I don't just mean lowered beams and shocks.

Does anyone in aust have a properly designed kit with shocks, anti-roll bars and urathane bits for beetles or type threes?

Just looked up whiteline but they only do golfs.

who set your car up?

Does v-force do kits?

It just kind of surprises me, coz it's not like people haven't been racing or hotting beetles up. There must be someone with a decent kit.

How much neg camber can you get from camber eccentrics?

And how much camber did you have in the front before you re-adjusted it?

its probabaly better to talk to people and find what setup they run.

Also try and find a good suspension shop (or someone like Vforce) as i know a few places don't list vw parts (eg kings don't list super springs) but if you talk to the right person they normally still have teh settins and specs and can make up for you.

I set up my car under the guidance of Jeff Unwin when Hell Bug was around.

I went for the hill climb set up which was;
Konis all round
Adjustable whiteline street bars
Single avis adjuster front beam
Tyre 3 or sway-away rear springs
Chassis stiffeners from the front beam to the front bulk head
Bent upper front trailing arms
Camber eccentrics
Castor shims
Neolothane diagonal arm inner bushes
Stock trailing arm bushes

With all this the car would understeer too much. I played around with the height and it got better.

Then I borrowed Greg Ward's twin adjuster beam and things improved.

Then I went for big 27mm rear springs and it turned in better.

Then I went for wider fuchs rims and it turned in well but developed mid corner understeer.

From that point Richard from V Force started to give me his theories and lend me a few bits to try out. That's when the car started to get less eveil.

I put a stock type front bar on and it turned into a sprint car. I don't think the whitelind adjustable front bar worked properly. I had to do so much work to the rear of the car to make it turn. So with all the work on the rear to make it turn when I put the stock type thicker bar on it would go sideways with out much warning. Then I lowered the rear and the handling improved but it would light up the inside rears around Oran Park south.

Next I changed to a lighter rear bar and that solved the inside rear wheel spin and the snap oversteer.

Next I started to widen the front track which is one thing Richard swears by. The priciple is that you can drive faster in a car that you are confident in. By that I mean no snap oversteer.

After speaking to one of the guys I work with at Yokohama I started to learn a thing or two about car set up. Have you ever noticed how stiff lowered beam cars are? That's bad for the track. With a stiff front end and the car more or less riding on the koni bump stop the tyres would only heat up half a pound at wakefield after a couple of laps. The were'nt working and weren't heating up. I began cutting the bump stops and playing with the adjusters to soften the front. I eventually got the fronts working and increasing by up to 5 pounds after a run. The car turned a lot better too.

Then when I pulled the front beam out to give it back to Greg I noticed I'd been bottoming out the ball joints.

I also used the pyro and figured out that the outside of the front tyres was up to 5 degrees hotter than the centre meaning that the car needed more than 2 1/4 degrees negative camber.

So the new front end should be soft and low with lots of camber.

The current set up is now:
Small front and rear non adjustable sway bars
Koni shocks
Twin front adjusters set in parallel at the stock height
CB drop spindles
2 sets of castor shims
27mm rear bars
New ball joints
Bent upper front arms

I'm not saying that this is better than the original set up. Its' just better suited to the long and fast corners on race tracks as opposed to the short and narrow hill climb circuits that the car was originally set up for.

My advice is:
1. drive the car and figure out what it does and what you want it to do
2. Renew all the worn parts
3. Get the springs right. The porsche guys think there should be twice the spring pressure at the front than at the back.
4. Make sure you've got suspension travel and that your car soaks up bumps. Make sure you can hold a line on the corners on the old pacific hwy and that bumps are'nt causing you to do steering corrections.
5. Start with the stock front bar and add a small rear one. See how it goes.
6. If it's close tune the car with shocks and wheel alignment settings including track adjustments.

From that point you can go nuts by corner weighting the car and stiffening it with a roll cage. I haven't got this far... yet.


Apart from that it depends on driving style. If I had the skills I'd steer the car from the rear. I can feel that's what the car wants some times. But I don't have the skills and I'd like to keep it neat, clean and reasonably safe. After all I've got to pull the numbers off, load the tools and drive the thing home at the end of the day. Not only that I don't want to rely on crash protection from 1956.

I hope that helps somebody. Want a kit? After all that I could make you up one with all my spares (kidding).

CYA CT

ta,

that's a good place to start thinking about stuff anyway.

Yep we got the gear give V-Force a call on 9743 1247 or 0408 991 247

alex

CT
Thanks for all the info, that will help me out as well.
Cheers
SAS