'59 KG LSR Fuel and Ignition Systems

The Fuel System...

We don't really have time now to document everything, however, some of the images may prove interesting.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, there aren't any stores you can just go to and get things like a new fuel line for a Denzel. Heck, even back in the day you couldn't do that! Even spares for standard period Porsche and VW fuel systems are slim pickin's these days. For example, fuel pumps are only available as rebuild kits and maybe a core (if you can find one) - or the very lucky might find New Old Stock for some serious coin. Heck, even the rebuilt kids are expensive these days! About the only fuel system parts you can get these days are reflected in the offerings of Stoddard Import Cars, and Tony Moore of Wolfsburg West.

So, we have, of course, bought the available fuel line to the pump (around the left side of the engine) (which as of 2010 is no longer available either!) and have made our own fuel line from pump to carburetors.

The image at right shows the line we made. Note the line uses a standard ferrel fitting coming out of the pump - in the larger 8mm diameter, of course!

Our carburetors are standard Solex 40 PII units, and in our first attempt to tune, we selected 130 main jets and kept the 180 air correction jets.

Here's the first part of the fuel line being constructed.

Here we have the already soldered fittings for right, left, and the junction block. It turned out that the left one continually leaked, despite resoldering several times and in the end, due to time, we had to cut it off and install another one with a small section of hose to join the pipe back together. No, we're not happy about it, but that's racing!

Yes, the mechanical pump in the engine bay is just to route lines! It would work but we took the pushrod out in order to save power - using an electric pump takes less HP. That silver thing is a pressure regulator - Solex carbs don't like much pressure, just about 2 lbs; more and the float valves will not handle it.

The Ignition System

The image at the top of this page shows our coil and distributor, and the spark plug ends. We started off with a Bosch 019 distributor and because it only is capable of a total of 22 degrees of advance, we thought we'd switch to a later 031 unit, but didn't. We simply advanced the timing about 10 degrees instead. This distributor uses standard Bosch period compoents inside. We rebuilt it with new parts. Also note the spark plug wire ends. These Behru units make it a LOT easier to remove the plug wire when the part inevitably gets covered with oil! The coil, meanwhile, is 6v Bosch, but from a different application - it can handle high compression and heat better than a stock 36hp unit.

We did have some trouble with the ignition at first because the Behru wire ends have resistors in them and with high-compression and only a 6v coil, the resistive plug ends prevented clean ignition. However, we replaced these with solid conductors and cured the problem.

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