narrowed beam question?
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warrenbaity
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:24 pm
narrowed beam question?
i have been thinking about narrowing a beam myself., i have a couple questions about it. 1) will a mig with gas be good enough to weld the beam? (ill be using a lincoln 135 sp) i have adequate welding skills and I feel comfortable welding the beam but is this good enough? 2) should i take the material from the middle of the beam and reweld on the "brackets" ( the pieces that hold the beam to bulkhead) or should i take the two inches from the outside between the shocktowers and the "brackets", and 3) should i remove the bushings in the beam before i weld or cut it? (also where are the bushings exactly?). I plan to cut the beam with a number 3 pipe cutter. i know the importance of correctly aligning the two pieces before welding and i have read a few articles dealing with this but i wanted to get a couple more people to input on this before i do the actual work. oh yeah, its going to be on a balljoint beam. and i will be cutting and rethreading my tierods and cutting and redimpling my torsion leaves. anything else anyone wants to say before i do this? anyone with firsthand experience have any advice also? thanks in advance to anyone who replys.
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wrench_monkey
- Posts: 119
- Joined: Sat May 29, 2004 9:18 pm
Warren,
This is a "dicey" question to answer online since we're really talking about safety and that safety all hinges upon your ability to do this job well so anything answered here would have to be based upon a perfect job done otherwise, this is not the sort of thing you should do yourself if there is any reasonable doubt it could be done with some error as you're only putting yourself and others on the road at risk.
In a drastic head-on or T-bone collision the beam will be stressed hard at the outer ends and this will cause the beam to flex. Thus, if your welds _were_ to break AND they were outboard of the central frame head mounts, the chances of shearing the beam is greater. While inside the frame head mounts the beam would remain _somewhat_ captive by the large bolts and therefore have a better chance of surviving.
Sorry if I sound like your Dad harping on you about safety but I am a father and both my son and a friend of his have been in severe collisions in Vdubs. His friend's narrowed beam failed and caused much more damage to the car. My son's beam (welded inside the "hard points") did not even though it bent hard. Thankfully they were both uninjured in the "accidents" neither of which were they're faults.
OK. Required caveat out of the way now:
There's three issues to consider when narrowing your beam:
1) cutting inside the frame head mounts is safer place to cut and weld because the outer portions of the beam beyond the cut/weld site are still secured to the frame head by the four mounting bolts.
2) cutting outside the frame head is easier since you don't have to relocate the frame head mounts on the beam and is therefore less work in cutting and welding but that leaves the cut/weld site beyond the "hard points" (at the frame head) that the beam is mounted to the car.
3) no matter where you cut, you will still have to relocate the steering gear box and associated damper and hardware for left and right lock points as this will move and this action may cause an interference with the grease nipple on that tube near the steering gear box.....
You'll have to make the decision on which side of the main mounting point you wanna shorten the beam from as a result based upon your skills and the resulting safety factors involved.
Once you have picked this location for cutting the beam, you will of course have to make several "registration" marks on the beam so you KNOW that it will go back together with exact same proportions and side to side off-set. For this, I usually just make several measurements along the tubes that have vertical lines with referenced measures. So I know that "this" line is exactly "X" number of inches (or centimeters) from exactly center of the beam. These lines do not necessarily have to be where you will cut either. Just so long as you have a reference point to ensure things go back straight and equal. Just remember if you measure say 12" out from center for a registration mark, that when you "go back together" it will be 11" out from center due to you narrowing each side by 1" for a total of 2" narrowed beam.. Got it?
This same kind of measurement or registration marking may be needed for your beam's adjusters if that applies since rotating the adjusters in the center can cause your beam's "drop" to change and possibly for the worse if you get them messed up from each other or dropped too low or raised too high etc.. A horinzontal line across these with an "up" indicator will help ensure you put them back in position the same and with the adjusters pointing in the right direction so you don't create an "auto-dropping" beam if you know what I mean?
