Questions, and plenty of them.

[David]

As some of you know I have recently purchased a Eureka, but have to admit knowing nothing about it.
There are photos of it already on this website under 'blue sports in just cars' in the for sale section.

Start at the start, can someone please tell me what I've got. Is it a sports, and if so, what does that mean?
Should it have a 1970, 1500 beetle floor pan & running gear? Were they scrapping 5 year old beetles to build the kits or is this likely to be a replacement floor?

[radekp81]

Hi David,
Firstly welcome and I know exactly how you feel, I asked the same questions about half a year ago. Anyway from that one pic on carsales yes your car looks like a sports based on the low sloping windscreen, the nostril Bonnet vents and square headlights. I'm 6' and have a sports and currently don't fit in it. I'm lowering the floors, slanting the seats and moving the gear lever back to try address that. As for the chassis yep they were made by sacrificing a bug for the chassis. To identify what chassis you have the best way is to check the chassis serial number. It's location and meaning can be found in the forum thread: http://eurekacarclub.com.au/forum/index.php/topic,916.0.html

Hope some of that helps.

Radek

[David]

I've worded that wrong. It is a 70 floor pan, that I already know. What I'm wondering is if it's supposed to be?
The fuel tank is mid 60's, should the running gear be around that as well?
But the main reason i ask is, 68 to 70 beetles had slightly different suspension to 67 back, larger steering box, which may explain a hole cut in the body, & a longer steering column, which could explain why I can't reach the pedals without the steering wheel touching my guts, even given that it is a sizeable gut.
The headroom I've discussed with a couple of people, I'm 5'6 so it's not a problem. My son is 6' & he's annoyed, but as I've said to him DAD'S!

[radekp81]

You will find pretty much any type 1 chassis was used in the eurekas, from the king pin fronts with swing axel rears and the link pin fronts with IRS rears. The  newer beetles from some time in the early 70s onwards were not suitable as they moved to McPherson fronts which did not fit under the low body.
So even eurekas built in the 80's had to use old donor bugs built in the 60's/early 70's.
To complicate things further there is the odd example where owners have converted rear axels that were originally swing to IRS.

As for the pedals there was a common mod made to them which is outlined in the eureka or nova assembly instruction manuals which you can find on the uk nova website... I think you can find them here: http://euro-nova.co.uk/index.php?option=com_rokdownloads&view=folder&Itemid=113

Radek.

[CyCo]

Radek has it right. The kit was designed from the beginning to sit on a VW floor pan. Back in the day, people would buy a Beetle that had been in an accident, that damaged the body but none to the floorpan. Then take the Beetle body off and put the Eureka body on. Sounds simple, but often took years.  With the lighter body, a 1500 will push it along quite nicely. Fuel tanks probably vary car to car. As they often rust out when left empty for years, they occasionally need replacing. When being built, most people used the VW fuel tank as they typically had the original donor car sitting there!