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King and Link Pin
Cam - August 19th, 2004 at 06:45 PM

Hey everyone,

Just wondering if anyone here has had success with setting up a king and link front end to handle on the front of a beetle for road racing?

If so, how did you find it compared to a balljoint front end, were you able to dial in negative camber, etc..?

Cheers,
Cam


vw54 - August 19th, 2004 at 07:30 PM

your wasting you time trying to use a King n Link front end for racing purposes as Camber and accerman are already preset and only toe in toe out are adjustable

You would have to bend the trailing arms in a press to get Camber then there would be not adjustment in the trailing arm movement.

Better off using a Ball joint front end . You have Discs, camber adjustement, and accerman as well.

You can weld on another front bulkhead to the panb to make it fit would be the easiest method.


Cam - August 19th, 2004 at 08:02 PM

yeah, I've already got an IRS/Balljoint pan going under it. Was just curious to see if anyone had used a K&L and had success with it.


Dasdubber - August 20th, 2004 at 08:59 AM

You may want to shoot Guy from Harding European an email - using the king and link pin setup seemed to go 'alright' in his Targa Tasmania Class-winning beetle. Although b/j is preferred of course, this is a good demonstration that suitable handling can be achieved with k/l pin front ends with correct attention.


vw54 - August 20th, 2004 at 09:10 AM

Yeah i know Guy uses K n L on his car
but there is NO adjustment so set up has to be as factory stock.

If i was building another car i would do IRS rear n Ball joint front end.... best combination the trailing arms can be bent in a press for more camber and adjustment and fine tuning is capable of being done.


Dasdubber - August 20th, 2004 at 09:13 AM

Yeah definitely agree with you Dave re. b/j being preferred for greater level of adjustment.

Just responding to the original question re. "if anyone here has had success with setting up a king and link front end to handle on the front of a beetle for road racing"


nbturbo - August 20th, 2004 at 11:05 AM

Porsche 356's used to handle OK with K&L front ends and the old swing axle back end. The structure of the front end is more solid than a Beetle,but you could easily make some Country Buggy type braces to stiffen up a Beetle.


Quoll - October 4th, 2004 at 04:47 PM

I figured I’d just add what info I have, according to the handling section of the how to hotrod Volkswagen engines book it is possible to get different camber on a K&L front end although I must say it sounds fairly dodgy.
What they say is something like this Negative camber is achieved by a juggling act with the link pin shims. The link pin bushings in the torsion arm links must be sloppy and well worn or the link pins will bind. Just one shim is used on the inside at the top link pin while 9 are used on the out side with the bottom pin getting the reverse that is 9 on the side 1 on the inside. It says that you should insure that the torsion arm link does not touch the spindle carrier except though the shim faces and that slight grinding may be required. According to the book you end up with around 1.5 deg neg camber.

[Edited on 4-10-2004 by Quoll]

[Edited on 4-10-2004 by Quoll]


pete wood - October 5th, 2004 at 06:05 PM

this article has some ways of doing it. not sure how legal they are. they involve heating up the trailing arms and bending them

http://www.geocities.com/deserterownersgroup/Autoxbuggy.pdf 


vw54 - October 5th, 2004 at 07:37 PM

You carnt bend the King n Link trailing arms as there is NO adjustment ... Like a Ball foint front end.


The shims are use to get the trailing arms is carrect alignment allowing them to travel up n down without binding

If you bend teh arms you wont be able to set theshims.... so the arms will bind whne traveling throught the arc there susposed to be in.

Best thing is to forget about performance mods for K N L except foradding Disc brake set ups and lowering the torsion arms