Welding with a MIG should be fine so long as you have your rig setup well for the steel involved and that you can get good penetration of the weld pool. The argon will help ensure your welds are cleaner than without it. So you'll just have to be certain your amp/heat setting is correct for a good weld on the tubes. Practice before hand if you have any doubts by welding together the cut-out bits which will be easier to inpect from the inside due to their overall short length.
You will have to clean the weld sites prior to welding of course as there will be paint and road goo outside of the tubes and lots of grease inside the tubes and that can lead to corruption of the weld.
Making sure the beam remains perfectly aligned during this work is of course also a MAJOR requirement.
The best way to help yourself ensure a solid weld on the tubes is to chamfer the edges of the tubes at the mating surfaces to be welded. This provides you with more surface area to weld the tubes back together as the two chamfered edges of the tube will form a "V" directly between the two parts being welded and help make the weld more secure as a result.
The outer-most ends of each tube contain the bushings - or in your case because it's a ball joint beam - the needle bearings that allow the control arms to rotate freely inside of each tube's ends. These should not be affected by your work as you really aren't going to be that close to them during the cut-n-weld phase.
HTH .... nervously finished
This is a "dicey" question to answer online since we're really talking about safety and that safety all hinges upon your ability to do this job well so anything answered here would have to be based upon a perfect job done otherwise, this is not the sort of thing you should do yourself if there is any reasonable doubt it could be done with some error as you're only putting yourself and others on the road at risk.
In a drastic head-on or T-bone collision the beam will be stressed hard at the outer ends and this will cause the beam to flex. Thus, if your welds _were_ to break AND they were outboard of the central frame head mounts, the chances of shearing the beam is greater. While inside the frame head mounts the beam would remain _somewhat_ captive by the large bolts and therefore have a better chance of surviving.
Sorry if I sound like your Dad harping on you about safety but I am a father and both my son and a friend of his have been in severe collisions in Vdubs. His friend's narrowed beam failed and caused much more damage to the car. My son's beam (welded inside the "hard points") did not even though it bent hard. Thankfully they were both uninjured in the "accidents" neither of which were they're faults.
OK. Required caveat out of the way now:
There's three issues to consider when narrowing your beam:
1) cutting inside the frame head mounts is safer place to cut and weld because the outer portions of the beam beyond the cut/weld site are still secured to the frame head by the four mounting bolts.
2) cutting outside the frame head is easier since you don't have to relocate the frame head mounts on the beam and is therefore less work in cutting and welding but that leaves the cut/weld site beyond the "hard points" (at the frame head) that the beam is mounted to the car.
3) no matter where you cut, you will still have to relocate the steering gear box and associated damper and hardware for left and right lock points as this will move and this action may cause an interference with the grease nipple on that tube near the steering gear box.....
You'll have to make the decision on which side of the main mounting point you wanna shorten the beam from as a result based upon your skills and the resulting safety factors involved.
Once you have picked this location for cutting the beam, you will of course have to make several "registration" marks on the beam so you KNOW that it will go back together with exact same proportions and side to side off-set. For this, I usually just make several measurements along the tubes that have vertical lines with referenced measures. So I know that "this" line is exactly "X" number of inches (or centimeters) from exactly center of the beam. These lines do not necessarily have to be where you will cut either. Just so long as you have a reference point to ensure things go back straight and equal. Just remember if you measure say 12" out from center for a registration mark, that when you "go back together" it will be 11" out from center due to you narrowing each side by 1" for a total of 2" narrowed beam.. Got it?
This same kind of measurement or registration marking may be needed for your beam's adjusters if that applies since rotating the adjusters in the center can cause your beam's "drop" to change and possibly for the worse if you get them messed up from each other or dropped too low or raised too high etc.. A horinzontal line across these with an "up" indicator will help ensure you put them back in position the same and with the adjusters pointing in the right direction so you don't create an "auto-dropping" beam if you know what I mean?
