WOW!
Moog: Um Martin I think we should go through a couple of, uh, common questions. While we're at it. While We've got people watching. Marty: Sure. Like a Fac...Fac-que (sic).
Moog: A what? Marty: A fa...Frequently Asked Questions. How do you say it, a FAQ? Moog: It sounds rude.
Marty: F-A-Q? F-A-Q, F-A-Q Moog: Ah, is that what you're saying? Marty: Yeah. Moog: Yep, cool.
Moog: Ah, let's talk about tires first. A lot of people saying, 'did you change your tires'.
Moog: Ah, in the video we spoke about what we did with the ah, rear.
Moog: Widened the um, the rim. So we could put fatter tires. We also did change the tires on the front. The best tires that we could find, that would fit on the front of that car.
Marty: In that size. Um, and also the suspension. Lots of questions about the suspension. Obviously when you drag racing you can tune the suspension so you don't get too much weight transfer. You can get into all that nerdy stuff.
Marty: We didn't have time with this build to do all that kind of stuff. All we did was just lower it.
Moog: Yeah. Marty: Just to get it close to the ground, so that when it did drop, it wasn't kind of like bouncing around like an old Pogo stick.
Moog: Similar thing with the brakes. Uh, one of the things that we'd thought, was like 'hey, do we need to do brakes'.
Moog: Mike had said 'unlike a track car where you're kind of like speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down.
Moog: You've just have to slow down from one run, and then you drive back slowly. So it wasn't actually needed.
Moog: Uh, for this, uh in terms of budget and timing to upgrade the brakes... Marty: So it got, it got new pads in the front, and just adjusted all around and checked, and Mike said 'yeah it will do for this'...
Marty: ...but if you're gonna be doing 9's, which ah could happen one day, um you'd need to do something about the brakes, so yeah.
Moog: Yeah, and same thing goes for the roll cage. Because in my mind I was originally like, do the brakes, do the suspension, do the roll cage, and then when I was chatting with him,...
Moog: ...and you know he does have a 9 second Volkswagen, he was like, 'you don't actually need that stuff for what you guys are doing'. So uh....
Moog: Yeah but, but that is something that we can look at doing later on, and while we're talking about that...
Moog:...what we might do later on. There were some questions about the forged internals of the engine as well. Particularly that we had to tune the car down on the day.
Moog: We built the engine so that it could handle way more than what we were actually throwing at it, and it can, it can handle ridiculous amounts of power.
Moog: Also worth, uh, mentioning as well is that, that the power that we're showing is power at the wheels, not power at the engine. Uh, it does still seem to be confusing a lot of you, um in the comments.
Moog: It's definitely worth, just for your own, uh, education, just Google the difference between power at the wheels, and power at the engine. Cause they are two very, very different things.
Marty: And a lot of manufactures quote power at the engine. Oh my car's got 300hp, at the wheels it's gonna be a slightly different story.
Moog: HORSEPOWER Martin?! Marty: Horsepower yeah. Moog: Horsepower... Marty: Kilowatts, horsepower. Just look it up. It's an easy conversion. 1.3, or 1.7
Moog: What are horsepowers Martin? That was another question. Why do we use kilowatts. Uh, because Australia, actually because all of the world.
Moog: Isn't it? Except for America or something? Marty: A lot of, a lot of, a lot of the world, and it's also just what you're use to.
Marty: You know what it's like. Same for the people who are use to talking in horsepower. I, I don't know what, my car's got 380 horse power, what that means.
Marty: I can compare it to other cars that I've had. They've just always been in kilowatts. It's just the way it is. Metric, Imperial, whatever.
Moog: Yeah, it's the way it is in Australia. It's, it's the ever on going argument um...,and we're Australian, so some people have said to use, 'change you should do horsepowers'. Some people have said, 'we hate your UK accent.'
Marty: Another point on the engine, ah...yes you can probably, you, you can get, can 200 kw out of a stock EJ25. A stock one that's true. That's if you own a stock one. We own an exploded...
Marty: ...EJ25. You saw a piston fall out of it. Um, so that was more of a base to work with.
Marty: So rather than trying to find one that, with, like, unknown. If you buy a second hand one you don't know what condition it's in. Maybe you get one run at the drags and it blows up, or something like that.
