Deanz Rodz & Racecarz

Take one very well cared for 1966 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia add the very first all billet alumunium independent rear suspension to come out of our cnc machine shop add a custom made billet front suspension add one of the wall custom chassis blend in 20 & 22 " rims and top of with a V10 dodge viper engine and a 6 speed ! CRAZY ?.. SICK ? .. DOWNRIGHT COOL ?.. We think so too .. DeanZ are proud to be the chassis builder that has teamed up with Jamie Walters to build such a wild creation .. Watch this page for as it happens build pictures of what has to the wildest ride yet to hit our jig !

After a few days of delays and computer crashes the sidewinder ghia made her way onto the jig . Step one was to determine the ride height because of the body curves we came up with a 5"in the front to a 6"in the rear ride height. At display a 3' airbag drop will leave the ghia sitting at a 2" x 3" rake.

.The wheels came to us from KB wheels . They are KMC rims and are wrapped with vredestein tires . Up front the are 20x8.5's and monsterous 22x11's in the back . Their look sets the stage for whats to come .

The first thing we had to do was redesign the way VW had made the ghia's floorpan . They orginal design had a large tunnel that was the backbone of the car . Stealing from the way we do our racecar bodies we first removed the rocker panel and replaced it with a boxed in repoduction panel .The supplier for all the sheet metal is also one of the sponsors of this build KGPR (karmannghia.com) After all the old rocker and heat channel was removed the boxed in rocker was test fitted. To our surprise a replacement patch panel had been previously installed and had damaged the door pillar . A quick phone call to KGPR and 2 new pillars and patch panels on their way . Im not being biased because KGPR are a sponsor but these repo panels are definately the best fitting panels i have ever used

We also went ahead and boxed in the area where the kick panel would be . This was rusted out and removed . This will be where the new firewall will fit in . The length of the V10 viper engine is going to push the fire wall back to about 3 inches from the door hinges . To allow access to the engine we are going to cut the fenders through where the rear of the hood meets the cowl and then flip the front end over similar to how a corvette does . This means this area here will be visible when the hood is open . Another piece will finish off enclosing the pillar . It was decided at this point that we will send the body in to be soda blasted earlier than we had orginally planned so we could find out what other secrets lay hidden under what appeared to be a very good body . The company blasting the body is another sponsor of this build . Metal Prep Services in Rockford Illinois (metalprepservices.com)

We took the ghia's body to Metal Prep Services in Rockford Illinois (metalprepservices.com..815 874-7631).Metal Prep Services are sponsors in the build and it was there Bill Wessel and his two sons Bobby and Rich soda blasted the ghias body and revelled the nasty secrets that lay hidden below . What had appeared to be a very good body had no less than 16 patch panels previously install by what appears to be a kindergarten class project . Bill labored for 8 hours stripping layer after layer of bondo from the ghias shell the doors trunk and hood swallowed about 6 more hours . One thing became painstakingly evident the ghia is in need of a nose job . Bill and his sons are VW bug fanatics also have a vast Honda motorcycle collection . Even though Bill and his sons delivered some very bad news with the ghia's body.The opportunity to meet them and work with them made for a great experience . What Bill and his boys did to prep this body is above and beyond what we could have ever asked for . I cant thank him enough for his time and patience .

W

With the ghia's body at a standstill while another ghia is retreived from Oklahoma we turned to machining the Independent rear suspension . The IRS is something that was designed about 2 years ago and had not yet been brought to life . The IRS is an all billet alumunium unit and for this we are using a grade of alumunium that is completely new to us . The manufacture claims that it has the strength of annealed 1045 steel and is one step above that of 7075 alumunium . So far all they promised it would be it has been . They promised it to been harder on tooling and it has but they promised a good machining alumunium and that it is they claim that it also is the best polishing alumunium that we will see later . In the pic above the first side of the outer carriers is starting to take shape . Picking the program of the computer and cutting the first carrier has swallowed about 14 hours .To machine a carrier now is about 3 hours . The carriers are cut from 6 inch square billets 11 inches long and weigh in at about 44 pounds after machinining a carrier weighs 1/4 of that .
.

