[Brian Watts]

It's been June 2005 since he posted/logged in time to pull the plug

June 2005, UAC weren't around in 2005 LOL

June 5th 2010 is a long time still, I emailed him and never heard back so seems you could be right on the plug being pulled

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Good evening Brian, the car couldn't be going any slower, honestly have 95% plus of the parts, just need to commit more time to finishing it up instead of other projects, home remodel ect. Primered the car today, will post pictures of car body by the end of this coming weekend. Picked up the 9 second NHRA roll cage from Ron Lummus a couple months ago. Have to re-work the billet heads a little, the heads spread port manifolds are so wide I couldn't get the spark plugs in, so have to finish welding up the plug holes so I can re-machine the plug holes angled in the combustion chamber at an angle towards the exhaust valve so I can put the plugs in with the manifolds on. I made the manifolds extremely wide so I could get a pretty straight shot of the intake port to the valves, almost a straight shot from the top of the manifold through the port to the intake seat, by the way the intakes are Del West 6mm stem 54mm dia. titanium valves, the exhausts are Del West 7mm stem 40mm dia. titanium with Del West titanium spring retainers and valve locks, valve springs are 1.5 in. dia. SPI brand duals with 500 lbs. plus open pressure, the bore is 97mm LA Sleeve barrels and JE pistons, made from scratch to my specs, their quite exotic and a thing of beauty and sport cassidem coated titanium wrist pins that I conjered up in my machine shop, enough update for 10:30 at night.

 

[Brian Watts]

Good evening Brian, the car couldn't be going any slower, honestly have 95% plus of the parts, just need to commit more time to finishing it up instead of other projects, home remodel ect. Primered the car today, will post pictures of car body by the end of this coming weekend. Picked up the 9 second NHRA roll cage from Ron Lummus a couple months ago. Have to re-work the billet heads a little, the heads spread port manifolds are so wide I couldn't get the spark plugs in, so have to finish welding up the plug holes so I can re-machine the plug holes angled in the combustion chamber at an angle towards the exhaust valve so I can put the plugs in with the manifolds on. I made the manifolds extremely wide so I could get a pretty straight shot of the intake port to the valves, almost a straight shot from the top of the manifold through the port to the intake seat, by the way the intakes are Del West 6mm stem 54mm dia. titanium valves, the exhausts are Del West 7mm stem 40mm dia. titanium with Del West titanium spring retainers and valve locks, valve springs are 1.5 in. dia. SPI brand duals with 500 lbs. plus open pressure, the bore is 97mm LA Sleeve barrels and JE pistons, made from scratch to my specs, their quite exotic and a thing of beauty and sport cassidem coated titanium wrist pins that I conjered up in my machine shop, enough update for 10:30 at night.

HEY HEY, your still out there!!

Good to hear from you I am still hoping you can make it out to the track since you have most everything it needs to be running

Realistically with your schedule and where the project is at is a race in 2013 possible, or 2014 more likely?

Please check in now and then and update us ,would love to see you finally make it out and Super Street can always use the help raising the car count

 

[Bad Bug Two]

...I made the manifolds extremely wide so I could get a pretty straight shot of the intake port to the valves, almost a straight shot from the top of the manifold through the port to the intake seat...

Best of luck on your project, I hope things turn out well. The only concern that I have for you is that with the intake that straight, you may not get as good of cylinder filling.

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Back again 2 nights in a row, on a roll. Brian thanks for shooting an email to me the other day asking about how the cars doing, that motivated me so here come some more updates, I'll have the car at the track test and tuning by this coming March 2013. Once home from work today I sped out to the back yard and snapped some pics of the car and they'll be posted tonight along with some others parts pics shot this afternoon also. In the car pics you'll see a couple of the cars one piece fiberglass front end which I've modified a great deal, to achieve the original Pineapple's 1970's old school look I had to search literally country wide on Samba to dig up a set of front flaired fiberglass fenders and also an original Empi fiberglass indented front hood, once tracking down these hard to find collectibles I proceeded to cut off the one piece front ends fenders and glassed-fabricated on the flaired fenders in their place, next came precisionally measuring and cutting out sections of the one piece front end hood and glassing in the indentations cut from the Empi hood, this was a real pain to make happen but I think you can see from the pictures the work accomplished the goal of re-creating the original Pineapple's identical look, I suspect it'll be the only one piece fiberglass front end with flaired fenders and Empi indented hood at the track this coming year? On another post I'll up load so pics of a few of the cars parts with a little text, ps: on one of the rear pics of the car you'll notice the original Empi fiberglass scoop rear deck lid and also the 3 inch narrowed rear torsion bar to accept the car's Dave Folts bus racing trans, Art.

