.

Seems to me you'd be asking a lot from the oil pump by putting the oil cooler in the front of the car.

As a fellow lunatic-with-the-details, I heartily endorse this idea, along with Mitch's caveats. To do this on my Spyder I bought a new Shadek 30mm oil pump to push the oil on that long run. The Spyder did not route the oil lines up, so a 26 would probably do. For your application (short of a dry-sump system) the 30's probably the way, as are the hard lines. 

I'm not using mine because my whole center-mount fan shroud project's on hold, so the Raby shroud, with its integral Type 4 oil cooler, is staying in place along with the 26mm pump Raby installed on the engine. So if you want my oil pump let me know.

Sacto Mitch posted:

 

What Lane said. If it floats your boat, do it.

But... if you want to create all sorts of head scratching, I don't think this detail will do that.

Anyone who knows the cars well enough to recognize what those hard lines are, won't be at all fooled into thinking this is a real Speedster with a four-cam. Or even a one-cam. There are a lot of other 'tells' on a VS that they'll spot first - like the fact that the wheel in a VS front wheel well isn't centered in that space, front to back, the way it was on the original cars.

Many of us have moved the external oil cooler for other reasons, though.  From where VS mounts it over the tranny to the driver's side rear wheel well, where much better air circulation lets it do its job a lot better. This move will be much easier to do than what you're proposing and will probably work better, too.

I think I've read speculation here that the stock VW oil pump doesn't make enough pressure for such a long run.

 

...not to mention the: high-hump tunnel, e-brake actuator located on that tunnel, incorrect steering wheel (on almost all cars), modern black wiper assembly (again, on almost all cars), incorrect side trim/garnish, too much distance from windshield post to door opening, bumpers too thin (from top to bottom), too many snaps for the tonneau cover and convertible top, square inner door tops, door pockets, gauges too large, turn-signal actuator incorrect (most cars)

the list is long but so are the reasons to buy, drive and enjoy one of these fakes...

Too much! Spend $ on umbrella brake and early VW star heater control (even if fake). Or just put fake lines in wheel well - fiberglassed in at top and bottom.  That's too much oil to push that far and back - oil cooler with electric fan in rear wheel well would be more effective.

Robert M posted:

Seems to me you'd be asking a lot from the oil pump by putting the oil cooler in the front of the car.

^ this.

If you want to put an inner fender panel in your car, that's cool. If you want to pump oil out of a 2 qt. (at best) sump, all the way to the front of the car and back again, I guess  that's cool too

... as long as you are OK rebuilding it a lot more often than you'd need to otherwise.

There are a lot of reasons not to do this, and none I can think of (besides aesthetics) to do it, but it's your car and your gig.

I wish you the best

Keep in mind the more fittings etc. you have creates a greater chance of a leak that could quickly take out the engine.   Just my .02

Hmmmmm.... i didnt realize the oil pump was so weak - would never have guessed that. This is my first type 1. As far as aircooled 4 bangers, all of my past experience is on type 4's.

I want the car to look as correct as possible, but any changes or corrections must be functional/actually work.  While i fully embrace that the car is a fake, i dont want to do anything that is along the lines of those fiero lambos that have that fiberglass tray that looks like a lambo engine.

Looks like i just had 2 longer term projects added to my list:  the motor and the front wheel openings. I never noticed that. Went and took a look and sure enough... Now its going to bug me.

I have my interior fixed, less the e brake. I have all the parts for that change, just need to get in and do it. My only concern there is the trial and error on the pivot so that the pull effort is easy/leveraged correctly.

Wipers are done, new bumpers and carrera decos are on the work bench and should be done this weekend (although i now need to measure them based on Will's comment above). Have a plan for the wheels, just need warmer weather.

I really am enjoying this process. It has completely renewed my interest in the car. It really is like building a giant model car. Very relaxing. 

Thanks all.

We all have opinions. But that’s why I love the replicas. It provides the freedom to create YOUR personal bespoke car. 