Welding with a MIG should be fine so long as you have your rig setup well for the steel involved and that you can get good penetration of the weld pool. The argon will help ensure your welds are cleaner than without it. So you'll just have to be certain your amp/heat setting is correct for a good weld on the tubes. Practice before hand if you have any doubts by welding together the cut-out bits which will be easier to inpect from the inside due to their overall short length.
You will have to clean the weld sites prior to welding of course as there will be paint and road goo outside of the tubes and lots of grease inside the tubes and that can lead to corruption of the weld.
Making sure the beam remains perfectly aligned during this work is of course also a MAJOR requirement.
The best way to help yourself ensure a solid weld on the tubes is to chamfer the edges of the tubes at the mating surfaces to be welded. This provides you with more surface area to weld the tubes back together as the two chamfered edges of the tube will form a "V" directly between the two parts being welded and help make the weld more secure as a result.
The outer-most ends of each tube contain the bushings - or in your case because it's a ball joint beam - the needle bearings that allow the control arms to rotate freely inside of each tube's ends. These should not be affected by your work as you really aren't going to be that close to them during the cut-n-weld phase.
HTH .... nervously finished
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warrenbaity
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:24 pm
very well explained jeff. thank you. but wouldnt having to cut the frame head mounts off and weld them back on make them more prone to break just like when welding the actual tubes? or is it because they take less stress because the framehead is backing it up and taking the damage? nevermind i just answered my own question i think
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brianpgriset
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:27 pm
heres a post i made on another forums a bit back... sort of a step by step for at least part of a narrowing job:
anyways, in order to lower an aircooled vw, there is one very popular way: narrowing the front axle beam and welding in height adjusters as well as installing drop spindles. now the drop spindle part is pretty boring but the narrowing is cool stuff, but also important. so heres a little info on it all.
here is what i want to do. weld in the two adjusters as well as taking 6 inches out of the length of the beam (giving me a net narrowing of 4").
now the two vertical brackets are where the beam bolts on to the framehead, those will be cut off and repositioned in phase II.
now to determine the location of where to weld in the adjusters, what most of the acvw world does is scribe a line through the middle of the stock grub screw position, then weld the the adjusters at its highest setting across that scribe line, which is what im doing here:
you can barley see the scribe. to get the exact length i want to cut out (which is 6 and 1/8 inches [4 for narrowing, 2 for the adjusters, and a 1/16 on ether side of the adjusters for weld penetration]), i took a peice of small angle iron, cut it to the 6&1/8 length i want to narrow, and center it on the beam, then tighten down two hose clamps on either end as you see above. now for a sqaure cut, ill take two more hose clamps, and put them on the inside of those two, leaving just the thickness of a hacksaw blade between them.
next i hack off the middle, and with the aid of the hose clamps, get a clean and sqaure cut:
(notice the cool snoopy pillow cover as backdrop)
next i do the same thing to the bottom tube, giving me two seperate peices of front axle.
now, the MOST important thing of this WHOLE modification is making 100% sure that the two halves of axle beam are rewelded perfectly straight. going 60 mph with a crooked front axle aint good no matter how you look at it.
so to make sure i get a straight axle when i weld the halves back together, i cut two peices of angle iron about the same length as the axle, then using several hose clamps, clamp the two halves to the peices of angle iron, leaving just the right amount of room between them to weld in the adjusters. first i cleaned off all the paint and crap off the side ill be clamping the angle iron too, like in this pic:
you can see the peice of angle iron too...
before i clamp everytihng in place, it is ABSOLUTLY VITAL that i get good, strong welds on the beam. now, first off, the material here is rather thick, and secondly, i dont know how many of you have welded pipe but it is very difficulty because it is a curved surface. so its important i bevel the edges that ill be welding on, to allow the weld to get metal all the way to the inner diameter of the pipe.
now before i welded this, i took the old peices i cut out and did a few practice runs to get the feel for it and to get my welder dialed in properly. so after i got my confidence up, i begin welding:
first i did the top adjuster, lining it up as i mentioned above.
you can see my welds turned out pretty good. they arent clumped on the top of the beam. they sunk down in, filling metal all the way down. now since the angle iron is still clamped to the two halves, i can only weld halfway arond the pipe opf the top adjuster.