The monsterous 505 cubic inch (8.3L) V10 Dodge Viper engine that will provide the giddy up for the sidewinder came to us from Don Scharf Automotive in Eagle River Wisconsin . www.donscharfautomotive.com. Don and his crew dug deep in the wallet and came through with a 2006 engine with only 800 miles on it . Don Scharf Automotive are a large auto parts dealer and are a huge asset to the build .The 6 speed transmission was shipped to Rockland Standard Gear. www.rsgear.com. Rockland Standard Gear are a transmission rebuilder that specialises in building performance racing transmissions for corvettes vipers mustangs etc . The engine arrived the day after christmas just after an ice storm that covered half the state of Illinois . Unloading the engine from the semi was next to impossible with the forklift being unable to get any traction on the ice . An hour later and with the semi backed into a building 4 blocks away the engine was loaded into a pickup truck only to get stuck 30 feet from the door of our shop .. A tough start for even tougher engine ..

.The Ghias 6 speed transmission is the huge T56 that Dodge installs in their Vipers . Prior to delivery Don Scharf Automotive shipped the trans to Rockland Standard Gear www.rsgear.com in Sloatsburg New York . Rockland Standard Gear specialise in performance racing transmissions and have been building bullet proof transmission for over 25 years . The Ghias T56 came back to us ready to take a 1000 HP plenty of room for the estimated 650 HP the V10 will produce . Rockland Standard Gear are full sponsors of the Sidewinder Ghia project  and had the transmission modified and tweaked and back to us within 2 weeks . For their help in this project we are truly thankfull ..

.The second ghia was found on ebay in oklahoma a complete car less engine was a steal at $300 . The second Ghia was the polar opposite of the first . The first looked like a perfect car and turned out to be junk the second Ghia (above pic) looked like it belonged in a junkyard but was solid with only minor dents and dings . Shelli took two days and stripped the entire car down to its shell . The Ghias are so light that they are able to fit on a borrowed snow mobile trailer . Our thanks go to Joe Orendorffof Flanagan Illinois for loaning us the trailer. Beats pulling an 18 foot tandem trailer like we did with first Ghia . Like we did with the first body we delivered the body to Metal Prep Services in Rockford Illinois www.meatlprepservices.com . Once again Bill and his sons blasted the body. This time because of the surface rust the Ghia was sandblasted rather than soda blasted . This Ghia turned out to be the answer to our prayers and under the ugly exterior turned out to be a fantastic solid body . Once again Bill and his sons came on board and did their part for the Ghia's build as another full sponsor

With the Ghia back from the blasters the body was mounted at ride hieght on the jig and welded down to the jig . Once again the rockers were cut away and the boxed rockers that we had intended to install on the first were welded in to the Ghia's body . This time the job of removing the rockers was infinately more difficult because the body is in so much better shape than the first all the inner structure was removed without cutting the quarter panels as we normally do . With the body now reinforced we could now remove the orginal floorpan and the front half of the VW  unibody structure.
.

 Now that the Ghia's body was strong enough to suport herself the nose of the Ghia was cut off . The shape of the cut is parallel to the curve of the door jamb . We will be running some sheet metal through the shrinker/stretchers in the next few days and make a channel that is similar to the seal channel across the back of the hood  . Two hood locks will be used on each side to secure the nose in place but that wont be anything we deal with in the imediate future right now we are getting ready to bend some tubes

Just for kicks and giggles we sat the Viper engine transmission and the wheels in place to get an idea of how things would fit . To our surprise we have alot more room than we ever thought . Right away it is obvious that the headers are going to very difficult to make . But we never expected anything to be easy . After the chassis the front suspension and the rear end being  completely one of a kind why should an exhaust system be an off the shelf unit .
.

.The frame rails are like the rest of the car and proving to be a complicated step in the build . Due to the Viper engine lack of symmetry the frame rails have been very difficult . The high placement of the engine mounts and the flat oil pan have created some unusal solutions to fitting the monsterous engine between the rail . Without any kick up in the oil pan it is impossible to have a crossmember under the engine to tie the suspension mounts together . To solve this a 1/4 inch thick plate was bent and profiled to act as a crosmember and as a skid plate to protect the front of the engine should anything go under the car and to tie the rails together . The factory Viper alumuimun engine mounts were replaced with a steel set we made to allow the mounts to be moved in about 2 1/2 inches . The mounts tie into the lower A arm mounts to make a nice stiff clean solution to 2 problems in one . The steering problems proved to be another nightmare and was resolved with the help of Flaming River www.flamingriver.com .. with an off the wall one of a kind rack and pinion with a secondary slide system . This allows the rack and pinion to be placed in front of the engine and the steering arms end up in the void below the first bank of cylinders . With the worst of the issues now resolved the Billet alumuimun A arms and spindles can now be machined .  

