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Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:52 pm

I still laugh at the old guys still racing stock cars complaining that the new chassis' don't 'handle like a '68 GTO' Damn right they don't, newer guys doing modern setups get them to work. There has been a large shift to use big bars and weaker springs.

Baja's have roll cages, if they use anti-roll bars, they wouldn't roll over and we'd just have to change the name to WTF for cages.

runslikeapenguin wrote: joescoolcustoms wrote: Thanks RLP! That one pictured on the link is a lot easier than what I had in mind, and I could mount it to the upper beam tube to get it out of the way, (fab a longer removable link of corse).

Everything on my Baja is new, (except torsions, spring plates so forth) body off restoration (or de-rustification).

Quote: if we are going to go the route of street handling a whole new world opens here. just bare that in mind.

Very fresh in my mind. In 2000 I sold my '66 GTO that I set up for SCCA. 1 1/2 inch tubular sway bars, 64 spindles modified for large negative camber, boxed everything to reduce flex, bare brakes F&R, so forth...

The Baja will not be that serious of a streeter, but now my wife and I owe nothing and going with a street baja saves any car payment. Linked sway bars will make it a little more safe on the street.

you got a 66 GTO to handle? who are you Jesus? :lol:

before you go through all the sway bar stuff try a set of caster shims on the beam. i find that they make a bug feel like it has power steering at speed and ive taken a pretty much stock suspension bug over 100 with a set on and it stayed right on course.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:55 pm

also, just something im going to bring up is the fact that we have independent suspension not live axle set ups thus greatly reducing the need for a sway bar.
im not going to go into detail but if you pay attention the next time you look at a T truck or a CORR truck you will notice a sway bar on the rear but not on the front, and if you look at the little T carts the kids race, they have a sway bar, but only on the back. why not on the front to?

just some food for though, hungry minds will now go out to seek the answer . . :lol:

Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:56 pm

Quote: you got a 66 GTO to handle? who are you Jesus?

I am certianly not the man, but yes, I did and a lot of others have gotten the A, F and G body GM cars to handle quit well. My "66 GTO would post quicker times than any factory 5.0 mustang on the track (SCCA Style). I got really tired of the Pontiac purist's nagging about "Doing that" to a real GTO.

I agree, the caster shims make a hugh differance in a torsion VW. I stumbled across my first set in 1981 and have been on every VW I have owned since except for one rail buggy. If you really want to get picky on them, put a little negative camber on the front alignment. In 1985 I put a 3/4 sway on the front of a '73 standard and a 1/2 or 5/8 on the rear and WOW, that would hang a curve until the tires let go.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 8:03 pm

Quote: if you look at the little T carts the kids race, they have a sway bar, but only on the back. why not on the front to?

My cart had a sway on the rear only, but the front frame was cut and a tempered aluminum I beam inserted that could be twisted for the "I" to lay horizontal or verticle. This allowed the frame to become the sway bar up front and be easliy tuned for each track condition. With the same frame, I ran dirt and asphalt.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 8:20 pm

joescoolcustoms wrote: Quote: if you look at the little T carts the kids race, they have a sway bar, but only on the back. why not on the front to?

My cart had a sway on the rear only, but the front frame was cut and a tempered aluminum I beam inserted that could be twisted for the "I" to lay horizontal or verticle. This allowed the frame to become the sway bar up front and be easliy tuned for each track condition. With the same frame, I ran dirt and asphalt.

:-k

not sure i understand what your describing, but you did get very very close to the point i was making.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 8:27 pm

Quote: not sure i understand what your describing,

I am describing a cart that I had raced (go cart style) that had a variable rate frame in the front that could be adjusted from zero sway effect to full on sway effect.

Just like my Baja sway bar idea. I will pull off the asphalt, remove two pins and remove one sway link, then go off-roading with a fullly independant suspension. Once back to the asphalt, install the one sway link and two pins, then go with a full sway bar for street driving. Fully adjustable front sway system. Expecially if I can use the sway bar you gave me a link to that allows for tuning by chooseing the differant holes in the end of the sway bar.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 8:32 pm

joescoolcustoms wrote: Quote: not sure i understand what your describing,

I am describing a cart that I had raced (go cart style) that had a variable rate frame in the front that could be adjusted from zero sway effect to full on sway effect.

