Damo has had his car on the road for a while now and was never really happy with the front suspension that he had pro built (by a dub specialist too) so he brought the bug up to my workshop for a bit of tweaking to get things sorted.

Firstly the suspension hardly actually moved when driving or just negotiating a bump like a driveway lip, also the steering was stoopidly tight so when steering into a corner, you actually had to manually straighten the wheel to come out of the corner. Man it was positively dangerous to drive.

The Whitline swaybar attachment to the lower shock mount is also a little agricultural so we redesigned that too, along with fitting improved CSP front end supports.

The CSP front end stiffiners make the connection from the beam lower tube to the front body mount bulkhead, this is only able to do around 30% of it's potential so I added the diagonal supports to tie in the top tubes as well. We ordered steering box clamps from CSP with the supports to do this.




These were trial fitted and modified to do the job properly




The front end suspension and steering were both rectified by correcting work done previously, ie. 2 ball joints were replaced and one lower trailing arm bush required reaming to gain free movement. Also a ton of sand was properly cleaned out from the inside (aparently left over from sandblasting) luckily he had done minimal mileage or the outer needle bearings would have been toast. I juggled the torsion leaf positions as the previous shop had also stuffed up on thier redrilling for the 2" narrowing and we couldn't get the desired camber specs previously, even with the aftermarket adjusters with more offset.
So all was reassembled and lubed properly.

For the sway bar links, we fitted 4 x Heim joints and a threaded rod link to the lower shock mounts for a nice adjustable system that should work well without the stoopid chunks of angle iron that normally come with the kit that are so problematic. Pics tell the story here.






So the alignment went well, not quite the camber we desired but 1 degree neg both sides was achieved where previously we could only get zero, all without making another set of torsions, so we're happy.

Enjoy driving your awesome car Damo, it's a credit to you mate. One very nice German Looker (well once you get those wheels sorted )

they are both sweet looking cars

I like the beam tie in supports.

I wonder tho. If the thick support bar located centrally between the beam tubes would this support well or is the triangulated design the better idea?

Quote:

Originally posted by psimitar I like the beam tie in supports. or is the triangulated design the better idea?

looks good matt, Whats the brake kit?

Thanks Mac, the brakes are 944 Turbo all round, I believe the fitting kit is from Vee Dub Engineering (Canada) but Damo can correct me if I've got it wrong. Stopping power is certainly not an issue with the 4 spot Brembos on each corner.

nice

I think, that CSP front end stiffeners originated in '68 on Country Buggies..

Hey Johnny, yes they did, but they were tiny by comparison in design and strength. I usually make them or integrate into the bar work, but the CSP ones are off-the-shelf and German made with a quality fit.

I want 4 pot brembos on all corners.

Still amazes me, the corners that get cut by some "specialists". Sand in the beam? Really?

sweet work as always, love the swaybar hangers

nice tidy link on the sway bar

The beam supports that are fitted to my Ghia are a double unit that fits up to both sections of the beam similar to what you have manufactured except the head is one piece. This was an optional part purchased from the dealership in about 1968 from memory.

I know what you mean Nils, on both accounts.

I've had feedback in the past that I put shit on other shops too much, I think that if they didn't do shit work all the time I wouldn't have to say that sort of stuff. In this case, it was no expense spared, big D wanted the best, no questions. And from experience I am sure that was how his job would have run.
What do you guys think?

Yea ,well we all know the answer to that one Matt , but apparentley it is not good sportsmanship to bag sh!t work .
To those in the know and the good old word of mouth it all works out in the end though .

I'm not going to sit a bag on anybody, but I think these places put themselves under the pump in an effort to be competitive. As a result things can get overlooked. We all spend time looking for the best price on parts, when parts really are the cheap part of most of our projects.
To think, 38hrs/wk @$90per/hr = $3420, How much can you really get done on your veedub in a week? Sure could buy alot of sweet parts for that!

I have spent probably 300+ hrs changing the engine in my baja over the winter, maybe $2000 in parts. Now would I have payed $20000 for this service? NOoooo!

If someone quoted you $20000 for an engine change, plus the cost of the engine mind you.

Point I make is-

--are we asking too much for our money?

Quote:

Originally posted by matberry Thanks Mac, the brakes are 944 Turbo all round, I believe the fitting kit is from Vee Dub Engineering (Canada) but Damo can correct me if I've got it wrong. Stopping power is certainly not an issue with the 4 spot Brembos on each corner.

Thanks for helping me fix my front end Matthew. I am very happy with the end result. The installation of the CSP bar kit was very easy and very well made. It was nice fitting quality German made parts on my bug. Now a little lesson learned from this, the CSP bar kit does not fit narrowed beams, my beam is narrowed 50mm and the CSP bars are stamped L & R too make it fit on a narrowed beam all you have to do is swap them from side to side and they clear the uprights on the beam. Installing this kit also allowed us to install my whiteline swaybar in a much better way, you can see in pics how it now attaches much better than two U bolts and some angle iron. The heim joint adjustable tie rods only cost $80 to make from all new hardware sourced from a bearing shop. As for availability of 944 brake rotors i simply went to Brisbane Porsche dealership and ordered from them and the price was cheaper than aftermarket. Front caliper mounting kit was from Canada and the rears are a mix of early and late 944 components and its all a bolt on for the rear brakes. Matthew insists that i paint my wheels black.

Hmmmm he wanted to paint mine black too

How bout black spokes with polished outers....possible? Leaving the center caps and wheel nuts silver

Good to see it back together and on the road no matter what colour the wheels.

Looks tell a thousand words..... Do you like the neat, almost sleeper/sweet street look or desire the hardcore " there's definitely more going on here" attention that comes with the dead giveaway of blackedness

Sweet ride...... I do have this distant memory of seeing you belting around in my fresh 1776 complete with stinger, look forward to the return show of faith one day. Ha ha ha, hint hint

Didn't you guys know, black wheels is the new.... well, you know, black. lol

As Daimo said, it's all about the look 'your' after, do you want , my middle name is Nancy, or do you want, look out Holdenman, Mr 351, I got shit here that might just whip your butt.

Is Blackedness a real word???....I like it

Here's the country buggy ones

Thanks Shaun, I remember them now, they are a strong design, I was thinking of what must be the early CB design that was made from some 1/2" (or there abouts) rod.

Sheez Shaun that reminded me I have a set of them...... somewhere

Well worth fitting to every bug IMO

Yes .... Was surprised to find someone had fitted them to my stocka long before I got it