“What is it?”
#1 question I am asked about this thing..
It is for no better explanation, a sales pitch. Grumman Olsen was trying to get the USPS bid for manufacturing the postal carrier vehicle.. between 1983-1985 they produced 500 kubvans in 2 different models (70 and 100) with a couple different options. High or low Floor (cargo area) dual or single rear doors, automatic or manual shift and right or left drive.
Most were automatics, almost all were diesel, I have heard that a few may have been ordered with the CIS gas engine.
Mine is a 100, with a manual trans (1/23 supposedly) single rear door, high floor. I looked for almost 4 years for one, and in January of 14 I found one in Ohio. After a little time talking with the owner we struck a deal and it was on its way to me.
I drove it around the neighborhood for a while trying to find out what worked and what didnt .. all the while thinking of paint schemes and engine options.
With a local show coming up in April I wanted to have it there and the simplest way with our work load and project list piling up was to work on the exterior first and then pull the original drive train out after the local show.
A little bit of OD Green and Raptor tintable bedliner produced the finish I was looking for, and I can scrub it with a brush if it gets dirty and not worry about scratching the paint.
We added a bullbar for safety… you know how rough the city streets of Chattanooga can be..
Final touches were a set of wheels that I use on every car, but never sell with a car. My Ronal Turbos. They were not what I had in mind but with the fenders and the offsets I was going to have to work with, these fit the bill. We also added a roof rack and a functioning ladder to access the rack.
It made it to the local show and we had a great time.
From the local show to SOWO14 was only 30 days, so we were still under a bit of a time crunch to get the new driveline inplace to make it to Helen GA.
The rebuilt ALH motor from an 03 Beetle TDI was painted CAT yellow before installing the accessories or transmission parts.
With all the accessories on we were ready to try out the new MK1 02A mounts and mk1 02J shift linkages we had made. Of course they fit like a glove and work even better. The Eurovan Cable Clutch conversion kit was also used on this chassis to simplify the mk1 02a/j conversion. Scirocco 16v axles were used with the standard mk1 hubs.
With those installed we were onto wiring, inter-cooler plumbing,and maintenance parts on the spindles and hubs.
After a snafu with the VNT 17 turbo we put on it having locked up vanes, we got a new one in a hurry and installed it, made about 20 miles of test drives and set off for SOWO14. We received our new decals as we were pulling out of the shop
We made the trip with out any issues, had a great time cruising around town seeing old friends. They had a mobile dyno setup so we crawled on top of it to see how we did. kubvan 023 The video is not that great as we were having issues finding a tach signal to work off of. After that was sorted we got 3 good pulls and managed 325ft/lbs of torque and 146hp.
Overall I am very happy with the performance and drive-ability of this vehicle, I have put a total of 1000 miles on the swap as of 6/4/14 and will continue to update as we add new parts.
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