Linkage kits - Empi - CB and turbo installations

5th September 2009

I had bought a brand new Empi linkage kit a few months back as I already had some inlet manifolds that I was going to use. Unfortunately I had forgotten that the CB pressure covers that were designed to capture the turbo boost and channel it into the carburettor would only fit on the CB linkage kit. This was a major foobar as The Empi Linkage kit had cost quite a lot of money and was a major piece of equipment to get wrong. Fortunately I managed to sell some pieces of beetle parts that I had in the garage that allowed me to purchase the new CB linkage kit and manifolds that I managed to get at a very good price.

The Empi linkage kit uses base plates to sit under the filters and can be seen in the photo right. It is generally quite a good piece of kit with high quality heim joints and aluminium hex cross bar , linkage bar and throttle. The package was very easy to assemble and I was pretty disapointed not to be using it but as there was no system for getting the boosted air into the carburettors with this linkage kit it had be replaced with the CB performance Linkage Kit pictured right. I had negotiated with my dealer not to supply the filters and filter caps as I was not going to use them as I would have to buy turbo pressure caps instead that the dealer had to order specially from the USA which would take a month to arrive.

The most notable thing about the CB kit is the quality of the equipment. Secondly you will notice that the manifolds place the cross bar horizontal to the engine without needing a modified plate like the EMPI system used. This seemed in my opinion to make the engine look more balanced. The fitting instructions see picture right that come with the kit do a pretty good job of explaining how all the parts go together although it did not seem to informative about the hiem joints and I had to purchase some adapters separately to bolt onto the Dellorto throttle levers to enable the adjustment bars to work well. The plates that hold the linkage bar need to have the screws screwed into them to fix the pressure covers it is a good idea to thread lock them into the base, as I have seen a number of these in the past come unscrewed with the bolt locked onto the shaft. The manifolds were an excellent design however no provision for the fitting of a vacuum line to feed the dump valve comes as standard. I found an old pump that had brass feed pipework integral to it. These were extracted from the pump and where fitted into the edge of the manifold by drilling a 5.5mm hole and then with thread locking them in to make a sealed joint. A 3mm silicon hose can them be run to the dump valve . repeated this for both manifolds and used a nylon tee piece to join the two manifolds making one feed to the dump valve.

With the carburettors waiting for the pressure covers to arrive so I could fit the boost system . I would have to turn my attention to the oil system and make some decisions about cooling and supplying oil and retuning oil to the turbo, I would also need to make a bracket to hold the weight of the turbo on the exhaust system.