TheSamba.com :: View topic

Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:34 pm

i have seen the "rear air shock" question pop up a few times, and i have tried to search them and get solid info without much luck! so, i have done the dirty work and research!

i have a 62 beetle with the stock trans. it is down 2 outer clicks. this is about as low as i feel is practical for me. it has a nice amount of camber. but! i am thinking that sometimes it would be nice to raise it up a tad. maybe to haul a couple of other people, or hit the interstate for an hour or two without worrying about frying the bearings.

it seems to me that a set of air shocks would be the ticket. very low pressure for weedeating, and just a little pressure should raise it up easily and quickly.

so with my forum-searching, i determined that a lot of people use the monroe ma803. this is the part number that monroe lists for a 68 beetle. i ordered up a set and mocked it up. the first problem was that they were way too long, even compressed as far as my 175 pounds could compress them. monroe lists the compressed length as 10.5 inches center to center. there is no way! about 12.5 inches is bottomed out for all practical purposes. the other obvious problem is the "twist" of the mounting eyes. i guess the 68s are twisted a little more than the earlier ones. another minor problem was the overall size of the shock's dust cover. it is huge, and it is very close to touching the axle tube and lower mount area.

sitting at my happy ride height, my mounting holes are roughly 11 5/8 inches apart. i thought about fabricating some kind of extension for the lower mount, but to really get the thing into the center area of its travel, the lower eye would have to be lower than the rim of the wheel. i just decided that it wasn't gonna work! so back to monroe's web site.

the shortest air shock that monroe lists is the ma785. it is listed with a compressed length of 9.5 inches. the upper eye is basically the same as the beetle shock, and the lower one is about 2 inches wide, and has a 5/8 inch diameter hole. this shock is listed for a 76 corvette.

i took the ma803s back and ordered the ma785s. they came today, and they are all good! the upper mount is basically the same as the others. it doesn't have a huge outer dust shield like the ma803, and is a much smaller unit overall. for the lower mount, i made a pair of bushings out of 5/8 diameter steel rod. i cut them 2 inches long, and drilled a 7/16 inch hole through them. (i have a little lathe!). i put them in the 5/8 holes in the shocks and used 7/16 fine-thread bolts 4 inches long to bolt them up. the "twist" of the eyelets are basically a perfect match to the stock mounts.

anyway, they are bolted on, with no stress on anything, nothing twisted up, nothing close to rubbing, and they still have some compression room left with no air pressure in them.

sorry for the long post, but maybe it will save somebody some time and grief! it looks like they will work perfectly for what i was trying to achieve. good luck!

oh, i also read a lot of negative stuff about the quality of the monroes. i was in the auto part business for a number of years, and built street rods and drag cars for most all of my adult life. i have used monroe max-airs on several cars, and have sold a load of them, and i am of the opinion that they are the best air shock on the market. i am thinking that on a lot of our vw applications, they are staying bottomed out, and are very likely in a pretty wicked "twisted-up" mounting position. (when using the ma803s on lowered early beetles). i am thinking that this is probably the reason for the bad press.

my car is still a ways from being driveable, so i am not in a position to do a real road test, but they look like the ma785s are going to answer my needs!

Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:28 pm

This is fascinating... Would these be a better choice for a slammed IRS bug as well? I'd like to get air shocks for my 69 but I was concerned about them being too tall since most people buy them with the intent of lifting their vehicle.

So, am I understanding correctly that the shock has too large of an opening for the stock VW bolt and needs a sleeve?

Thanks!