MK1 Berg Cup Replica From the USA

Hello Everyone,

I have decided to move my build post from vortex to ClubGti so I have edited it to catch every one up to date.
First let me compliment you on the quality of your forum and the information within it. I am located in the US and it is a little tough to get quality parts and information. Shipping everything across the pond gets expensive. I discovered your forum from the last issue of Performance VW where they feature 3 track prepped MK1s and needless to say I was impressed. I am a big fan of the Berg Cup and ever since I saw my first video of the race I have wanted to build a replica MK1 for track days here in the US. I quickly sold off all my aircooled stuff and began setting up to reach my goal.
My goals for this car are.

1. Be street Legal, I want to be able to drive to the track
2. Make around 350 WHP Reliably
3.Handle and perform like a modern track car.

Being a father of 2, I can’t afford to pay someone to build the car for me and there’s no fun in that, so I am doing as much of the work on the car that I can. This car is my hobby so my home & family come first. I am making weekly progress but this is not a big budget build. I am having to pinch pennies to get it done. My plan is to build a Replica Berg cup car on an 82 Mk1 Rabbit Chassis. I am doing an big turbo AEB 1.8t Swap with an 02J trans & wavetrac diff. More details about the parts are in the picts below.

This is my inspiration


A Shot of the car the day I started, it is a 1982 American Rabbit with a layer of blue house paint plus flat rattle can black over the stock tan.


Got the old Lump out and started Stripping the car down to bare frame. Notice the square front headlights buckets.


Using Acid paint stripper I went to work on the body. The floorpans are trashed due to the leaking sunroof.


I’ve got some pretty serious rust to deal with. I ordered new pannles from rabbitparts.com


The Shell is mostly stripped and the parts start coming in. The new grill and an AUDI badge just for giggles.

Replacement panels here


Floorpans


Welding up the turn signals


1999 1.8t Bigport AEB arrived today with 105 miles on the odometer


Started tearing the engine down and Built an A-frame out of lumber to get better access to the underside of the car. The stripped out shell is pretty light, guess that is the whole point to these cars


As you can see the underside of the car is pretty rough, I have cut some of the rot out already


Got the floorpans welded in and frame connectors made from angle iron. Sorry bout the crappy cell pict.


Seats arrived


Put the car back down on the ground and Welded the Cage in.


The new round light front core support arrived and I promptly welded on.


KW variant 3 coilovers arrived and were placed with new disk brakes and wheel bearings. I will upgrade the front brake calipers after I get the car running.


A set of Integrated Engineering H-beam rods were sourced and the engine rebuild was started.


Got the Engine bay cleaned and protected for now


I bought a new house so I had to get the car ready to move, so the suspension went back on the car and a quick shot was taken.


Got the car safely to the new house. The garage is a lot smaller but it is dedicated to this project so it works. First order of business was flipping the car back on its side to sort out the floor and undercoat the car with POR-15.


My best friend came over to take his turn on the welder.


Finally got the New shop organized enough to get some work done. I took the rear beam off and cleaned it with a wire wheel and angle grinder.


Goodbye Drum brakes, Hello Disk sexiness.


Started welding in the sunroof. Slowly.


OBP bolt in pedal box arrived today. One of the nicest pieces I have for the car. I believe it is designed from right hand drive floorpans so we will see just how tough it is to bolt in.


This is where the project is as of last week. I finished the underside of the car and have undercoated it with POR-15 and a rubberized top coat from the eastwood company, Should be tough and stop any rust.


More to come and thanks for the support

 

Hello and welcome to CGTI.

Looks like you are well on the way to accomplishing your aim of owning a Berg Cup style car.
Where about in the USA are you located?

 

Welcome, good to see the Club GTI word is spreading far afield!

Hopefully we can help you get as much tech info you need for your build, including wide tracking options for the arch kit

 

Hi and Wow, that's great ambition. Welcome.

 

I am located in Kansas City, Missouri. Pretty much in the center of the US. With regards to filling the wide fender arches. I was going to order some custom offset, Wide race rims to push the wheels out enough to fill the arches and run race slicks .Is this not the correct way to achieve a wider stance for racing application?

Thanks
Jason

 

The Berg Cup sees a combination of big offset wheels, and also more engineered solutions, particularly at the front where it really matters, of genuine wide track suspension

 

Kansas City is not even in Kansas!



I spent a day fishing for big catfish in Lake Eldorado back in the day.

There are other ways to fill the arches. A widetrack conversion may well be the way to go.

 

A warm welcome and great pics

 

Thanks guys, I have been on this forum for 1 Hour and i have learned more than months spent on other forums. I am Proud to be a part of it. There is man State side who makes some really nice suspension pieces for the MK1 http://www.scch-heads.com/. I could talk to him about a wide Track front end. I was concerned about the Extreme back spacing hurting steering performance.
The City of Kansas City sits on the border of 2 States. Kansas & Missouri, Go figure.

 

Cool, welcome to the forum.

 

Is that Xtrom / Jarod that has scch?
His build on Vortex was quite something.
There are ways of widetracking by selecting certain shafts from different models, or spacing inner cvs out using bits from other shafts. Many options that are not too hard on the wallet.

 

Yea, thats him. Wouldn't you need different controll arms or just modify the stock ones?

 

You can just modify your stock ones. If you have fitted a cage and have access to welder, it will not present too much of a problem.

 

Have Welder, Will fabricate!

 

Welcome. Looks like you've made a good start on that build! Did you bend the pipe yourself or buy a kit for the cage?

 

Thanks man, no I don't have a tubing bender. I bought a pre-bent weld in cage and I did my best to fit it. It isn't approved by any race organizations but my car isn't a serious racer, more toy really.

 

Looking good dude, looking forward to the build thread!

 

will follow with interest.

 

Should I move my build post over here? I know there is more help on this forum. Currently its on vwvortex.

 

Yeah, just do it, follow the yellow brick road from Kansas to CGTI.