VolksRods??

Thanks for the pics flatheadgary Very cool indeed, I'd love to see that last one!

 

you want a funny story about my vw-t? i pulled into a gas station to get gas in the castaic area one night. nice lake area by magic mountain.
at the time, i had to take the hood off to put gas in, as i had a stock vw tank in it. i eventually made a cap on the radiator shell and plumbed it into the tank. anyway, i have the hood off and i am filling it up, the attendent comes over and starts rubbing the black painted aluminum in the shell and ask, wait for it, wait for it, "hey, how does air get through there to cool the radiator". i just looked at him and said "do you see a motor in here". then he just looked at me with a really puzzled look and i just got in and left.
now just think, these kind of people breed and vote. ain't that a scary thought?

 

Pedal power baby, pedal power!

 

heres a 32 pickup sitting on a vw pan used to be blue metal flake. it was built in the early 80's. ran all over riverside and the OC

 

I like the idea of using just the veedub power plant concealed in the model t body idea. I remember as recent as in the last 6-7 years an article in either VW Trends or HotVWs about the Volksrods. Interesting and was pretty cool. Now like has been stated leave out the hacked up Beetles, Buses, Karman Ghias, Type 34s, Notchbacks, Squarebacks, Zwitters, Ovals, and all the other ****pola so this thread lives another day or 2.-VLKSWZL

 

Splits are worth money, but ovals are still cheap and plentiful. There are a few of them for sale in my area now, in fact I got a 56-57 for sale right now. 400.00, can't sell it. This threads about the Volksrods. Since everything in the world has been done to the bug, cut up , flattened out, fenderless s****e racers is all thats left to do.32Coupedeville has a neat car, and I'm building one too.This might be the wrong thread for leaving them all original. Ever meet a Volkswagen resto-snob, I have meet many. They are like the same guys that worry about matching numbers, the whole ten yards. We cut up old bugs just to give them heart failure. I like VW's , if I had a mint original, I wouldn't cut it up.
Volksrods have facinated me since I was a kid and saw them in R&C back in the sixties. They got you thinking outside the box. I think Fullers T was the neatest one. The power to weight ratio was always a good selling point to me.The pic of Fuller holding the front end up is etched into my mind.A lot of good parts on that one,vintage Porsche motor included.Remember , they went against tradition when they came out, but had just enough hot rod appeal that they are still around and we are talking about them. Enough ramblings.

 

Man, these bring back memories.
I must have worked on a thousand VW dual port 1600 engines.
Or was it the same engine torn apart a thousand times?...

 

When Bill Smith bought the V-Rod business from Kent Fuller in the late 80's, I was lucky enough to be the guy who went to California to pick everything up. As a lifetime drag racer, getting into Fullers shop was way cooler than hauling a bunch of patterns, molds and jigs back to Nebraska. Bill also bought a complete car from one of Fullers neighbors which another buddy drove back to Lincoln.
I guess he must have liked me, cuz he took me back to his home and showed me lots of really cool drag racing memorabilia he had squirled away.
We had a great time driving the V-Rod around, but unfortunatly the buzz was just about over, and we never sold many kits.

 

this one has been up for a while with no takers..........
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/cl***ifieds/detail.php?id=806008
would be fun to have around.

i'll probably always have a vw project or 3 around. square should get paint soon and i got a rusty notch sittin now. and cory why didn't i know you have a oval for sale and i haven't been to see it yet hahahhaa...ken....

 

I think someone should bring these back - with an updated ch***is and a turbo Subaru! Gary

 

This damn thing's worth the money. Someone should buy it.

 

Back around 83 when I was in high school, I stopped at a used car lot because I spotted a flat fender Willys Jeep in the back, but it looked strange. Got up to it and it was lowered and had a hot rod vibe, looked pretty cool. I go and pop the hood and get quite a surprise, basically I'm looking at the ground and a small tank. I get real confused and crawl under it and see the strange rear end. I'm thinking what the hell is this thing? Go back up top and realized the bed has a hinged cover, open it up and theres the VW motor. Overall it was a pretty cool set up. I didn't drive it or anything, (I was a kid with no money) but it has always stuck with me. Wish I'd had a cell phone camera back then.

 

I was a little nervous about posting this thing......didn't know how it would be accepted. But you guys suprise me......I guess after all it ia a "Hot Rod" thing. keep it up I'm learning and again...Thanks!!

 

for about 10 years there was a gl*** 27 roadster volksrod down the street from house funny how many times someone would tell me how there was a model a roadster right down the street

jim sibley did a few vw things years ago, he built a vw roadster body which really was more like a model a, funny thing is he was moving so he just threw the body away and bought his first model a right after, in a way i guess that was when he saw the light

jim and vic did a vw for norm francis that had a bug body with a chevy motor and full hotrod ch***is also