Just like my Baja sway bar idea. I will pull off the asphalt, remove two pins and remove one sway link, then go off-roading with a fullly independant suspension. Once back to the asphalt, install the one sway link and two pins, then go with a full sway bar for street driving. Fully adjustable front sway system. Expecially if I can use the sway bar you gave me a link to that allows for tuning by chooseing the differant holes in the end of the sway bar.

yeah im was talking about Trophy carts for desert racing. but if you have a picture of the front of that thing i would like to see it.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:30 pm

Quote: yeah im was talking about Trophy carts for desert racing. but if you have a picture of the front of that thing i would like to see it

Did not know there was such a thing. Maybe if we had a desert on the east side.

I would love to have a picture also. The only one I have is me sitting on the cart, in the dirt on a track, helmet and fire suit in Southern West Virginia. Cannot see the frame in it. Got it from my brother-in-law when he upgraded. Ran the pee out of it that summer until it kicked the rod out at 11,000 rpm. I did not have the money then to buy another $ 5,000 1 cylinder engine. There ended my Kart racing days.

I am thinking it was a Margay Kart frame, (raced it in '96 and I think the frame was a '94). I also think it may have been called a torsion suspension. I do know it was adapted to the rear suspension some years later.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:42 pm

joescoolcustoms wrote: Quote: yeah im was talking about Trophy carts for desert racing. but if you have a picture of the front of that thing i would like to see it

Did not know there was such a thing. Maybe if we had a desert on the east side.

I would love to have a picture also. The only one I have is me sitting on the cart, in the dirt on a track, helmet and fire suit in Southern West Virginia. Cannot see the frame in it. Got it from my brother-in-law when he upgraded. Ran the pee out of it that summer until it kicked the rod out at 11,000 rpm. I did not have the money then to buy another $ 5,000 1 cylinder engine. There ended my Kart racing days.

I am thinking it was a Margay Kart frame, (raced it in '96 and I think the frame was a '94). I also think it may have been called a torsion suspension. I do know it was adapted to the rear suspension some years later.

ok nevermind we're talking about apples and oranges here.

this is what im talking about.

a whole playlist if you like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl_FXTNbTA4&fea...p;index=12

Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:45 pm

Don't forget trophy trucks are also driven off road whereas other vehicles with a front sway bar are driven onroad. The reason for the disconnect is to get the free travel offroad, and the stability onroad. You drive that trophy truck on road without the sway bar, and its not gonna be as stellar as it was when it was jumping those sick dirt jumps.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:38 pm

Cuog wrote: Don't forget trophy trucks are also driven off road whereas other vehicles with a front sway bar are driven onroad. The reason for the disconnect is to get the free travel offroad, and the stability onroad. You drive that trophy truck on road without the sway bar, and its not gonna be as stellar as it was when it was jumping those sick dirt jumps.

well that's my point, they are driven off road and they have a sway bar. why? same for the trophy carts? they both have sway bars on the rear and not the front, the live axle suspension has a sway bar but the independent front does not. why do all the stadium buggies that have VW style 4 wheel independent suspension not run sway bars? they run the same course.

also the VW's sway bar does not limit the travel of the front end, the reason you want to remove it is because it puts stress on the bottom ball joints and it makes the front end want to function less like like independent front suspension when off roading.

if you have a baja with no sway bar on the front and its acting erratic on the road and it feels like a safety hazard either your front end is stock and worn or there is something else wrong. a sway bar will help remedy this because of the nature of its design but will basically be masking the problem. this is my point, in modifying the front end of a bug for even slight off road use you completley do away with the need for the stock sway bar, if your front end is diving considerably when you turn and it makes the car want to tip over either your shocks are totally gone or your torsions have no preload, or both.

so in short if your planning on using your baja on the street most of the time and have no plans for working on the front end in any way then keep the sway bar on. there is no reason to take it off.
but if your going to take your car off road and you plan on doing the usual off road suspension mods and you plan on replacing all the old used and typically beaten to hell front end parts take the sway bar off and don't worry about it. im confident if you did all of that to your car you would feel no need for the sway bar.

i could get a hell of a lot more technical here but a long and lengthy explanation was what i was trying to avoid.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:54 pm

I get and have gotten your point RLP, all along. I do not think you are getting the thread title point.

Quote: puts stress on the bottom ball joints

I do not see this in the standard set up. Besides, I was not going to connect it to my bottom trailing arms. I am going to connect it to my top trailing arms. And if a sway bar breaks a ball joint, it will not last very long off-road anyway, sway bar or not.

Quote: either your front end is stock and worn or there is something else wrong

My front is all new except the trailing arms and metal beam. The wrong is the high center of gravity over stock ride height because of the tall tires and upward adjusted suspension. Any diving on the street makes that issue worse.

