many modern vehicles use a constant full flow heater with solenoid operated air flaps for the hot/cold selection as it is more controllable. The buggy will be better compared to vans and beetles as your pipe run is shorter and circulation will be better.
I have considered moving my heater to under the rear seat and ducting the air to the front as in cold weather the air flow around the engine means it gets nowhere near the thermostat opening with full running temp reached but 33 years on nothing has changed.

many modern vehicles use a constant full flow heater with solenoid operated air flaps for the hot/cold selection as it is more controllable.

Didn`t know that - might mean a better selection of heater boxes then should I go down that route in the future

Another big chunk removed today was the power steering pump - You can see the empty cradle just to the left of the alternator.

Frustratingly difficult to get access too. The front two bolts were easy to spot through the holes in the rotor wheel, but the long bolt at the base was a nightmare to get to, so ended up removing the cradle in the end and unbolting the pump on the bench rather than in situ. Pump gave me another quick £50 to the coffers via eBay too, which was a nice result.





It does leave me with a problem though, and that is I have now lost my alternator belt. I will order a short one up for the time being, but I`m not even sure that the alternator will remain in this position yet. I have a feeling that the air intake and throttle body pointing towards the rear of the engine may foul the rear bulkhead of the Buggy, but I have read somewhere that the inlet manifold can be spun 180 degrees and the alternator relocated.

Something else to play with when the engine is out then, because that radiator hose is also pointing in the wrong direction too 

I`m going to give a mention about removing a Vacuum hose here, as it nearly caught me out. The pipe in question is the one that goes from the inlet manifold to the Brake Servo, and it provides the necessary internal vacuum that allows the brakes to work more efficiently as the pedal is pressed.





Something you will notice when working on this car is the unusual sizes of the nuts and bolts. Most vehicles are tackled with 10/13/17/19mm spanners, but everything on this is slightly smaller. Where you would expect to wield a 13mm spanner, you will be reaching for a 12mm one - What should be a 17mm will be a 15mm - get the idea? Everything is metric, there are a selection of thread sizes, and there are just as many conspiracy theories behind this. Some say that the reduction is a weight saving exercise resulting in more performance, whilst others maintain a considerable productions savings to be made in raw materials. The Jury is out on this one. Anyway, with the hose pulled, we are left with an open hole that needs to be plugged.





And this is where I nearly got caught out. The stub that unscrewed looked like a 10mm bolt with a really fine thread, in fact it resembled an M10 x 1.0 which is an extra fine. However, it is not. It is actually a 1/8" BSP Tapered Thread, which any old skool engineer will tell you has little place on a modern Japanese Car, but thats what it is. Had I wound an M10 in there (and yes, it would have felt tight) it would have stripped the thread of the manifold which would be quite expensive to replace. 1/8" BSP Taper plugs are commonplace in pneumatics, so finding a blanking plug was relatively easy.





If you are one of those that likes a thousand and one panic dials on the dash, then this would be a great location to put a sender for one of those Vacuum gauges with the needle that swings from red to green indicating fuel economy. I just wanted it blanked off.





You are probably throwing all of these pipes and hoses in a pile, not knowing what will be required at a later date - well pay particular attention to the Vacuum hose that you have just removed because it also has a one way vale inside that is almost impossible to identify externally. This may cause issues in the future should you inadvertently tried to fit in anywhere that you expected fluid to flow.

Really enjoying this Dave. Looking forward to the next instalment.

My aftermarket oil filler neck had an odd thread on the takeoff, think it was BSP. A plug used on gas fittings was the right fit

Really enjoying this write up Dave

Unusual to have manifold operated vacum I thought most vehicles had swapped to vacum pumps with the emissions and need for economy before the 52 plate. Makes life easier for you though and you could servo your rear brakes to up the efficiency and help control front lock up.

By now, most of you will know how easy it is to drop an engine block out of the back of a Buggy, and for those of you who don`t, then it is only held in by four bolts. Undo those four bolts and the engine slides out. It really is as easy as it sounds. So, how do we make our Subaru engine physically fit then, especially given that it is held in place with six bolts and they are in different places?

We use what is called an adaptor plate. It is a thick metal plate with 10 holes - six of which bolt to the Subaru lump, and the remaining four allow it to bolt to the VW Gearbox. Most of the adaptor plates will come as a kit with a modified flywheel (we will cover that one later) and this is where you are going to be spending a rather large chuck of money. Most kits will come in at around the £500 ~ £600 mark, but that doesn't include shipping or any import duties which have to be carefully considered if bringing one in from the States, as a final bill for around £900 is not uncommon if going down that route.





