The JagerBug

Paint Time!

2008-03-26T12:06:00.001Z

It's been a long few weeks of prepping the shell but this is where it all pays off (apparently). The Bug was taken down to Mark @ Petes Signs of Lincoln to be painted.

The outside was masked up carefully to allow Mark to apply the 'Hellrot' Orange direct gloss to the inside including the rollcage. Every square inch was thoroughly panel wiped and cleaned to ensure no dust or grime was left on the primer.

Once clean, we left Mark to it and took some photo's through the window as he applied the first of the colour.

a coat of direct gloss on the inside

then masking up the interior to apply the base coat and lacquer

It's all in the prep....

2008-03-19T09:16:00.002Z

So everyone told me. However it's only once you actually paint a car that you realise just how true this is! This blog will will only hint at the amount of work that has gone into prepping the Jagerbug for paint. Trust me, it's been hours and hours, days and days of sanding and spraying and sanding again. It'll all be worth it in the end.

Once we got the Bug back from RNJ Motorsport with our impressive roll cage fitted it was time to crack on with getting ready for paint.

The final filling was done mainly around the roof chop areas.

It was all hands on deck filling and sanding until we were 100% happy with the finish.

With all the filling done and sanded back it was time to apply a good coat of primer then a guide coat. This was sanded back and the whole process repeated several times over the entire car! Literally hours were spent getting the body as straight as possible in the time left.

Fast forward several exhausting days later and the Jagerbug was treated to it's final coat of white primer. Much to the relief of the sanders!

After another coat of guide coat and rub down (told you there was a lot of prepping!) the body was reunited with the floorpan to transport it to the paint shop

Roll Cage

2008-03-07T17:37:00.005Z

Ok folks, a quick update from Team Jagerbug

It's taken me a while to get to writing this blog entry but last week we visited Rob Judge aka Judgie of RNJ Motorsport to have our roll cage built. We supplied the regulation tubing and Rob provided his time FREE OF CHARGE! We can't thank him enough as he's done a fantastic job in a very short space of time. Anyone looking to get a cage built would be wise to give the man a call on 01604 813702

After a lot of careful measuring and double checking Rob's awesome pipe bender made light(ish) work of the 42mm cds tubing and it wasn't long before our first hoop was bent and trial fitted in the car. The first hoop is the most vital as virtually all the other tubing is attached to it.

Piece by piece the cage was built up, each join being fishmouthed using this impressive bit of kit

The cage grew into a 17 piece 10 point cage!

Once all the pieces were cut to length it was down to Rob to expertly weld them all into position

It may look like a huge game of kerplunk but this little lot should hopefully keep any driver safe in the event of an accident. It also stiffens up the shell incredibly so should give the car a much more rigid feel.

It was a long 2 days but as Rob neared the end it was starting to look pretty impressive inside the Jagerbug!

The end product is a 17 piece, 10 point cage! Should be plenty good enough for the speed we'll be going. Let's hope we never have to use it

Forget rat look, this is go-kart look!

2008-02-22T23:23:00.000Z

The one thing that we were not happy with at Dubfreeze was the look of the rear wheels, they were sticking out way too far from under our nice new fibreglass wings (kindly supplied by Day Mouldings 01205 460584) This was due to the fact that the centrelines we are running on the back have very little offset so once bolted up to our normal length race axles, the result is the "go-kart" look you see below! Unfortunately, this was only found out the day before the show so it was too late to do anything about it.

We now have two options.... either replace the brand new wings with a pair of oversize fibreglass wings which are pretty hard (and expensive) to get hold of, or replace the race axles with some earlier shorter ones. Unfortunately, both solutions will end up costing money but after careful consideration we decided on the latter. We ideally want to keep the rear wings in proportion with the rest of the car so, if you know of anyone with a spare set of > 64 race axles lying around.... give us a shout!

To ensure this replacement would do the trick we first decided to trial fit an earlier box that had shorter axles already fitted to it to see if we actually gained enough clearance to make it worthwhile. This meant whipping the box out that had been in the car for just 5 days!

Swapping the Splitty nose cone we had fitted to the 5 day box.

And fitting the earlier box back in.

(By the way, the box we will actually be building to race with will look a lot cleaner than the one shown above! Here's the case that I spent a couple of hours cleaning in the parts washer with a wire brush

Apart from the shortened race axles, we have so far acculmilated most of the bits needed to build a pretty strong box, strengthened side plates, racing diff etc so hopefully our reinforced unit will outlast the normally weak Beetle gearbox.

Once fitted, the earlier box tucked the rear wheels in much further than before, however, there is still a chance the tyres may foul the arches on heavy launches from the line so we have also decided to flare the rear arches a little to give adequate space. Watch out for the next blog update to see how we do it ;-)

Dubfreeze - Sunday 17th February

2008-02-22T09:05:00.000Z

Well, we did it!

It's only one of many deadlines that we have to meet this year but to get the Jagerbug to Dubfreeze as a rolling shell in primer was always going to be a challenge. Considering the shell looked like this at 11pm on Friday

After a long day of filling and prepping on Friday the shell was finally reay for a coat of primer just before midnight. Alex applied all the paint in his garage and it was great to see the car all in one colour for the first time the next morning.

It was a hectic Saturday morning reassembling the car. The Chassis was built up and a temporary gearbox hung in place. With the doors hung, bonnet and decklid back on, lights etc all fitted the Jagerbug actually strated to look like a beetle again! The decals on the side really made a difference.

Then it was onto the back of a trailer and over to Stafford for the car to takes it's place on display in the main hall at Dubfreeze. We were delighted to be displaying the car in here as originally it was booked into the show & shine! It was great to hear all the positive comments from people who had been following the progress of the car through the Volkszone forums ( http://www.volkszone.co.uk/VZi/showthread.php?t=399443 ) or in Ultra VW Magazine.

The car looked pretty cool on Sunday on display and we'd like to take this opportunity to thank VW Heritage and Street Style & Power as well as all our other sponsors for all their help so far in the project.

More updates soon as the project continues......