Aircooled VW South Africa

^^^^^^'''Talking about the shock towers ''

Here are some pics of my beam before welding on the brackets for shocks.

Cool man,thanx,',but u can keep them coming,i dont mind an idea or ten''

Looking foward to seeing this one progress!

What is the purpose of fitting dropped spindles and having adjusters ?
I have both on my bus and never thought about it, Splitfan made my beam the way I wanted, and he was right with the location of where I wanted the adjusters.
That bus can go all the way to the ground and then there is still teeth left on the adjusters!!
So cant I get the same result with the normal spindles installed?

...and I have shocks

i honestly dont have a clue,,ive did some research on the samba,as i understand when installing drop spindels u dont need shocks,they also weld in adjusters,thats why they can go so low,i can be wrong,maybe someone that knows more about it can explain

What kind of jig do you use to narrow the beam for interest sake

68 Bug wrote:What kind of jig do you use to narrow the beam for interest sake

A peice of angle iron

Splitz wrote:
...and I have shocks

Splits, busses are very different to bugs, if you had gone narrower your end plates would of bolted up on the inside and you would of had to have a top shock mount fabricated, but after that a bus cant go any narrower. Whereas on a bug we can go upto 8" narrowed beams and if you get very creative you can still run shocks.

1972 wrote:

68 Bug wrote:What kind of jig do you use to narrow the beam for interest sake

A peice of angle iron

Splitz wrote:
...and I have shocks

Splits, busses are very different to bugs, if you had gone narrower your end plates would of bolted up on the inside and you would of had to have a top shock mount fabricated, but after that a bus cant go any narrower. Whereas on a bug we can go upto 8" narrowed beams and if you get very creative you can still run shocks.

How do you know it's a 100% straight?

yip, ive build a jig with angle iron.works perfect.

68 if the beam is cut,placed and welded corectly, you will have a beam that is 100%.

1972 wrote:68 if the beam is cut,placed and welded corectly, you will have a beam that is 100%.

Hey, Shane... where've you been?!

Hey Ron. I've been around..Just have'nt had that much time to spend on the forum.

Splitz wrote: ...and I have shocks

1972 wrote: Splits, busses are very different to bugs, ...

I know, just teasing with the shocks, how is your bug coming along I enjoyed that thread...


When I got my first narrowed beam for the bus it did not fit, it was I think about 5-7mm to short(Splitfan can correct me)
That thing would not go on...and it was built in the same jig that many other successful beams were built in.

Haha I know you are...lol, My Project/Debate thread hasnt been updated in along time. Actually need to get round to taking some pics and updating it sometime.

Splitz, on busses it is quite hard to build beams that are 100%. The jig I was going to build for bus beams, was going to be an actual frame off a bus so all I would then have to do is bolt up the side plates, slide in the pipes and weld it up. Then its just adding adjusters and all that nice stuff afterwards. But the biggest problem comes in...If the bus that I decided to cut the frame from happend to be out by 10mm, every beam I build will end up not fitting but it will fit my jig. So bus jigs are also sortof complicated.

Phillip wrote:i honestly dont have a clue,,ive did some research on the samba,as i understand when installing drop spindels u dont need shocks,they also weld in adjusters,thats why they can go so low,i can be wrong,maybe someone that knows more about it can explain

Ohk the easiest way to understand the whole drop spindle thing is to look at your beam in stages, you have the...

1. Actual beam
then comes the 2. leafs inside the beam
then onto them comes 3. tortion arms wich join up to the 4. carriers, wich hold the 5. spindles.
then comes 6. disk's/drums and your wheels

Now what happens is when you drop a beetle with adjusters, the lower you go the further backwards or forwards the wheel is moved.

So from point number (2.) all the way to (6.) everything is affected.

But when you use drop spindles, you are not moving the wheel backwards or forwards you are moving the wheel from the stock postion straight up. So you are only affecting numbers (5.) and (6.)

Now if you go back to the reason why people narrow their beams...For those who dont know.

Narrowing the suspension on VW's came about so that we could go lower. Prior to narrowed front ends we had what was referred to today as "fender brakes". This was when your tire rubbed on the fender when you turned or your car leaned in a turn.. And you were as low as you could go, because you were hitting fender..

Now we narrow the front ends, not only does this correct the fender brake problem, is allows the tire to sit up in the fender where there is more head room for the tire and for the suspension to work, and allows the tire to turn better so driving is not inhibited by the lowering.. Ofcourse, if you slam it, you are going to run into these problems again.. But everything is a trade off.

I would also like to think that nowadays, it is simply "the look" also... So weather you drive a type 1, 2, or 3.. If you are going to lower, you might as well plan on narrowing too, for the same reasons.

So if you now look at why we narrow beams, and how we lower beetles...you then start to put together why people run both adjusters and drop spindles...simply beacuse if you have drop spindles that lift the spindle 2.5" you can adjust your adjusters less than if you had to run without drop spindles, thus also keeping the wheel more center'd.

Hope that makes sence