To a degree, it’s like bringing a stock car to Chip Foose to customize to your desire. 

What I feel terrible doing, and I’m guilty of doing this, is hovering over a “real” Speedster and explaining all the differences to friends who ask what’s so different about mine from the real Speedster. 

To a degree I feel bad for a real Speedster owners when people keep asking them “real or fake”? I’d grow tired of fielding that question if I owned a $400k original. 

In summary. Have fun with it. It’s yours. Want to make it look as authentic as possible, do it. Want to make it “hot rodded”, more power to you. But do it for you. Just my two cents. 

Of course no one has to know whether the oil lines are actually carrying oil, now do they?

We seem to fall into three distinct camps in our hobby:

OCD "I want the car to look original " (Think PCA mentality).

"I want the car to be reminescent of the original" (Think Outlaw style, etc.)

"Hold my beer and stand back!  (Wide body, side vents, 8" wheels, diamond tuck interior, West Coast Customs.)

They are all valid and fun. 

Pick one and have at it, you'll be safe here!

Yup. Several distinct schools of thought. Taste is in the eye of the beholder. My experience so far is that most car guys like the cars a lot, since they're so different from the typical fare at the Steak & Shake. You can never please all the fans—there are the crusty lead heads who disdain all things fiberglass; there's the PCA tightasses who hate that there are replicas—but these are rare folks and, frankly, they can't be pleased. So screw them!

En re long runs with oil: It's conventional wisdom not to put the oil cooler up front (unless dry-sumped), but (with all respect to Stan) I think the concern is overblown. Pumps in general are rated more on lift capacity than distance pumped. If you keep the lines close to horizontal with few bends it should not stress the pump, and you should be able to get good flow and pressure at startup and after warmup, so long as the oil you use isn't too thick. It WILL be a hassle to set up, though: all those bulkheads to get through, fittings to make sure they're tight, etc. Then at oil change time you'll have these tubes full of oil to contend with. I was going to install a front drain.

On my Spyder I also have a large Accusump accumulator to keep the pressure up on those long sweepers. It's all overkill and, as Stan says, a true dry-sump system is both more elegant and more period-correct. But: cash money, plus technical complexities. 

Since you're more after the look of those two oil lines in the fender well, I endorse what others have said: put in the lines, and also locate your auxiliary oil cooler in the rear fender well where it will work better, be easier to service, and no one will see it.

I work on pumps as a part of my livelihood, so I think about what is asked of them in a situation like using a conventional (wet-sump) pump to push oil to the front of the car and back.

Think of it like this: if the oil level in the sump is correct with the engine not running (which is how you check it), the likelihood of the lines and cooler being completely full of oil is pretty small. Anything above the level of the sump (cooler, lines, etc.) is going to have a tendency to drain back to the sump, unless there's a check-valve or inverted trap of some sort in the system.

When you start the engine, you'll have to fill those lines and that cooler with oil from the sump. 2 thing are going to happen at that point:

1. The oil is going to fill those lines and that cooler before it can pressurize your engine's oil galley. 15 ft of line and a cooler could take a fair amount of time to fill, depending on how much air there is in them.
2. The level of oil in the sump is going to drop to fill those lines and that cooler, leaving the sump under-filled. You could compensate by overfilling the sump when the engine is not running, but to what end? You'd have oil spray like you've never seen  if you did that. 

If I wanted an oil cooler in the front of the car, a 2-stage dry-sump with the cooler in the first stage is much better for a few reasons:

1. If the lines and cooler drain back, it isn't going to mean that I'm out of oil when I start the engine, as long as there is oil in the reservoir. The sump on a dry-sump doesn't need to have any oil at all in it to work, since the oil supplied to the galleys is stored in the reservoir.
2. If the oil drains back from the lines and cooler, all it's doing is filling the sump with a bit of oil, which is still well below the normal sump oil level in a normal (conventional) oiling system. On start-up, this oil is moved out and though the lines and cooler with the first stage of the pump. It's the second stage, drawing oil from the reservoir that pressurizes the galleys.

