Rear Beetle suspension

Hello all,

After trying for ages to adjust the rear suspension on my 72 Choptop Beetle, Im about ready to give up.
I can do every part, except put the leading arm back on the stop plate. As I try to raise the damn arm, the whole car raises, making it impossible to put back on. (I believe it is due to the lack of weight, due to no roof)
I am in the process of raising my rear about 1.5cm, so it is under considerably more tension

Any suggestions?
Cheers
Tnate

mailto:tomnathan@gmail.com

Sounds like You need a tool attached to the chassis to pull the arm Up over the plate....

the other thing You can do, is place a few bags of concrete in Your car to add weight to it.... until You can safely jack it up
and over....

Best of luck...

Lee

We use a hook dyna bolted to the shed floor. Using a chain we bolt the car to the floor then jack away.
Hope this helps
Brett

You need to use a chain and a trolley jack.

Look at this Link.

http://www.meyersmanx.com/garage/garage_suspend.htm

Basically you chain the car to the trolley jack so it doesn't go up, then jack the spring plate.



[Edited on 21/3/2005 by MikeM]

there are a few ways. i was stupid enough to pull the rear suspension out when i had no engine in teh back........

got 3 mates to stand on the rear bumper, sit behind rear seat, on guards etc.

that normally works for me. and once its within a few mm, just lever it up and on using a very large screw driver.

As MikeM said. I used this method last night on a bear chassis. Works fine and is damn easy to do.

excellent - was wondering how I was gonna keep the chassis on the ground (it's stripped)

another good article on rear torsion bars here - with pix

http://www.vwtrendsweb.com/tech/0312vwt_71super/

i was needing an explanation of this 2, so this is gr8, now that i know how, i just gotta get some adjustable struts 4 up front

Couldn't get the "chaining the trolley jack to the car" method to work for me, for some reason. So instead I use a "big" turnbuckle and a length of chain. Bolt one end of the turnbuckle to the top shock mount; loop the chain over the hook on the turnbuckle, and bolt the other end of the chain to the spring plate - tighten the turnbuckle and the spring plate lifts up.

did it this way a couple of weeks ago - used a big chain from the chassis to the front of the trolley jack and just kept jacking till it all lined up. the chassis did actually lift a bit, but only till the slack went out of the chain.

while it works it's a bit heart in mouth, lots of pressure going on there!

the turnbuckle method sounds interesting for next time - or buying the right tool....

The turnbuckle method was kind-of fiddly to initially setup, in that you needed to ensure you have just enough threds on the buckle to lift the spring plate and alow you to lever it out of the "groove", and enough thred to unwind the turn buckle so that the spring plate reaches it's lowest point without any load on the chain so you unhitch it - but it worked

1stcarbug,
I have a tool that you can borrow that may be a little easier than the chain and jack system (as good as it looks)
Will speak to you at Klubfest