Marty: We wanted to go from scratch, and also to show something new. Which was building an engine.
Moog: Yeah, exactly. Um, speaking of doing things new. Some people have said, 'why didn't you do like 5 or 10 episodes like you did with Super Gramps?'
Moog: The idea of this was to make one video, and uh, and when we're having a chat with someone, and there like 'we want to help you do this crazy video.' It was about doing one video.
Moog: We shot, I think it was about 50 hours worth of footage all up, and all of that had to be condensed down into 45 minutes.
Moog: Uh, it was around, between 40 and 50 minutes. Because that's what a TV hour is, once they add all the ads. That turns into about an hour.
Moog: So as a filmmaker it's actually a harder thing to do, to aggregate all the best footage and cut that down into something that makes sense in a short amount of time. Than just uploading really long shots um, of everything.
Moog: So that was a, that was a tricky thing to do, but that's why it was just one episode. We appreciated that some people were probably like, 'we want more details about this specific thing.'
Moog: Um, other people don't want that. I mean it's interesting that in the few days that it's been up it's been viewed, you know, over a million times. That's the most popular video that we've ever done.
Moog: Uh, in, in that metric. Uh, but at the same time I agree there's probably space for more detail, but that's not what this video was about.
Moog: This video was just about getting a car. Trying to make it look as stock as possible, and trying to make it go really really fast.
Marty: And there are gonna be technical nerdy detail videos on other cars in the future. It's just what we kinda like doing. A bit of everything.
Marty: Uh, another really common question, the transmission. What did we do with that?
Marty: So that's a beetle transmission one of the um, the things we were going for with this build was to keep the car looking as stock as possible. We said that fairly early on.
Moog: Which is what a sleeper is. Marty: Yeah. Moog: Heaps of people said, 'what is a sleeper?' A sleeper is a car that looks like something you don't expect to wake up and go fast.
Marty: To be fast. Uh, so we did use a beetle box, but we used a rebuilt one. So mike had an old uh beetle case there, and he had to get some gears sent over like special uh specially made strengthened uh, gears from, from the US,...
Marty:... and he got them sent over and he put them together, like at night when we weren't there.
Moog: So it, it was a fully rebuild gearbox with strengthened parts from the States. Marty: A few little notes though.
Marty: Yes, yes it's probably uh, it's probably even being stressed as it is. Uh, Mike has a lot of experience with drag racing with his karmann ghia...
Marty:... uh that does low 9s or high 8s, and uh, and a lot of the kinda parts and processes he went through was stuff that he has done and tested himself, and uh that gearbox combination...
Marty:...he reckons is good for, yeah the kind of power we're chasing, and that's, it, it did hold up. It was the clutch that let us down, and that car, I will tell you, is really hard to drive fast.
Marty: HA HA HA!
Moog: Yeah, I mean, let's have a quick chat about that quickly as well, because I think the car being hard to drive in a sense goes hand in hand with, with also having limited time to film on the day.
Marty: Well untested that, you know those drags was it's test. Again cause of limited time, but uh yeah, hard to drive I, I did touch on it in a video, but,...
Marty:... basically with the clutch, because it is quit small. It's got a lot of clamp pressure on it, but it's small. So you can't...
Marty:...with Super Gramps for example, really big, really meaty clutch. You can just dump it, and it will go...a limited number of times. With the Beetle, if you dump it, the clutch will spin. So...
Marty:...even though the car is light, and like you kind of get it off the line, to keep it on song, you have to change gears really slowly, let it settle in. Get off the clutch, make sure it's clamped down and then you can feed the power on again.
Marty: So what we actually had to do in the end, we said we'd turn the power down. A lot of that was to do with the fact that, because it's got an electronic throttle,...
Marty:...we had to turn the pedal down. So, if you put 100% throttle on that engine it's just gonna spin. It's either gonna spin the wheel, spin the clutch, or well it can't do both.
Marty: Um, but yeah. By turning the pedal down it means that it was actually much more driveable. So when I say 'it's hard to drive', in it's original form in it's first few runs it was just...
Marty:...because when you're going at a drag strip the last thing you're thinking about is pulling your foot off the accelerator. Moog: Yeah.