So, according to the thread title, in 30 seconds, my front sway bar will be disconected when I am off-road, like the stadium buggies and T-Trucks you cite. But in 30 seconds, I can have it connected for on-road. I still do not understand your problem with that concept.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:05 pm

joescoolcustoms wrote: I get and have gotten your point RLP, all along. I do not think you are getting the thread title point.

Quote: puts stress on the bottom ball joints

I do not see this in the standard set up. Besides, I was not going to connect it to my bottom trailing arms. I am going to connect it to my top trailing arms. And if a sway bar breaks a ball joint, it will not last very long off-road anyway, sway bar or not.

Quote: either your front end is stock and worn or there is something else wrong

My front is all new except the trailing arms and metal beam. The wrong is the high center of gravity over stock ride height because of the tall tires and upward adjusted suspension. Any diving on the street makes that issue worse.

So, according to the thread title, in 30 seconds, my front sway bar will be disconected when I am off-road, like the stadium buggies and T-Trucks you cite. But in 30 seconds, I can have it connected for on-road. I still do not understand your problem with that concept.

if you really have an all new front end and its turned up Via adjusters or a cut and turn which will preload the torsion bars upping the stiffness of the suspension, then there should be no need for the sway bar. have you been experiencing problems with the front end? what shocks are you running? have you been driving the car or are you just predicting problems?

because i would even doubt the effectiveness of a 22mm sway bar on transferring the lateral load change to the other side of the suspension with the front end turned up and a decent shock installed.

like i mentioned earlier my first baja had the sway bar taken off and was completley stock except for a set of new shocks and i made crazy hard turns all the time without any front dipping at all.

Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:16 pm

Quote: I don’t know if such an animal exists and I cant find any old threads on the subject. I know it wouldn’t be as clean as on the ones for wranglers, scouts, etc. I just don’t like driving w/out a sway bar on the road and I hate the idea of removing/installing it every time I go off road.

That is the opening quote. We want to be able to connect it quickly and disconnect it quickly. What is wrong with that? Please explain that one fact.

If I want to buy a 019 cast iron distributor, will you oppose that too because you run something else?

Quote: have you been driving the car or are you just predicting problems?

Both. The last Baja I built did not have a sway bar and I felt it needed one. This Baja will have one. I will be able to connect/disconnect it in 30 seconds and tell wether it makes a differance on road or not. I will report if my idea of how to mount the sway bar works and functions either way, sucks, works or waste of time.

If you do not want to run a sway bar on your baja, I will not tell you you need to. That is up to you.

Why not spend your energy on this thread on helping us figure out the best way to mount the idea. You have a vast off-road and fab experiance, we could use that instead. We may just stumble onto something that works better than the standard mouse trap.

Sat Feb 14, 2009 12:33 am

joescoolcustoms wrote: Quote: I don’t know if such an animal exists and I cant find any old threads on the subject. I know it wouldn’t be as clean as on the ones for wranglers, scouts, etc. I just don’t like driving w/out a sway bar on the road and I hate the idea of removing/installing it every time I go off road.

That is the opening quote. We want to be able to connect it quickly and disconnect it quickly. What is wrong with that? Please explain that one fact.

If I want to buy a 019 cast iron distributor, will you oppose that too because you run something else?

Quote: have you been driving the car or are you just predicting problems?

Both. The last Baja I built did not have a sway bar and I felt it needed one. This Baja will have one. I will be able to connect/disconnect it in 30 seconds and tell wether it makes a differance on road or not. I will report if my idea of how to mount the sway bar works and functions either way, sucks, works or waste of time.

If you do not want to run a sway bar on your baja, I will not tell you you need to. That is up to you.

Why not spend your energy on this thread on helping us figure out the best way to mount the idea. You have a vast off-road and fab experiance, we could use that instead. We may just stumble onto something that works better than the standard mouse trap.

Im trying to approach this from the most technical non bias point of view that i can. it really has nothing to do with my personal preference to sway bars (as i mentioned im actually a big fan of them in most cases) but to the uselessness of them when the front end is modified in the typical off road fashion.
like the empi coil overs :lol: i get shit for being so opposed to them. im not opposed to them because of preference (well kind of) but because of how completley useless they are and because of the poor design of an inferior product that fools the noobs into thinking they are something other than what they really are.

people were mentioning in this thread they were looking for a quick disconnect sway bar like they sell for Wranglers and Scouts and other vehicles that have a solid live axle front and back. these vehicles are completley different animals than our VW's. just like we cant run block lifts or the like they cant ditch their sway bars without some seriously adverse handling effects.