The Sidewinder project came to a grinding halt the past week . The most unexpected hurdle occurred . We had the misfortune to get flooded . The saddest part of this is that this isnt an act of nature this is all caused by the County raising the road in front of the shop by 8-12 inches . In a freak downpour, 4 1/2 inches of rain fell in a few hours the new road blocked the waters abilty to drain as it did before . The mess to the shop is a disaster the entire office area is destroyed , the shop had about 6 inches of water through out . Thankfully a good friend of ours . Barney Hulse of Hulse Excavating came to our rescue . I called Barney and explained our troubles and He pulled his equipment off of the job he was doing 30 miles away and trucked an excavator in . Barney shot the area with a laser and dug a trench about 100 feet long to the south and another one about 80 feet to the west . In less than 3 hours Barney was able to fix what The County spent $600,000 to create . Thankfully we own 5 acres of land and we were able to drain to a 2 acre section to the west of the shop . The clean up of the shop has begun and the delay and the damage has a bitter pill to swallow . In the summer Barney and his crew will come in and do a permanent fix by digging a 10 foot wide gradually sloped ditch about 200 feet long to the land behind the shop . The saddest part of this is that the County had planned to install a storm drain in the front of our driveway across the road to connect with the storm sewer on the other side of the road and changed their minds at the last minute at our objection to save a few dollars .......

The billet A-arms made their way through the machining process this week . Counting the time to CAD design the arms , Write the program and then test machine an arm and then finish machine a set of upper and lower A-arms swallowed up about 65 hours . These A-arms are unique to the Ghia and once they are finish polished they will add a truely mind blowing impact to the car . The A-arms feature screw in ball joints and have a secondary locking ring that ensures they stay in place . A threaded cap then covers the ball joint assembly for a clean look . In these photos the opening for the bushings have not yet been machined in . The spindles used in the mock up are our billet chrome moly spindles and will be replaced with billet alumunium ones later . A total of 68 pounds of alumunium billet ended up becoming 12 pounds of A-arms and 56 pounds of chip when all was finished . The old coil over shock in the photos are just for mocking up a set of air bags from Air Ride Technologies , www.ridetech.com will fill the void .

With all the front end now wrapped up with the exception of a few odds and ends we moved rearwards . To allow the massive 22x11's to fit the rear wheel arches had to be extensively modified . The orginal rear wheel arch was cut out and move up 6 inches back 2 inches and the bottom widened 4 1/2 inches . This is the first time we have stretched wheel arches that far but the Ghia's tiny wheel arches left us with no choice . Between cutting and refitting then welding and grinding back down then hammer and dollying about 8 hours got eaten away . A new rear panel underneath the trunk lid needs installed and then we will start building the wheel tubs . For this project we are going to try something different and are currently making dies to make wheel tubs with a larger radius on the edges instead of the sharper squarer tubs that are the norm . The Ghias sheet metal is proving to be a tough project as some areas need to be removable to allow the body to drop over the top of the roll cage . From an engineering standpoint the ghia has been the most thought provoking build in over 25 years of hot rod building ....

The sad part about doing the sheet metal work on any hot rod project is the massive amount of time it takes to make pieces that will never see the light of day .. Simply installing a floor will let the panel drum and vibrate so lots of internal braces are needed to make the body rigid and the harder part is to make the supporting structure look good from the underneath as well as above ..In the lower pic you'll see the under structure made to reinforce the rear bumper panel and support the trunk floor .. Many hours were swallowed up by running panels through the shrinker stretchers to make the trunk area a seamless transition .. The wheel tubs are a hand hammer formed pieces made from 18 gauge sheet metal with contoured beads following the rail rails ..The firewall is a very clean piece made from 6 individual parts and slowly welded together to avoid warpage .. A grand total of  32 hours was spent creating he firewall trans tunnel and seal channels for the flip front .. A sharp eye will notice that there is no brake booster of clutch master cylinder ..These items are quietly hidden away inside the Ghias dash with remote resivors ..The firewall features 3 different depths to accomidate the engine set back , clearance for the intake and for things like the brake booster and the wiper motor to be hidden from view .. A lot of work for something that 99 % of people will never see ....