There's a third option, however. You could run a conventional oil system and use an Accusump to pressurize the oil-galleys during start-up, and to act as a surge-tank of a sort. Start-up procedure would be to power up the fuel pumps and Accusump solenoid, wait for the oil pressure to come up (lines and cooler filled, oil-galley pressurized), then crank it over-- but most guys think an Accusump is black-magic, and won't go to the effort. If you want to do that, it'd work.

I did both a dry-sump and an Accusump, but the dry-sump by itself is a huge project for a variety of reasons:

1. Bugpack was purchased by EMPI a while back, and they apparently didn't see fit to continue production of the pumps. That leaves Auto-Craft as the only source for a real 2-stage pump. Warm up your credit card.
2. You'll need a custom exhaust if you get a dry-sump pump, since it won't clear most headers.
3. You'll need to re-do the pulley set-up to clear the pump.
4. You'll need an oil reservoir somewhere. Buying one from Canton or somebody similar means having a tiny little beer-keg somewhere in your car. Getting one that looks right is a custom part. I welded mine out of aluminum. Just building the prototype out of styrofoam took about 6 hours, then my welder built it out of aluminum. I took it back to him no less than 5 times for this or that (fittings welded in various places, etc.). I shutter to think what I've got in that tank, but it's many hundreds of dollars).
5. You'll have an explosion of lines under the car. They'll all be stainless-braided which don't look period-correct, but which are the only thing to use on this sort of thing.

All of these things make the car look less original, which is why you want to do this in the first place. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It's easy to lose something you never intended to get something nobody cares about.

Ask me how I know.

I'd suggest just driving the car, and being happy.

I have seen photographs of real speedsters that appear to have the same problem with wheel well placement - though it could be due to the wheels being turned slightly or the photograph being taken at a slight angle:

 Steve McQueen's:

John Oates':

And don’t smoke in that last shop.   Jus’ sayin’.

"I shudder to think what I've got in that tank, but it's many hundreds of dollars)."

Note spelling corrected -- but the point is: Stan is a very knowledgeable guy, extremely so when it comes to the mechanicals.  A wealth of knowledge. All learned the hard way, I think.  And he has an abiding philosophy: if there is a way to do it and spend more time and more money, then that's the what I'm going to do.  Sort of an inverse Orcams Razor, if you catch my drift.  I'll say this: he has one of the sweetest, tightest, badass rides in the group, by far, and likely has put more time and $$ into it than any five of us.  Just sayin'  If he suggests that you just get in and drive, well that is coming from some hard learned lessons.  As to the quote above as evidence, imagine what all has happened to all his other parts large and small if this was invested in a smallish metal tank with no moving parts.  Just sayin'

Stan: I love ya, man.  Rave on!!!

Sorry to go a tad off topic, but does anyone know why the windshield frame is in the wrong place?

Scott S posted:

Sorry to go a tad off topic, but does anyone know why the windshield frame is in the wrong place?

 The windshield posts are mounted directly to the fiberglass body with nothing underneath. I'd guess it's moved forward from OG, so the hardware for the posts can actually grab something substantial enough to keep from folding the windshield over if you look at it wrong.

The best philosophy regarding how to make these cars look and work "right" is Musbejim's: set the stance, nice (fake) Fuchs, mild 1835 or 1914 with a good header and then just drive it. The dude just exudes cool. You can't buy it and I can't make it.

That said, getting Stan's endorsement of my front-mounted-oil-cooler-with Accusump+30mm-pump notion is very gratifying, backhanded though it is. I feel like we have to try this—someone has to, anyway—to see if I was right.

El Frazoo posted:

Sort of an inverse Orcams Razor, if you catch my drift.

It sure looks that way from the outside.

The interesting thing about Occom's Razer  (which says that "more things should not be used than are necessary.") is that it really only works only when the simple solution and complex solution both work equally well. If a more complex solution does a better job than a simpler one, then the complex solution is better. At least, that's what I tell myself when I'm trying to remember why I have two spark-plugs in every cylinder.

