just 4 everyone keeping up with the newbes follies.  got all fixed! starter went out. fixed 4 $40. next day fuel pump took a dump an hour from home right across from auto zone in jasper ga. you think good luck? no. didnt carry itin stock. wife saved me once again. god love her cause i do.this week end went to a friends house and he has the idiot book. valves all to tight timming way off and carb junk at the start.  found a old bug mech who tinkers at home in hayesville nc. had a 34 carb he rebuilt it installed it set it and out the door 4  $50 .  set vales then pionts to close by far got them right. set timming right and i got a great running bug.  $189  includeing ball joints.      woo hoo    im doin all the work  (with guidance) myself. great learning .  my 10 yr old wants to start on her one. i am all for it. anything to keep her on the right track.

well got the timeing fixed. adjusted the valves and retimed it . worked great. the rebuilt carb i bought went south. sucking air around the bottom throttle arm.  new solex 34 $200.36 . bug doin great runnin wize.  got to put a transaxel in it.  reverse has at least 2 or 3 teeth gone .  :?  its worse than my harley. but ill get it all done

got a tranny  but would like to get this one fixed. it jumps out of gear and sounds as tho some teeth are missing. can only back about a foot and out it goes

Joe, Thanks for the info on the "34".   I'm going to check that out.  I don't think that this Mod is going to effect fuel mileage that much. Worth a try

The "get up and go" may be to the gearing in the tranny.  I take it that your bug is a '65 0r '66 ?    If the tranny is the orignal, its geared for a 1200 cc 40 HP in '65  and a 1300cc 50 HP in '66.   Your duel port (stock ?)
is 1600cc  60 HP.  10-20HP gain is going to make a big difference. I truely belive that if you were running a 1600cc Single port (57HP) you would leave the line even faster but the Duel Port would get by you on the top end but not by a whole lot.  
     Starting in '67 the trannys got a bit "long legged" in the gearing department.
     The fastest stock Bug I ever owned was my new '70 with the 1600cc Single Port . This was the last year in the USA for the Single Port.  That little varmit would put the speedo needle right in the middle of the turn signal indicator with ease on flat ground. :shock:

Well !   I guess that anwsers your power question huh ?  I didn't know plug'n one little hole would do that. Shows you what I know. :lol:

I realize this is a little late... but I just wanted to add that I had a 200cfm bugspray on my beetle and it ran awesome... It was a stock 1600 with a C35 cam and an 009.. oh, and an extractor exhaust w/ a sideways pointing glasspack muffler. I had to redrill the mains with a #54 drill bit (if memory serves me... I'm pretty sure it was a 54, I think we tried 53 first) and as far as the choke, I'm pretty sure I had it set to have hardly any coke at all when it was cold... (or it would flood indeed) However, it started pretty well without it. When starting it I did have to nurse the throttle for about a minute or two, but after that it would burble happily away. I did have problems with it freezing up when it was around or below freezing and humid though... I would have to pull over halfway to work and either blow on it, or allow the radiant heat to melt the ice. I eventually drilled a hole in the rear tin and installed some heater hose to duct hot engine air from behind cyl 4 and direct it at the body of the carburetor. It did get take a little tinkering to get right... but it ran exceptionally well. I drove it for 10 months while working 2 jobs, often driving almost 100 miles a day.

(edit:  the carburetor had belonged to my coworker and I went over his house and salvaged it off an engine in the brush behind his barn and actually had to unstick it, disassemble it and glass-bead blast the steel parts, which were pitted slightly but not too bad. He also had one with larger valves, think it was dubbed the 300cfm version. and I had to use a spacer between the intake manifold and carburetor for the accelerator pump arm to clear the top of the generator)

the guy I bought it from asked me why I was selling it, and I answered "I don't want to drive it thru another winter"  - and it was the truth. I had two  lengths of aluminum preheater tubing running directly from where the hot air entered under where the rear seat would have been if I had one..  the Left one went under the driver's seat and sometimes I'd stuff it up my coat sleeve. The right one was by the tunnel and pointed up at the windscreen. Lack of heat was mostly due to aftermarket, non finned heater boxes and an ill-fitting hood that didn't seal well. sold it to buy an '89 jetta that I've been driving for almost 5 years and 100k miles.