 

[Brian Watts]

Back again 2 nights in a row, on a roll. Brian thanks for shooting an email to me the other day asking about how the cars doing, that motivated me so here come some more updates, I'll have the car at the track test and tuning by this coming March 2013. Once home from work today I sped out to the back yard and snapped some pics of the car and they'll be posted tonight along with some others parts pics shot this afternoon also. In the car pics you'll see a couple of the cars one piece fiberglass front end which I've modified a great deal, to achieve the original Pineapple's 1970's old school look I had to search literally country wide on Samba to dig up a set of front flaired fiberglass fenders and also an original Empi fiberglass indented front hood, once tracking down these hard to find collectibles I proceeded to cut off the one piece front ends fenders and glassed-fabricated on the flaired fenders in their place, next came precisionally measuring and cutting out sections of the one piece front end hood and glassing in the indentations cut from the Empi hood, this was a real pain to make happen but I think you can see from the pictures the work accomplished the goal of re-creating the original Pineapple's identical look, I suspect it'll be the only one piece fiberglass front end with flaired fenders and Empi indented hood at the track this coming year? On another post I'll up load so pics of a few of the cars parts with a little text, ps: on one of the rear pics of the car you'll notice the original Empi fiberglass scoop rear deck lid and also the 3 inch narrowed rear torsion bar to accept the car's Dave Folts bus racing trans, Art.

Glad to hear my internet kick to the butt worked LOL got you going again

The front in sounds like a project in itself LOL

March 2013 is great to hear and will be looking for you, just stick with it

Never can post too many photos also

Brian

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Trying to get all the car body pics posted, I'm very much out of practice doing the web site stuff, hopefully they'll be attached here?

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Brian here's some more pics shot today of the car's for instance JE 97mm pistons and forged titanium 5.5" long JET brand connecting rods I bought from the Bergs years ago, the interesting aspect of the purchase was that the rods were completely RAW FORGINGS, absolutely, totally un machined, one solid piece not even with big end rod caps split-seperated from the rod beam, they with a few other sets were found lost on a shelf way after the Bergs thought they'd sold out all the remaining machined sets they had? That's why I got them for a very good price, I asked, almost begged Dee to have her shop finish machine the rods for me, they'd many hears since scraped all the tooling and machining them would be cost prohibitive for them and also for me thus considering my back ground I made up the tooling and did the raw and finish work in my machine shop. Much time later when I'd finished the rods machining I kidded with Dee that if she were to give me a set of titanium rods un-machined for free I wouldn't take them, after completing the rods I experienced why her shop didn't want to machine them and I fully understand, forged titanium is a very nasty material to machine, gummy like stainless steel and hard has hell, extremely unforgiving and all cutters have to be expensive carbide, quite an investment for one project, steel end mills will simply burn up, enough crying on my part, PS: while in the machineing process I actually scraped one rod and had to buy a fifth to complete my set. If I can find them I'll also attach some pictures of the machining process I had to go through a couple years ago, also attached is a picture of balancing the rods on a device purchased from SUMMIT that's fair priced and actually very accurate, the digital scale was bought on ebay and accruate within a 10th of a gram, usually rods should be within a 1/4 gram, I also balanced the engine's pistons on this scale getting them closer than how I received them from JE which were close but I'm compulsive and wanted them closer, just some dumb trivia. Last on the picture of the rod you'll notice a .866 dia. titanium piston wrist pin part of the set I machined up from scratch from bar stock purchased on Ebay, their 30% lighter than tool steel pins, also you'll notice the pin and rod are a shiny black color, that's because they all had to be sent out and hard carbon, Casidiam coated, if you don't coat the rods thrust to crank contact surface the rods will GALL radically, you can't cheat on this process, if you don't coat you lose the rods and possibly the crank too!

 

[Brian Watts]

Man got you rolling quick now huh LOL!!!

Stay on it and you will be on the rack by your goal!!


Love the photos and updates

 

[Manx U]

Hey, Art you never answer my? Will the Pineapple have Train Horns? LoL :jig:

Manx U

 

[dangerous]

Keep those pictures and progress stories coming Art!

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Howdy Manx, it'll have train horns if you help install them like we did on you totally awesome truck! Oh - and more pics coming tonight.

