ShopTalk Forums | Aircooled VW Tech & Restoration Help

Hey all,
I live in the bay area California and I am about to start putting money into the suspension. I would love to ride in some bugs that have altered suspension or suspension add ons. I am not looking for baja style. I am looking for bugs that are for street coarses and daily drivers. I want to see the difference between coil overs and stock, sway bars and non sway bar ect... my car is what I am comparing it to its completely stock suspension. Do I go the full Torsion bar deletion and put coil springs in, or do I just need a Kafer bar and sway bar? ect ..... to many questions and I figure the best way to tell is to ride in them! I'll buy you a cheap lunch / dinner or coffee. hehe

Thanks!
Bugsly

volksbugly wrote:Hey all,
I live in the bay area California and I am about to start putting money into the suspension. I would love to ride in some bugs that have altered suspension or suspension add ons. I am not looking for baja style. I am looking for bugs that are for street coarses and daily drivers. I want to see the difference between coil overs and stock, sway bars and non sway bar ect... my car is what I am comparing it to its completely stock suspension. Do I go the full Torsion bar deletion and put coil springs in, or do I just need a Kafer bar and sway bar? ect ..... to many questions and I figure the best way to tell is to ride in them! I'll buy you a cheap lunch / dinner or coffee. hehe

Thanks!
Bugsly

Go here first, watch all the videos.

http://shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=101402

Really study the steering reaction when he blips the wheel and the car reacts, how the nose dives when he hits the brakes, the sway through the turns and slalom, how the rear end kick when the gas is applied coming out of a turn. This car is highly modified but should give you an idea of a lot of what you're asking.

A few pics on their website www.vw1303.at

Best bet to ride with someone is to go to the local autocrosses and hopefully someone has a bug they race regularly. Good luck with it.

your approach is good. unfortunately you live in an area where drags and offroad is more popular.

just a few things to consider...

what year model is your bug coz that effects things a lot.

Early cars with swing/king&link can be made to handle, but none of them will ever get near an IRS/strut late car for overall cornering potential and tunability. So whatever you have at the mo, you might want to reconsider whether that is really the bug for you. I'm guessing like most of us, you bought with your heart and can deal with inferior/antique suspension systems, you just want it to work a bit better.

So let me put it this way. the mods I'm about to prescribe will help EVERY model of beetle.

Front; Koni/Bilstein adjustables shocks, lower 2-3" (adjusters/dropped spindles/lowered adjustable struts), urethane sway bar mounts and perhaps a slightly fatter front sway bar, (strut brace for strut cars)
Rear; Koni/Bilstein adjustables shocks, lower 2-3", 24mm rear torsion bars (from late squareback), 19mm (or there abouts) sway bar, Kafer kit and berg front trans mount. (limiting straps or camber compensator for swingaxle cars)

Just a few notes. Bilsteins are rebuildable and can be revalved, Konis cannot. Anything thicker than 19mm rear swaybar without an LSD is complete waste of time. After you have done all this, you will want to get some stickier tyres.

Most of this stuff is cheaply got these days and easy enough to install if you can turn a wrench. You should have all this in the car for under $2k... and you will be stunned how much better the car goes round corners. It will be eminently "chuckable" even with a stock 1600. You could lower it more but you will have speedhump/driveway dramas and there isn't that much more gain for a street car.

The best thing to do is do a track day and then install all the bits and do another one. Measure the difference in times.

Thanks for the responses!

Its a std 1970 bug (IRS) I have 2" drop spindles on the front right now, disk brakes up front drums in the back. I am currently running 195/60/15 on all 4 but I am going to put 215/65/15 on the back to help out the high RPM on the high way. That is only temporary till I get a built transmission. There are no sway bars, so I ordered 2 19mm sway bars (front and back)

Can you suggest a set of Bilsteins that will fit? I think a good coil over would do great on the car!

Is this worth it?
http://www.eagleperformance.com/CoilOverKits.html
and do I still run a torsion bar with it? I see the added benefit is easy adjustment of toe ?

those are designed to be run with the torsion bar deleted completely. They are really designed for full custom offroad setups. I would caution you on converting to coilovers on an otherwise stock setup. The whole back end of the car is designed to restrain the forces placed on the trailing arms and channel them into the torsion tube and torsion bar. Deleting the torsion bar and passing all the forces through the shock tower places a lot of extra and different forces on the shock tower and the body. I'd suggest at least a kafer bar kit, but in reality, you really need some sort of space frame in the back of the car with these forces in mind. Doing a proper coilover conversion means re-fabricating the back end of the car to get the best out of it. If you want to see what I mean, look at the standard trailing arms vs a set of a datsun 510 or similar.