Ptolemy said (a long time before Occom), "We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible", which seems fantastic until you consider that he said this in defense of the Ptolemaic System, which postulated that the planets, stars, and entire universe revolved around the earth. It was an elegant and simple solution (at the time), but it was also wrong.

I like to think my path hews more to the Sherlock Holmes approach, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I've eliminated most of the impossibilities by actually trying them, finding them to be of little utility, then discarding them. I'm still finding what those impossibilities are.

... but at the end of the day, I'll readily admit (here, in front of God and everyone on the World Wide Web) to heading down some serious rabbit-holes and into several dead-ends. Occom and Ptolemy (and later, Herr Doktor Porsche) were really onto to something when they postulated that sometimes less is more. The problem for me is that the "more" in this instance is an intangible, and I don't do very well with those. I'm all about the quantifiable. As a result, I tend to think less is just less, and more is (well)... more.

There really isn't any mechanical problem that can't be overcome by the application of effort and money. The madness comes in knowing (or not knowing, as it were) how much effort and money are appropriate for the problem at hand, and whether or not those problems can just be lived with in a manner requiring almost no effort or money.

Anyhow, I don't think I'm the anti-Occom, so much as the anti-Jim Ignacio.

I build engine after engine after engine, in pursuit of some holy-grail of the perfect pushrod air-cooled engine. My goal is to run 90 mph for days at a time, crossing time-zones to get to better roads, so I can run like a sportbike in the mountains. Jim putts along in a near-stock Type 1 for 100k mi, running whatever oil is on sale and hanging out in the right lane on CA1, looking more cool than I ever have or will.

I have roll-up windows, a gasoline heater, and a scissor frame top. I've sealed up every place water or air might infiltrate the cabin. I drive 6 months a year. Jim just lives in SoCal, and drives all year round in a car that never gets the top put up at all. I'm wound like an 8-day clock, Jim runs on island time.

So... when it comes to being OCD, I can do OCD. But my advice remains-- if you can just be happy with the way things are, you'll spend a fraction of the time and money you can spend trying to make it better. If you're that guy, fan-stinking-tastic. If not... I'm really so very sorry. 

Stan, I'm somewhere near your OCD when I get my mind set on something, without the vast sums of cash. I do spend some, and sometimes a lot, but I guess I'm lucky with just one motor so far.

Ed, original Spyders did have the front mounted cooler, as do a lot of 911s. They are all dry sump so have the benefits of that as Stan so elegantly explained.

But, if you REALLY wanted to do a front cooler, I've seen it done. Yes, use a 30mm Shadek pump, and put an extended sump on the engine. And the lines that run up front should be AN-10 to lessen restriction.

Me, I have a 1.5 qt. extension, a 190 oil thermostat, 190  fan switch, and rear-mounted plate cooler with AN-8 lines. There is no shroud cooler, I have a 911 shroud. It works.

"... anti-Jim Ignacio."

There it is folks, in a nutshell.  El Guapo rules!!

El Frazoo posted:

"... anti-Jim Ignacio."

There it is folks, in a nutshell.  El Guapo rules!!

Word. 

Third time's a charm: Occam's razor.

If it's really what you want to do, fine, but the expenditure (labour as well as cost) has no more benefit than a properly installed cooler/fan/thermostat assembly in the rear fender well. This is an instance where, although I see the attraction in recreating the original look, keeping it simple (with fewer trouble points down the road) may be the better option. Al

And where's the fun in THAT?

Jim Kelly posted:

Third time's a charm: Occam's razor.

An infinite amount of monkeys, at an infinite amount of keyboards, typing a nearly infinite amount of words, and we still cain't spell fer spit.

Stan Galat posted:

 

...as the anti-Jim Ignacio..

We're all Bozos on this bus (SOC, the best website ever)...

...cause it's all part of 'The Madness'!