BAJAS AREN'T JUST BUILT

THEY EVOLVE

WELCOME TO THE EVOLUTION OF MY FIRST BAJA

Ah my first baja what a joy, what a wonder, what a marvel, what a.....piece of junk. I actually paid $700 for this thing. It really was a piece of junk. Who ever converted it was a butcher. The fenders and hood were still the stock ones. The guy just took a torch and cut them off, he didn't even bother to smooth off the edges. A piece of plywood was bolted across the front and the hood was hammered over it. The headlights were nailed and wired to the plywood (getting the picture yet). The car had no brakes, no rear seat and no radio. The thing had an electrical fire so nothing worked. To start the car you had to connect the battery cable and push a starter button. To shut it off you disconnected the battery cable and dumped the clutch to stall it. But the engine sounded good, the tranny was solid and this was the cheapest VW I could find and about all I could afford. So I shelled out the $700 and took it home, driving very carefully seeing as how it wouldn't stop.

I made home in one piece. It was Friday afternoon so I started working on it right away. By Sunday afternoon it was looking pretty good. I had rewired it, installed new brakes and added a baja kit. Now I had about a total of $850 and one weekend's work invested in her. Everything works like it should and she doesn't look half-bad, so I figure I did all right.

At this point I was totally new to the world of VWs and as a result I knew nothing about them. Within a few weeks I learned that my car had some other good baja traits. She was '64 which means that it had a king & link front-end, has 5 lug wheels and was already converted to 12 volts. These are all good things for off-roading.

The only draw back was the swing axle tranny. This isn't a dependabilty problem, it's more of a handling problem. You see when cornering the rear wheels will swing under so that you're riding on the outer edge of the tire. When the car is lifted the problem is even worse. Oh well, it's easier to convert to an IRS tranny than to convert from ball joint to kink pin front-end.

Here she is about six weeks after getting her. Shinny new Corvette yellow paint, new bumpers and just itching to go out and play.

AND PLAY WE DID

I've had her about 2yrs now. The front-end has been cut and turned 3/8in. and the rear torsion bars have been turned two splines. This resulted in a pretty good lift. The tie rods and pitman arms have been reinforced and larger tires mounted up front. The shocks are KYB's all around.

The motor is a 1641 single port with a good low-end cam. The heads have been nicely ported and it is still running on the stock carburetor.I installed a high volume oil pump along with a filter and cooler kit. It also has a bosch 009 distributor and an alternator kit. This motor was a work horse and proved too be extremely reliable. For being a fairly stock car this thing would go anywhere.

Here she is a few months later. I've spruced her up with some graphics. I toasted my 1641, won't bore you with the details lets just say that mud and oil don't mix. I built a balanced 1835cc with ported dual port heads and a performance cam. This added a little kick to the thing.

DISASTER STRIKES

All I can say is, I wasn't driving. Check out the trouble page for the details. No problem, I can rebuild her stronger, better and faster!

Well here's the new body, it only cost $60 and took a weekend to change out. Now if I can only straigten this damn tie rod.

Ah the rebuilding process is coming along fine. New body installed, whale tail in back and just about ready for paint. The rear suspension has been modified to a bus IRS system that made her 14inches wider and with some future mods would net 18 inches of travel. And just when things were looking up...

DISASTER STIKES AGAIN

This was the result of a high-speed impact with an ATC. Again see the trouble page for the messy details. Well, now I guess, I will need a custom front suspension.

The rebuild is almost complete. The custom built torsion bar front-end works great. The lengthened arms made the front-end 8 inches wider. I eventually relocated the shock towers and added dual shocks. Then I turned the torsion bars up two notches which made for almost 18 inches of travel up front. I installed eight long travel Rough country Nitro-chargers in back. I also installed a set of dual Dellorto carbs wich really boosted the perfomance of the 1835cc. When done this car had 20 inches of ground clearance and would float across the desert.

This is what she looked like fully lifted. This car stood taller than my brothers S-10 Blazer. Even though it had a higher center of gravity the extra width made this an extremely stable car.