Marty: So we had to do that electronically to make it possible.
Moog: And I think one of the adjustments they were making with the Haltech Elite,...
Moog:...was in terms of it, instead of the pedal being 100% altering the percentage of that, so that when the pedal is all the way down to the floor it's only on 50% or 60... Marty: Yeah
Moog: Do you remember what it was...in the end? Marty: Yeah we turned, we turned it down to like 50% or 60%. Moog: Yeah.
Moog: Which means that when the pedal is full to the floor the ECU is, is, is saying 'hey it's only 50% of the way down', and, and that's why the car still has so much more potential which is ridiculous.
Marty: Yeah, yep. Moog: Mad, a lot of fun.
Moog: Uh, that was a mad race, and let me apologize uh, for my launch in Super Gramps. Marty: Dude, it wasn't that bad.
Marty: From, from someone who, like you launched it like you would launch a Silvia...
Marty:...which is like feathering the clutch cause you don't have grip. Dude you got grip in Gramps!
Moog: Yeah, I know, I know. So I, I know I could've like dumped it. I'm just not use to it. You know like I've driven rear wheel drive cars there, and that is the first time I've driven Super Gramps on the track...
Marty: Do you know... Moog: I don't want to break your stuff Marty: Do you know what was mad though?
Marty: And you can see it in the, in the camera that's, that's hanging over the dash you can see a light at the bottom of the screen. That's the, that's the red line, the shift, shift light. Moog: Shift light yeah.
Marty: And you hit it every time. You weren't even looking dude! Moog: Aw thanks man! Marty: You're looking out the window at me and this things going 'boop change gears'.
Moog: Thanks man. Anyway, I mean well, look. I'm just gonna say it now. Both cars have way more potential than what these fools gave them.
Moog: Not that that's what it's all about, but I'm just, I'm just saying it's like... Marty: Considering that we had like 20 minutes in a drag strip, and hundreds of people looking at us being like, 'get out of the way'...
Moog: And what was funny with the Super Gramps, we had the guy there who was like the marshal who was like...
Moog:... 'you're finished, like that's done.' And we were like 'we've got to do the other race', and he's like 'no'. And we're like 'come on man, one more race'. So we had one chance at it. One chance.
Marty: No pressure. Moog: No and ah, and ha, and he's like 'get out.' So, so that's, that's what happen. That's how it went down.
Moog: Um, other question everybody was asking about the music. Uh, it's all listed in the description of the original video. Uh, the times and the names, uh they're all there.
Moog: That's about it I think Martin. Marty: That's about it. Moog: That's uh all the, all the main questions. Marty: Yep, lots of more uh, awesome videos and projects happening.
Moog: So good to have it done now. So good. Marty: Otherwise...yeah, yeah it was a good thing. Moog: Um, and really exciting to, to think about what we're gonna do with it next. You know what's gonna happen.
Moog: There's a few other mad little things that are happening. Everyone wants to know what's happening with Super Gramps Martin.
Marty: Um, chasing more power of course. Cause the car looks mad. I mean, I was watching this video, and like going 'aw that looks so good.'
Marty: Uh, so yeah. Just needs more power. Obviously um, it's going a little bit slower now. It's got a full interior. It's a bit heavier. It's, it's a much nicer car to drive overall.
Moog: Not pulling 11s anymore is it? Marty: Probably not no. It'd be in the 12s for the couple of times I've run it.
Marty: Um, and yeah. So just chasing more power, but there's a couple of limitations with the engine that it's got currently. So um, you know end of this year, into next year, we're looking at, looking at addressing that.
Moog: Yep. Maybe there will be a formidable opponent for Super Gramps Martin. Marty: You never know. Maybe it needs a formidable opponent.
Moog: I think it does. Anyway, so there it is. That is Mighty Car Mods. Of course you can follow us on the Faceballs.
Moog: Facebook.com/mightycarmods. Uh, thanks for watching our mad mad beetle episode.
Moog: Um, that's it Martin. Marty: That's it. Moog: That's it. I'm gonna go get some mad falafel.
Marty: Really? Moog: Yeah!
Moog: Falafel, barbecue sauce, hummus. Marty: Barbecue sauce? Moog: Yeah. Marty: I think I wanna get donuts.