taking some measurments with and angle measurer, i position the bottom adjuster in the same angle as the top, then tack it into place and double check evrything.
in this image i used another long peice of angle iron to see if the two adjusters were lining up properly in the vertical direction. looks good, so i welded up the bottom adjuster. now i can unclamp the angle iron and finish the welds on the back half of the pipe.
with a little grinding i get the finished product:
looks straight too:
you might notice it looks like the beam dips in the middle, where the adjuster is, but thats because the adjuster had a slight smaller OD than the stock axle tubes. very curious.
anyways, the finished product is on the straight and norrow (haha).
-------------------------------------
now for the shock towers, im not quite done with them but here are a few pics for ideas:
i wanted to do this way for several reasons, fisrt, ive never seen anyone do it like this, so itll be custom, 2nd, it looks stock at first glance, third, it requires less fabrication, since i am using the stock shock towers.
now i left out a TON of details, but there is alot, so you have any questions about any of the steps, feel free to post up
.... also, here are a few links that i used as reasearch when i was designing,/bilding my beam:
http://www.kaferweb.com/lowered_beam.htm
http://members.shaw.ca/acvw/narrowed_beam.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~aircooled/wo ... arrow.html
also, with a narrowed beam yuoll have to think about other parts of the front suspension that need modified, such as tie rods, steering damper mount, swaybar, etc...
i hope this helps some
anyways, in order to lower an aircooled vw, there is one very popular way: narrowing the front axle beam and welding in height adjusters as well as installing drop spindles. now the drop spindle part is pretty boring but the narrowing is cool stuff, but also important. so heres a little info on it all.
here is what i want to do. weld in the two adjusters as well as taking 6 inches out of the length of the beam (giving me a net narrowing of 4").
now the two vertical brackets are where the beam bolts on to the framehead, those will be cut off and repositioned in phase II.
now to determine the location of where to weld in the adjusters, what most of the acvw world does is scribe a line through the middle of the stock grub screw position, then weld the the adjusters at its highest setting across that scribe line, which is what im doing here:
you can barley see the scribe. to get the exact length i want to cut out (which is 6 and 1/8 inches [4 for narrowing, 2 for the adjusters, and a 1/16 on ether side of the adjusters for weld penetration]), i took a peice of small angle iron, cut it to the 6&1/8 length i want to narrow, and center it on the beam, then tighten down two hose clamps on either end as you see above. now for a sqaure cut, ill take two more hose clamps, and put them on the inside of those two, leaving just the thickness of a hacksaw blade between them.
next i hack off the middle, and with the aid of the hose clamps, get a clean and sqaure cut:
(notice the cool snoopy pillow cover as backdrop)
next i do the same thing to the bottom tube, giving me two seperate peices of front axle.
now, the MOST important thing of this WHOLE modification is making 100% sure that the two halves of axle beam are rewelded perfectly straight. going 60 mph with a crooked front axle aint good no matter how you look at it.
so to make sure i get a straight axle when i weld the halves back together, i cut two peices of angle iron about the same length as the axle, then using several hose clamps, clamp the two halves to the peices of angle iron, leaving just the right amount of room between them to weld in the adjusters. first i cleaned off all the paint and crap off the side ill be clamping the angle iron too, like in this pic:
you can see the peice of angle iron too...
before i clamp everytihng in place, it is ABSOLUTLY VITAL that i get good, strong welds on the beam. now, first off, the material here is rather thick, and secondly, i dont know how many of you have welded pipe but it is very difficulty because it is a curved surface. so its important i bevel the edges that ill be welding on, to allow the weld to get metal all the way to the inner diameter of the pipe.
now before i welded this, i took the old peices i cut out and did a few practice runs to get the feel for it and to get my welder dialed in properly. so after i got my confidence up, i begin welding:
first i did the top adjuster, lining it up as i mentioned above.
