Help! I can't get my front torsion bar and torsion arms back in! I'm replacing the front beam in my '59 and I need to put the parts from the old beam onto the new beam. I've slid the torsion bar leaves through the new beam put in the central retaining screws to hold the bars in place, but I can't get the torsion arms back on because the ends of the bar leaves are not all together in a neat square shape to fit into the square hole in the arm: the leave ends are in kind of random positions. Is there a trick to getting the leaves into the square hole as I slide the arm on? Thanks for any suggestions!

Hi
I just moved them althogether by hand and just slid the arms over
the adjusters were undone or not tight...

the adjusters may be holding them in the incorrect position...

I have heard of people using cable ties.. to hold them together as they place them into the tubes..
and the cable ties stay in there.. lol

I just replaced My torsion bar front end with another one
[ball joint] and the leaves were sticking out and not together
but I just pushed them altogether by hand

cheers

LEE

I think you are right about the central adjuster screws holding them in the wrong place, I'll loosen those and see if it helps. I'll also bind them together with cable tie / masking tape. Thanks for your help!

Thats some awesome help Lee ! Thanks for taking the time and posting pics like this up. This will be a good reference for myself also for future work on my bug.

Just use some cable tie as Lee says, put them on the end and trim the tail of and fit the trailing arm, also leave the centre screw loose.

Doing both those things has HALF helped: I've got the arms on one side on. But when I go around to the other side of the car I can't get the other arms on because even though the bar leaves are still bound into a neat square, it is not central: it is a bit off to one side of the hole in the arm, and this stops the arm from sliding onto the bar. I can poke a flathead screwdriver into the hole and easily lever the bar into a central position, but as soon as I pull the screwdriver out the bar springs back to off-centre.
p.s. the central adjuster screws are completely removed.

I've done it!

The trick was to use a feeler guage as a guide. I went to the side with the arms already on to work out what was the thickest guage I could use without it binding beween bar and arm (0.33mm, which is pretty sturdy fortunately). Then I went to the arms which were not on yet: for each arm I poked the guage into the arm's square hole and past the end of the bar, then tap-tapped on the arm with a hammer and it slid right onto the bar like a dream, and the guage pulled out easily.

Thanks for the input! On to the next task now :-)