The strength in these arms is in totally different places to a standard IRS VW trailing arm. Here is an offroad arm built to use a coilover setup.



See how the coilover is mounted to a highly braced section at the rear of the arm while the mounting points are attached with much less bracing. That's because all the force on the arm is concentrated at the back. On a stock arm, the overall shape of the arm is cantilevered because the forced are concentrated down to the torsionbar link on the mounting plate.



the image above is a type 3 setup but the bug setup is the same. The point is, the shock towers are on the WRONG side of the arm to work properly and the arms are not designed to do what you want. Sorry for the essay.

There are better (and cheaper) ways to get the rear end to work in a stockish street car than cutting off the back end and starting again...and that's what coilover really means.

I think this will do what you want

http://mendeolamotors.com/motors/index. ... Itemid=110

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewto ... sc&start=0

cool thanks for the suggestions!!

I ended up putting the swaybar in the front, and it helped but still not what I want. The bug had adjust-a-gas shocks in it which were way to firm. I got some cheap bugpack coilover shocks to stick in just to try out , but it altered my ride height up about 2 inches, booo! so I am going to stick some regular shocks in temporarily. I haven' had a chance to put the rear sway bar in yet.

After looking at the mendeola suspension, I am going to use the coil over torsion deletion kit in the rear and go with stock length boxed trailing arms, kamfer (spelling) bar, and then I can put some nice coilovers on. I don't have lots of $ to spend, so If I can keep the budget low that would be best..

It does ride alot better with the crappy coil overs in the front so I think I am going to try and find some that will fit properly.

since you want to ride it on the street too there will be some trade off as race suspensionis are too harsh for the street.

I would start with swapping out the rear torsion bars for something around 25-27mm and use oil shocks (not gas shocks) on the front or you will start chipping teeth on speed bumps. When you put the new torsion bars on you can lower the rear to be almost even with the front (level) when you are in the car.

This is probably the most cost effective solution you will find and will take the least effort to install over changing the whole rear. BTW the rear is not so much of a problem as the limitations of the front suspension with camber changes in cornering. Do some reading on this forum there is a lot of good info on here.

ok I will take that into account,
yeah I am putting some nice oil shocks in when I get the time.
Thanks for the info.

petew wrote:those are designed to be run with the torsion bar deleted completely. They are really designed for full custom offroad setups. I would caution you on converting to coilovers on an otherwise stock setup. The whole back end of the car is designed to restrain the forces placed on the trailing arms and channel them into the torsion tube and torsion bar. Deleting the torsion bar and passing all the forces through the shock tower places a lot of extra and different forces on the shock tower and the body. I'd suggest at least a kafer bar kit, but in reality, you really need some sort of space frame in the back of the car with these forces in mind. Doing a proper coilover conversion means re-fabricating the back end of the car to get the best out of it. If you want to see what I mean, look at the standard trailing arms vs a set of a datsun 510 or similar.



The strength in these arms is in totally different places to a standard IRS VW trailing arm. Here is an offroad arm built to use a coilover setup.



See how the coilover is mounted to a highly braced section at the rear of the arm while the mounting points are attached with much less bracing. That's because all the force on the arm is concentrated at the back. On a stock arm, the overall shape of the arm is cantilevered because the forced are concentrated down to the torsionbar link on the mounting plate.



the image above is a type 3 setup but the bug setup is the same. The point is, the shock towers are on the WRONG side of the arm to work properly and the arms are not designed to do what you want. Sorry for the essay.

There are better (and cheaper) ways to get the rear end to work in a stockish street car than cutting off the back end and starting again...and that's what coilover really means.

after reading this again I am waiting to do my coilover switch till I get the rollcage in. This is going to be a street cage, I will have some spots built for coilover shock mounts. I totally see what your saying about the buildup on the trailing arms. I am probably going to buy a boxing kit for the trailing arm and then put new gussets on for the coilover.

Thanks for the info!