sway bars were originally implemented on cars because they allowed for a softer spring rate to be used to allow for a nice riding car that could still corner decently without adverse amounts of lateral load transfer to the outside wheel via body roll.

so if your going to make a car handle from a performance point of view you can run huge sway bars with a stock spring which will allow for you to keep the front and or rear of a car tight and hugging the turn without having to run bone rattling suspension. you can also get the same effect however by just upping the spring rate substantially. this will prevent body roll just like the sway bar will but without the positive ride characteristics the sway bar allows. in fact a super hard spring rate can be counter effective if the suspension does not react to road hazards and you end up lifting a wheel off of the ground or bouncing the car up to where traction is reduced possibly causing any number of problems. this is why Formula cars don't run sway bars. the tracks the run on are for the most part completley flat and have just about a perfect road surface. so they can run massive spring rates over sway bars because for one they don't have enough travel to worry about any kind of ride quality let alone body roll or suspension dive and two because the only reason they run suspension at all is because its works to their advantage by allowing a dynamic change of ride height over variable speeds by focusing on channeling the air around them into massive amounts of down force.

now! to get back on track from that rabbit trail to off topic land.

with our VW's when we modify the front end for off road use we typically do 2 things.

1. either cut and turn the front or install adjusters. this is what makes your front end stiff, when setting the pre load it pretty much ups the spring rate of the suspension. giving us ride height and making the front end resistant to bottoming out.

2. install a decent gas charged shock. this helps control the now stiffer spring rate which will have a tendency to bounce now that its preloaded. and to allow for smoother suspension cycling while driving under harsher conditions. not to mention cheap shocks have fade, wear out quickly, are not rebuildable, have crappy valving that cant be changed and are physically weaker.

both of these things are steps in the direction of making the sway bar useless. not to mention when the stock one is kept on a baja it has a tendency to put pressure on the bottom ball joints causing un-due fatigue. but because because when you bump up the spring rate and the load it takes to compress the suspension becomes more than the sway bar can transfer to the other side it becomes useless.

so even if you were to get a sway bar that could effectively transfer the load from one side to the other with a turned up front end and a good gas charged shock, and its anchored to the frame/ beam well enough to prevent the bar from just warping; will a bug have enough weight/wheel traction to compress the suspension enough to need the sway bar? its possible but not likely. and here is the jist of my point.

standard off road mods completley do away with the need for a stock sway bar. and it would take a considerably larger one to be effective with the now considerably stiffer suspension. and if you are running the expensive aftermarket kit with the largest sway bar i know of being sold (22mm) my question for you would be.

what the hell are you planning on doing with this baja on the road that would have you worried about the lack of a sway bar? if your compressing a cut and turned beam paired up with a bilstein shock or something equivalent to the point of dangerous body roll and possible loss of traction i would say your involved in the wrong motor sport. :lol:

Sat Feb 14, 2009 6:51 am

RLP, my Baja will not be built like a left coast Baja. The tires will only leave the ground for service on a jack. It will not travel faster than 10 mph when off-road because I do not want to scratch my paint, break parts and the off-road places in WV do not afford any speed.

My build will have a show quality paint job.
It will have a 2332 aluminum Auto Lina case, flanged bugpack crank, Wiseco pistons, 5.7 H-Beam rods. (rotating assymbly in the machine shop now getting balanced and the case cut for the flange seal)
My swing tranny has SAW race axles, Super Diff and Pro-ringed second gear with steel shift forks.
The suspension will be set at mid height rear and front. (swing rear set to zero camber at ride height and then front adjusted to make pan level)
I have new 31X10.50 rear and 30 inch tall for the front all mounted on aluminum slots.
Body lift for leg room and to help clear tires.

My VW will not go fast in the sand, (only sand we have is used in concrete here). It will not get jumped. It will not get stadium raced.

My VW will get drag raced. My VW will get put in car shows. It will get about 600 miles per week on the interstates and highways of WV, OH and KY. My VW will go on logging trails, hill climbs and strip mines. I will not be putting it into mud because I do not like to clean mud off my cars.

So why build a Baja style VW? For the same reason I painted my truck blue, put all my garage electric in metal conduit, wear Georgia boots, used # 8 rebar on 12 inch centers in my driveway and garage floor, put a metal roof on my house, drink Mountian Dew, Listen to rock music, lifted my golf cart and put a jeep wrangler body on it, wear a ball cap and other things. Because I want to and we have the freedom of choice.

