Get into topgear by building a V8 Bug

[Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign vehicles of the 60s 70s 80s is a VW Beetle but we also know that the VW Beetles only got 40 horses which is not exactly exciting so to make it exciting we decided to put a V8 into it which you cannot do onto a standard Beetle chassis so to put a big V8 in it bold new chassis and if you're going to build a new chassis build new suspension and if you build new suspension put on bigger brakes and then put the big V8 in it in the middle of the car mid-mounted not at the rear as on the original and then run it through a six-speed transaxle this all makes sense in theory but how does one actually go about making this vehicle and getting it to drive down the road when we build a vehicle for a customer one of the first steps apart from building the chassis and everything else is to Source a good donor body when we started this particular vehicle our spray painter had mentioned that there had been a beetle standing in his Workshop that he had been working on for a customer needless to say it was a stock standard Beetle the vehicle itself was in a very good condition the body was in good Nick because some work had already been done to it and it also happened to be quite close to the color that our American customer asked for once the car arrived at the workshop one of the first things that needs to be done is to remove the body of the chassis it's not a complicated process in fact a beetle body is held onto the chassis but just I don't know 15 or 20 bolts and we removed the body and the chassis gets pushed one side it's the perfect donor but if you intend putting a big V8 in the back we do have a space issue if you can imagine on a beetle where the back seat goes and all that petrol tank where the engine went at the back all that gets cut out so it'll be only left with almost the silhouette of the shell plus the four fenders there's also some reinforcing that we put back in there's some mild steel work there's some welding up we change the dashboard significantly so there's quite a lot of prepping work that's done by us before the body goes back to equibus the spray painter and then he starts with all his work foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] so we've done a couple of dozen of these chassis already and we have them in stock so we would allocate one of those chassis towards this particular project and then from our stores Department we would then start allocating the suspension and all the mechanical bits that would go onto the chassis at the same time while all that is happening we need to Source an engine and in this particular case we found a 40 valve Audi engine and then a six-speed manual gearbox and then from the UK we would order the clutch the pressure plate flywheel all the bits and pieces so everything is now happening in the workshop apart from all what I've just mentioned it needs electrics it needs a ECU it needs a whole lot of stuff and then on this particular project we will ask for two turbos so that had to be sourced so there's a lot of work that happens in the workshop prior to the body coming back to us the chassis itself is an aluminum chassis it consists of about 38 panels which are laser cut and CNC bent the aluminum is um 5082 which is a particular grade which is used a lot in share building and petrol tankers that kind of thing we fit all the components within a jig so they fit with a tolerance of 0.1 millimeter within each other and on this jig where it gets secured it then gets welded by a obviously a graded aluminum welder the process of welding takes on average about 12 12 hours to complete and the prepping before welding is about two days worth of work when we receive an order for a beetle a beard style beetle there is quite an option list and we try and fulfill what the customer has requested obviously up to a point on this particular vehicle we were given a color spec which is a BMW charcoal color that we used but then there were some other exciting options which we always enjoy doing is and that is that the customer had asked for a roll cage within the vehicle we didn't want to get a full competition roll cage into the car because it would make it just impossible just about impossible for him to climb in and out so we've got a stock standard roll cage it is made of chromoly so it's incredibly strong and we had to work out how we were going to build this roll code such that we could have it on the chassis while we're testing and afterwards be able to put the body over it and in fact it became a bit complicated to shed the roll codes had to move into the body and then the body and the roll coach together had to be fitted back onto the chassis apart from that um the particular vehicle has got Halle brand rims front and rear with a 12 and a half inch wide rim at the back an eight and a half inch rim at the front the request was for two turbochargers which have their own complication one doesn't just stick to Turbo charges onto an engine you have to lower the compression on the engine and then you have to water feed the two turbos oil feed both turbos and involved quite a complicated exhaust system and integrate a intercooler into orders um so yes it was a bit challenging but it's ended up as a very exciting vehicle there are quite a few steps when we build the exhaust system we have to have the body on the car because we have to see where the exhausts are going to clear especially now with the two turbochargers and then we wanted the two pipes to come out the center of the body so there's a point where the body goes on WE design the exhaust system while the body is on we look for other routing of electrics to tie lights all that kind of stuff the body comes off again with the body then off we can drive the car we can test the car we can do all the let's call it the Dirty Work of looking for for oil leaks water temperatures all that kind of stuff we can do all that much easier without the body apart from the fact that the body might be in our way it's just safer because with everybody around the vehicle we could scratch somewhere a beautifully prepared body so we simply leave the body off do all our tasting when when we are happy that everything's hundred percent only then do we start re-footing the body um and the Upholstery and the carpeting and all that kind of stuff once the car is assembled including the body we we get to the most tricky bit and the most nerve-wracking bit and that is to take her down to the dyno and and drive the car hard we we can't do that kind of testing and setup on our roads um it just doesn't make sense and it's bloody dangerous so we take it down to the dyno which means it's on a Rolling Road it means that you can put the vehicle through all the scenario of what it would go through on the road you have a massive fan blowing air onto the front of the car as would have happened had you driven down the road so this air across the radiator and then we drive it through the gears and we did all the testing when we did power power runs we do in fourth gear so to give you an idea when we did the one power run up to 6000 RPM in fourth gear we've already reaching 220 kilometers per hour so that explains why we can't possibly do this on the road once it's on the dyno and the and the car is actually driving one can pull the the program up the ECU map and you can adjust all the parameters which means fuel to air mixture when does it change in in the range of acceleration at this RPM what must it be at that RPM what must it be how much do the injectors open and close um all these little things can't be done on the road so that's that's the real reason for being at the diner obviously we also at that point look at temperatures does the does the engine temperature Sunny climb does the oil pressure drop and of course we all stand around praying that the thing's not going to explode but it all went very well we got some incredible figures and we're very very happy with the engine and drivetrain we would always Supply the car in a in what we call a safe mode so we're not we're not pushing it to the extremes we run a low boost we we ran 0.3 bar of a boost we had a fuel pressure at realistic fuel pressure we had the injectors using 60 of the duty cycle so we we're really not pushing the limits even at that scenario with the Rave limiter set at just on 6000 RPM we were getting just short of 300 kilowatt and about 480 Newton meter torque foreign [Music] once we're back from the dyno we start the final assembly so on the dyno we don't have the fenders and stuff on the vehicle so fenders need to go back on and once fenders go on the electrics up to all those lights can be connected final carpeting goes in the final seats go in which in this case is black Napa leather seats door panels door locks glass the glass in the in the car wasn't all fitted so there's some windows that need to go in window Winder mechanisms all the final little bits and pieces make the Hooter work is the steering wheel center all these little bits and pieces get done with the vehicle back in the workshop with the final assembly completed within spend time polishing the car put a nice layer of Polish onto the body as I always say to the guys the last five or ten percent of the vehicle is 40 percent of the work this is one of many vehicles we built but each vehicle has got its own character its own time in the workshop um at trial engineering we we specialize in building bespoke vehicles and this is definitely a bespoke vehicle at the moment on the planet there isn't another one with this particular spec so there isn't another one with the 40 valve Engine with two turbos with these rooms and we we enjoy that to be frank we don't enjoy building a repetitive one after the other exactly the same so we we really enjoy something unique and this is definitely a very unique vehicle this particular vehicle has the Audi 4.2 V8 we're very excited to also now offer the Chevy L is one two and three engine options completely different to the Audi but a whole new challenge for us in the workshop new chassis design new engine mounts new exhaust Etc but we're really looking forward to it in our next vehicle

Channel: V8stealthbeetle

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Id: yfPYU0a0NxA

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2022