So what is Class 11?

So what kind of off roading will we be doing in this thing?
Well...we are planning on entering Class11 which is the "lowest" class you can enter in competitive off road racing. The rules are actually very strict for what you are actually allowed to modify. We need to keep nearly all of the engine components stock. Once we order our SCORE International rulebook we will have an exact idea what we can change or not change. just so you get an idea of how in depth the ruleset is take a look at the pic of a page out of the rulebook.

Anyway, check out the links on the side. SCORE international is the biggest off road racing community and they are the ones who actually run and manage the baja 1000. There are a lot of smaller race organizations which is where we will probably start out to get a feel for acutal competition racing.

Bleeding brakes

Our first "official" task on the bug. Since the brakes were basically mush on the drive home, we decided to bleed the brakes and hope we could make them a little more responsive (or at least make it good enough to last until we replace them). Screws which haven't been touched in 35 years are always fun to loosen. We managed to find out all 4 bleeder valves are corroded shut so we bled directly from the screws instead. Although not entirely fixed, we managed to make the brakes at least twice as responsive.

first step...get car...

This page is dedicated to the baja off road project. Took me a while to get around to setting up the blog, but we got the bug on 2/20/06. Picked it up in Salinas for a great price! The car drove back some 300miles with no problems so we couldn't be happier. Keep checking this site for more posts and our worklog.

1970 vw bug
1600cc single port engine (70ish hp)

The bug came with no seatbelts or passenger seat so we will be adding that in so we can at least drive it around town since we don't know how long it will be before we actually get to stripping the whole thing apart. Driving it back with almost no brakes was pretty scary...so we should probably get that looked at too.