I will put a reverse mounted sway bar on my Baja picking up the upper trailing arms with one quick disconnect link. I like to fab new things, sometimes what others do not try or cannot because they may lack the skills to do it. Why? Because I want to. Again, I will post pictures and report how it works.

Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:17 am

joescoolcustoms thanks for picking up the flag on this one.

i am just thinking aloud on this... how high above the beam do think you will have to be to prevent interaction between the arms and the sway bar? is there enough space halfway between the bottom of the trunk and the top of the control arms travel to make it work? do you think that will require adjusting the stock gas tank location? do you think that it could be tied in to the beam unistrut style (ubolts and tubing not actual unistrut and ridgid clamps) sorry "to the plumber everything looks like pipe". Would all of this require reshaping the fender wells to clearance the bar? I guess that is another advantage of the body lift, by the way how much lift?

thanks

layne

Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:30 am

](*,) :lol:

you should have mentioned your baja is going to be a "baja looker" in the first place. if your going to be terrorizing the streets and leaving the dirt alone and your only plans for the front end is to even it out with the rear (which you can probably do with just tires) then you have every reason to run a sway bar. but on the flip side you have absolutely no reason to remove it. seriously run that aftermarket bar and forget about it. if you have no dreams of wild off road action nothings going break on the front end and the sway bars not going to limit you in any way.

Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:46 am

layne8 wrote: joescoolcustoms thanks for picking up the flag on this one.

i am just thinking aloud on this... how high above the beam do think you will have to be to prevent interaction between the arms and the sway bar? is there enough space halfway between the bottom of the trunk and the top of the control arms travel to make it work? do you think that will require adjusting the stock gas tank location? do you think that it could be tied in to the beam unistrut style (ubolts and tubing not actual unistrut and ridgid clamps) sorry "to the plumber everything looks like pipe". Would all of this require reshaping the fender wells to clearance the bar? I guess that is another advantage of the body lift, by the way how much lift?

thanks

layne

in the words of Dusty Mojave
K.I.S.S keep it simple stupid.

instead of worrying about the sway bar clearing the arms, running a sway bar through the trunk area, and reshaping fender wells you should just take the front end off or find another one and do the standard off road mods and ditch the need for one. and if your going to just stay on the road like Joescool then just leave the stock one on there and stop worrying about having to take it off. seriously just because your cars cut like a baja doesn't make it an off road car. removing the sway bar is not something you have to do when you cut your car for the fiberglass kit its something you do when you actually modify your suspension for off road.

your weak link is your asking this question here in the off road forum, where we are assuming your in here looking to modify your VW for off roading, for jumping it, for duneing, for the whoops. if your not you have to make sure you specify that.

Sat Feb 14, 2009 3:23 pm

You know what happens when you assume...

This will see a 90/10 mix of on road off road I mentioned on another thread that this will be written off of my taxes as a business expense for advertising. To justify the expense it needs to be driven in town, and often. To answer why not make this a Baja looker and get another to be the serious off roader I have two reasons. One a Baja looker is as useless as teats on a bull. The other is cash.

I could have clarified that point but the question was never asked and it has no bearing on my question or its answer.

I did not take the question to an on road forum because I expect them to have never considered disabling a sway bar temporarily, why would they?

The driving conditions I see regularly are very different than what you see. My commute to work is on ice 3-4 months a year, to get to my in-laws ranch, 45 min away, I cross 20 miles of open range (rogue cow/deer/badger/rock chuck avoidance at 65, try it some time), rural/residential streets where I live have 50 mph speed limits and the children playing in their front yards are no more carful than the ones in your neighborhood. I don't plan on doing a double lane change at 50 but if I need to I want that ability. Even if a sway bar only adds marginally to my, your, and everyone else’s safety it is worth the effort in my opinion.

I have purposely not talked about physics or where I disagree with the arguments made against a sway bar. Suffice it to say I am not ignorant of forces and vector analysis. When I get in over my head with them I am related to more P.E.’s than you can shake a stick at.

My dad was forced to crash land a C-130 above the Arctic Circle by a mechanical failure. 5 people lost their lives in the incident he flew for 15 more years but to this day he can’t talk about it. (What I know came from an old news clipping I found in the bottom of a box) Why would I want to risk living through the pain, guilt, and what if’s if I can reasonably do more to avoid it?

My needs and wants are dictating a vehicle that is probably revolting to a purist but a purist won’t be driving it.

as for what type of offroading I will be doing here's a link to pics of the area http://www.duneratt.com/gallerymenu.php

Sorry for the rant and thanks for the link to aircooled.net