Whilst shopping around for the best prices, you will also come across a variety of different plates too. Most of them however fall into two types that are fairly easy to identify. One of the plates has very "Rounded" sides and is often known as the "German" or "Euro" one as I guess that someone over there is banging them out. The picture above shows the German one. The other style is called the "Kennedy" plate, as it comes from a Company in the States called, yep, your guessed it, Kennedy. If you compare the above picture to the Kennedy plate below, you will see the obvious difference in shape.





Your research will also have probably thrown up a few forums and chat rooms full of people having problems with both of these plates. More people seem to complain about the German one than the Kennedy one, but I think that's because there are more German ones in circulation due to the costs, so the percentage of people moaning about them is going to be higher. They do all seem to have issues with the same thing though - Bent or damaged studs.

Now studs just don`t bend on their own and a lot of the early posts seem to be regarding studs that were already fitted to the plates prior to shipping and were bent in transit due to the very heavy flywheel bouncing off them in the box. Later plates are shipped with the studs removed, ready for you to fit them when they arrive. This again caused problems with stripped and crossed threads and bent studs as a result of intervention with mole grips. Some even complained that the studs bent whilst fitting the engine, but that sounds as if the engine and gearbox heights were incorrect and the engine was resting on the studs - that's a rookie mistake and not really any fault of the adaptor plate. Some mention has also been made that the plates do not line up properly and do not sit flush with the gearbox or engine. Again, this sounds like something else going one here, but nevertheless, is something that can be easily checked by test fitting the plate to the gearbox and see if it sits flush.





So which is better? The cheaper and more accessible German one, or the Prohibitively Expensive to Ship Kennedy one? The Kennedy one is a more complex design shape and obviously more expensive to produce, so the only thing I could think of was that more effort had been made into the research and reason of this shape, but still unsure exactly how it could make it better than the German one? After some searching on the net, I stumbled across a secondhand Kennedy kit for £300, and believe it or not, was located a mere 1/2 mile from my house !!

So that was the one for me 

Did you not consider the Rjes method ? Make a very good install and lots of info on the site. The other Sandrail on the island went this route.
http://rjes.com/

Did you not consider the Rjes method ? Make a very good install and lots of info on the site. The other Sandrail on the island went this route.
http://rjes.com/

Wasn`t an option as I don`t use a Van gearbox - Rails tend to have a bit more wriggle room for such inclusions of physically larger boxes

If you want to retain the Type 1 Beetle gearbox in a Buggy, then an adaptor plate is really the only viable solution

Dave, this is a great read. Looking forward to your thoughts/solution when it comes to cooling.
You should consider a mini business for conversions, I'd be a customer.
Best,
Paul

Thanks Paul - glad someone is enjoying reading it   

I have been looking at Alternator Belts. Now that the Power Steering Pump and Air Conditioning Condenser have been removed, I need a much smaller belt to go between the crank pulley and the Alternator.

The belt is known as a flat 5 ribbed Poly V one, and has five small ribs that locate in the grooves of the pulley wheel. With the Alternator adjusted to its mid position on the adjusting bracket, I measured the length of the belt that I would need, and each time I got a slightly different measurement. They were all around the same though, and varied from 700mm to 710mm which was close enough to go shopping for.

Not knowing which sizes were available, my local parts factor guy was very helpful. It was no surprise that he would not have anything suitable off the shelf, but the available sizes and prices seemed to be really random. 697mm = £14 (3 days) / 700mm = £11 (Next Day) / 705mm = £28 (10 days) / 708mm = £14 (3 Days). The 700mm seemed to be the cheapest and most readily available, and I couldn't really justify an extra £17 for another 5mm of belt, when an extra 8mm would have only cost £1 more. Figure that one out?

So I went with this one.





And it fitted absolutely perfectly





At some point I may experiment with turning the inlet manifold around 180 degrees as I think that the air filter may foul the buggy bulkhead which would mean relocating the alternator - but for now this will do

Hi Dave,

Great thread and loads of useful details and info.
Going through the Scooby conversion at the moment but going down the bus box and RJES bellhousing route which is throwing up all sorts of interesting challenges.
Looking forward to your next post.

Will the bug box take the Subaru power ? I thought the idea of the Bus box was to handle the torque? Physically I don't  see much in it bu I guess it is how tight it is in there.

@JimB if you have not already, take a look at "Road Going Sandrail" over on the Baja Club forum - that's my mate "The General" and he has done exactly the swap you are with the Rjes - twice in fact as he did the 2L then the 2.5L