 

i think a lot of you guys are missing the point.
people that build vw stuff don't want to build Subaru stuff because they like vw's. if you build a t bucket with a Subaru in the front it's just another t bucket with a different motor. with a vw it's a lot different. not only the fact the motors in the back, but also because it is so damn odd compared to other t buckets.
what i think a lot of you guys may not realize is, you may just be closet vw type guys.
here is a scenario, a magazine sends there ace reporter out to cover a show. he sees all the usual t's and a's and all the rest. he is getting bored. in comes some off the wall car and it gets his attention. it may not be what he likes but it brakes the monotony of all the usual type of cars that most people build. also you have to admit, it takes some big stones to build a vw powered car and subject yourself to all the ridicule you would get. which is exactly what you get except at vw shows. i can't tell you how many times i got told "nice dune buggy" when i drove mine.
another reason vw's are built is, the ease of the motor, trans and suspension layout. if you haven't built a vw powered car, you can't imagine how easy it is.
as far as the vw jeep car goes. they still make them. originally they were made from steel jeep bodies, now you can get them in gl***. more i think because of the manufacturing ease than the weight of steel. you ever feel how heavy a 'gl*** street car is? oh ya, they were called VEEP'S.
when people who are set in their ways are confronted by what they don't like and find they can appreciate it, it is good for all the hobby.
now i don't expect to see vw threads coming out of the woodwork here and they shouldn't. there are web sites for that but, vw-t's fit here just because they are getting old. there are also not very many of them around, so i wouldn't expect to see very many threads on them.
they make great grocery getter's and parts chasers albeit, not to big parts and groceries. not even to mention the gas mileage. i could fill up my 10 gal tank and drive it for 2 weeks every day!
something else not mentioned before is, everybody that has or is building a vw-t, has built v8 rods before. it's just another adventure in rod building. i think that the way there put down and there owners feelings get hurt, may be why there weren't many built and why they still don't get built. better to be safe than sorry.
another thing about vw-t's is, the fact that rod events are the only place they get negative remarks. now isn't that odd. the general public finds them 'cute".
man, all this talk about vw's, i think I'll go build that closed cab one in my other post.

 

and another thing!
here is a thing about not seeing what is there and only seeing what you want.
this guy has had this ad out there for awhile. i saw it on the samba site about a year ago. it was originally set up to sit on a vw pan with the engine in the back.
even on the volksrod site, the people that are so open minded, people were saying what a piece of ****.
from what i found out was the people that made it, raced a gia drag car. they wanted to run in the goodguys events. since they don't allow foreign cars to run, they built this body to replace the gia at those events. the gia body was a flip top so it was easy to just swap the 2 bodies.
now before everybody gives me **** about gg not allowing certain cars, i personally couldn't give a rats **** about gg. never liked them, never will. we called them greedy guys here and when they left calif drag racing it was the best thing for us little guys. this is just what the po told me. i even asked him if anybody came to see it, he said 1 guy in all that time.
anyway, as you can see, it's just a full fendered '27 ford t body.
no one wanted it because it was originally built to go on a vw. OH NO! IT'S A VW .
if you look past what it was for and see if it can be adapted to a v8 drag car, what do you know? this thing from a 'gl*** guy would cost upwards of a 1000 easily.
oh yea, i paid one hundered dollars for it.
the back was cut out in the trunk area though and as i have two '27 t bodies anyway, i'll just pull a mold off one and replace the trunk on this one.
or maybe i'll just put it on another vw pan and race it like that.
or maybe i'll build a tube frame and make it a street t with a big wing on the back to hide the motor. what'ya think

 

the subby motor would be in the back just like the vw as it would most likely be bolted to a vw trans via the common kennedy adapter for doing so. the subby swap is become fairly common in the vw world. flat4 base just like a vw. turbo'd. can make gobs of power. still a fairly simple engine. and still relatively cheap by most standards. if i do end up building this RUSTY notchback i have it may very well be subby powered...ken....

 

Volksrods guys, anything else will get this thread shut down...and I would like to hear as much about them as possible. This threads brought some really cool information to light, so please, stick to the volksrods and save the rest for the VW social group

 

If anyone is looking to buy one, theres one on new hampshire craigslist. http://nh.craigslist.org/bar/1486444890.html

 

ken, i was just showing my ignorance about the subby. i was picturing a straight four motor. i should get out more often i guess. gary

 

Volksrods. V.O.L.K.S.R.O.D.S. vole-cuhs-rodz. Not chopped up Bugs, Ghias, Squares, Fasts, or Notches, just Volksrods. Please, if not this thread will die...and we might miss out on the chance to learn something really cool.

 

Can we get a Moderator to clean all the bugs out. I am a ******** anti-VW guy on this forum, but I dig the Volksrods (the original ones). Lets keep this thread open fellas and respect the rules.-Weeks

 

Done.

I left the Fuller type cars and got rid of the rest.

I hope thats what you had in mind...

 

Thanks metalshapes, much appreciated!

 

You are the MAN metalshapes. Thank you sir!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I got some wild pictures from the 60's of Model T's utilizing the front beams off of bugs I need to post. Weird thing is they were the rear suspension not the front wtf????????? They are in a HOT ROD magazine yearbook 1963ish I believe, I scored them from my H.S. library for a dollar. Man how I loved that tall slender voluptuous black haired 27 year old librarian with the 62' Biscayne. But that's an O/T story -Weeks

 

I evidently done sumthin' wrong cause my post about my '70 VW hard chop top got deleted... oh well but that's why I don't do clubs or rules and don't think I'll be changing anytime soon.

 

This thread is dedicated to T-style bodied VW's known as "Volksrods".
There is a VW social group on the Hamb, please join and post your ride there

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/group.php?groupid=313

 

The white one is Kent Fuller's car. Really nicely crafted.
The black one I found on the net, just liked it's rough-and-ready look.

 

Flatheadgary, you know that body you have? I know Mat Eserini and his Pop fairly well, used to watch them race that car, the New Beetle Funny Car, and the rear engine VR6 dragster at Sacramento every Labor and Memorial Day.
Ever since I saw the Volksrod in Rod & Custom back in the 60's, I think it was, I've wanted one. I had a SoCalook car almost built, but traded it to my Real Estate Agent instead of commission fees for selling our house back in 2005.

 

well old guy, it just go to show you what a small world we live in. gary