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

As requested, more cool parts pics that I took yesterday of the up and coming engine I should be throwing together this January, it's of the 97mm JE pistons, the 54mm dia. DelWest titanium intake valves that sport 6mm stems and accompanying 40mm dia. titanium exhaust valves sporting 7mm stems, steel lash caps and DelWest titanium keepers, the dual valve springs are SPI brand that are 1.5" dia and sport 550 lbs.of open seat pressure, next to them you'll notice bronze spring cup shims and last you'll notice CV PRODUSTS bronze silicon valve guides, they look peculiar because their of a big block Chevy design that I'm going to have to lathe down to size to fit my heads, I had to buy over the counter guides in order to easily get the guides in 6 and 7mm valve stem diameters, as you can guess no one makes vw outside guide diameters for the extremely small valve stem dia's. A lot more pictures this weekend of the car's unique front suspension. Art

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Just crossed my mind, can anyone advise me of a good southern calif. shop that does these modern "Wrap JOB" type paint jobs like was done on the gorilla paradise turbo bug? I guess I heard their doing this method on the nascar and NHRA funny's instead of traditional spray booth paint jobs? Can anyone share of this methods quality, endurance ect. Thanks Art.

 

[Agent Orange]

Lance Gregory I believe had his done by Gator Wraps in Ontario. Maybe he'll chime in.

AO

 

[lance gregory]

yeah Gator Wraps did mine and Prothero's.

http://www.gatorwraps.com/gallery/racing.html/title/silver-bugget-racing-vw-notchback?page=4




I gave them the car for a week. The sent me emails of the design and also went down and looked at a printout on the stock. I loved it. You can do anything with a wrap.
Different stock form matte to high gloss.
In my opinion for a race car it was the only way to go if you are going to have graphics and don't do painting yourself. It was more cost effectivefor me.

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

Lance thanks so much for the info on the body wraps, it's something I have to get done probably this early Feb. Today did more fiberglass work on the car, created a roll on the rear fiberglass skirt bottom for strength and appearance. A little history on the car so people have a better idea what this project is all about, I bought it from Danny Turco's wife-widow in the mid 1970's, Danny, it's original owner died in tragic hang gliding accident. Danny chopped my 55 steet bug back in the early 1970's when I was a member of the DVB Orange County bug club. On this post I'll attach a few pictures, my gray steet bug Danny choped which is how I met him at his bug shop in Los Alamitos Calif, and a pic of the Pineapple the day I bought it 38 years ago in my folks driveway. i raced the Pineapple in NHRA devision 7 on he West Coast in J and K glass, the car only weighted roughly a little over 1,100 lbs. Danny who originally built the car to attain the car's extremely light class had the entire car acid dipped, all the steel on the car's body was half the thickness of a stock bug, you had to be extremely carefull where to position your hands when pushing it up to the starting line in fear of radically denting the body, the car also had an original Deano DynoSours tube front end similar to a old school funny car's. The complete floor pan was cut out and replaced with thin gage aluminum. I totaled the Pineapple in 1977 at the Orange Country International Raceway at Bug In 17. The car went sideways after just going through the lights, smacked into the left guard rail at full speed under power, then spun out sliding down the rest of the track, I still have the time slip, 11.07 at 122 mph. I believe the cars always high top speeds is due to the engines 5.7 in. length Chevy connecting rods. So now I'm bringing the car back from the grave with original old school look but highly updated internal design.

 

[The Mad Pineapple II]

More pic's, building a new car from scratch after so many years I badly wanted it to be unique and hopefully fast so I decided to not do what's common and copy every one's elses engine specs and buy parts off the shelf that're making the competion go fast, so I'm sharing here the rockers I designed and made up. After doing some research, my rockers are roughly designed after JESEL Co. very hi ratio rockers but for VW drag racing needs, the aluminum rockers bodys are my making ALL others parts are JESEL whom are world renown for being in most of the professional pro stock and NASCAR engines, as hard is it might be to belive Jesel makes rockers that are as much as 2.2 ratio giving top pro stock cars with over 1 inch of full valve lift! Enjoy the pics of rockers in pricess of being machined and the finished product.

 

[dangerous]

There is a lot of work in those rockers Art.
What ratio did you go for?
Are you going for a roller or flat tappet profile?
I recently made these 1.7 rockers:
Many, many hours on a manual milling machine.

 

[Big wing mick!]

Geez Dave, Art is like the American version of you!

****.