you can see my welds turned out pretty good. they arent clumped on the top of the beam. they sunk down in, filling metal all the way down. now since the angle iron is still clamped to the two halves, i can only weld halfway arond the pipe opf the top adjuster.
taking some measurments with and angle measurer, i position the bottom adjuster in the same angle as the top, then tack it into place and double check evrything.
in this image i used another long peice of angle iron to see if the two adjusters were lining up properly in the vertical direction. looks good, so i welded up the bottom adjuster. now i can unclamp the angle iron and finish the welds on the back half of the pipe.
with a little grinding i get the finished product:
looks straight too:
you might notice it looks like the beam dips in the middle, where the adjuster is, but thats because the adjuster had a slight smaller OD than the stock axle tubes. very curious.
anyways, the finished product is on the straight and norrow (haha).
-------------------------------------
now for the shock towers, im not quite done with them but here are a few pics for ideas:
i wanted to do this way for several reasons, fisrt, ive never seen anyone do it like this, so itll be custom, 2nd, it looks stock at first glance, third, it requires less fabrication, since i am using the stock shock towers.
now i left out a TON of details, but there is alot, so you have any questions about any of the steps, feel free to post up
.... also, here are a few links that i used as reasearch when i was designing,/bilding my beam:
http://www.kaferweb.com/lowered_beam.htm
http://members.shaw.ca/acvw/narrowed_beam.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~aircooled/wo ... arrow.html
also, with a narrowed beam yuoll have to think about other parts of the front suspension that need modified, such as tie rods, steering damper mount, swaybar, etc...
i hope this helps some
Last edited by brianpgriset on Tue Jun 14, 2005 2:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
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warrenbaity
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:24 pm
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brianpgriset
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:27 pm
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warrenbaity
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:24 pm
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brianpgriset
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:27 pm
lol, talk about a thread back from the dead....
as for the two items you mentioned, when i did my beam, acutally bought another LP beam from the samba, and kept my old one. so, to reposition the steering dampner mount, and the steering box position, i used my old beam, and measured FROM THE CENTER of the beam to the stock locations ,them replicated the measurements on my new, narrowed beam.
btw since the last time i posted on this thread, the new beam has been painted, and is very close to done, just needs a few small things. let me know if there is anything else
as for the two items you mentioned, when i did my beam, acutally bought another LP beam from the samba, and kept my old one. so, to reposition the steering dampner mount, and the steering box position, i used my old beam, and measured FROM THE CENTER of the beam to the stock locations ,them replicated the measurements on my new, narrowed beam.
btw since the last time i posted on this thread, the new beam has been painted, and is very close to done, just needs a few small things. let me know if there is anything else
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brianpgriset
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:27 pm
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warrenbaity
- Posts: 455
- Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2003 10:24 pm
I also did this job after getting all the info from this thread. Thanks brian and everyone else who helped out. Anyway the part I found the hardest was removing the steering stop bracket. The framehead mounts were not that hard to get off. After you think you have ground them enough, just turn the beam upside down and give the framehead mounts a few good hits with the biggest sledge hammer you can pick up. You'll see it start to crack where the welds were. Thats how you know you ground it down enough. If after hitting it with the sledge you dont see the piece seperating, try grinding some more material from it. DONT grind too much into the beam. Be careful about where you are grinding material from. Take you time. Good luck
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brianpgriset
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:27 pm
agreed. i even took a chisel to my the framehead mounts and gave a good whack around the ends to just start alitle seperation. after you see a crack begin to propigate, all it will need are a few god whacks with a hamer.
btw - i just finished got the torsion leaves re-"dimpled" yesterday, so im going to do a mega-huge writeup on the whole thing with pics... thats dropped spindles/narrwoed adjustable beam how to... ill be sure to post it up in here
btw - i just finished got the torsion leaves re-"dimpled" yesterday, so im going to do a mega-huge writeup on the whole thing with pics... thats dropped spindles/narrwoed adjustable beam how to... ill be sure to post it up in here
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FITNESSFORYOUTOO
- Posts: 176
- Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 7:34 pm