Ok, assessment and plans thus far:
Engine: She came with a 1600 single port and a 2.0 bus motor. The 1600 will be the quick and easy path to movement and I will get it running pretty quick so I have it as an option. I'd prefer to use the bus motor for obvious reasons but it will require a conversion to carburetors (currently has an incomplete FI system) and some flywheel modifications at a minimum. There is also the small possibility I'll borrow the subaru motor and adapter from the Wartburg for awhile but honesly for its purpose either of the VW motors should suffice.
Suspension:
The rear trailing arms were modified in a most hideous way. I will replace these with stock units. I had considered swapping to the aluminum porsche units but that would change my bolt pattern and as the car came with 15x10 wheels to get some big sticky tires in back I'll keep the 4 bolt. The overall goal is to keep this cheap but functional.
The front beam is a hacked up mess with some pretty poorly fabbed shock towers but I think I can clean it all up and make it work rather than rebuild. The top leaf pack for the torsion beam will be replaced with a solid rod to act as a sway bar, the lower pack will get beefed up and an adjuster added to lower the front. Coil overs may be used on the front shocks if a higher spring rate is needed.
The pedal cluster is crap, the Wartburg is getting converted to a hanging pedal setup so the buggy floor mount set that is in there is perfect for this application.
The steering is rather interesting as well. Stock system but the rebar and angle iron steering column leaves a bit to be desired. I have a center mount buggy rack and pinion left over from another project so that will go into use and a new columun with some u-joints will be built.
This is one way to mount a shifter in a buggy. Not a great way but it works. Its functional and I should leave it, but oh hell no. I'll get a proper shifter box and I want to put a better shifter in the wartburg so I'll buy that now and use it on the buggy then put a stock one back in the buggy when the wartburg is ready for the shifter.
Brakes - This thing was set up for dirt track roundy round work. As such it has rear drums and ONE front drum. All the brake lines are hard lines, no flexible rubber anywhere. WTF. (I should stop and note that any disparaging remarks about a PO are directed to the owner prior to sanyarcosean, he did not do this butchery on the car.) but hey at least they werent fastened to anything so they could all move any where they wanted. Sigh. The car came with spindles and disks from a karman ghia which will go up front and the rear drums will just get reconditioned. New lines, with rubber lines where appropriate, will be run.
Finally I will add lightness by removing much of the unnecessary bits of the rail. Many additions were made (marked in red/pink in the photos) which were not part of the original chassis. These will be removed, along with the rock slider bars on the sides since they aren't needed and everything will get cleaned up.