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BUGZYLA-What is a conversion beam?
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71StandardReduction
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:42 pm    Post subject: BUGZYLA-What is a conversion beam? Reply with quote

Looking around on the bugzyla fabrication website and keep wondering what the conversion beam is.
Having a balljoint car one could only hope that it converts ball joint to link pin, but.... impossible. Sad
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dustymojave
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The site was just telling me that Daryl was on here, so you're likely to get a message from him.

But a conversion beam is a beam made to bolt into a ball joint Bug. It has the correct spacing between the upper and lower tubes to fit. But it is made for king pin arms and spindles to fit into it. So you can bolt a king pin front suspension into a ball joint car without having to cut off and replace the frame head.

It's a product that has been wanted for many years. Tweeds for a while offered conversion arms which were made from ball joint arms with link pin ends, but they told me that they were having trouble finding ball joint core arms to make them from. I built a couple such beams over the decades, but never considered going into production.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
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71StandardReduction
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 9:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hm.. That's really neat. I didn't think you could do so since the spacing of the torsion tubes are different. I have 1" wheel spacers on the front of mine right now. The 2" would work great. Can't find any 2" wider parts on the net, like leaves and tie rods. May be because of the over abundance of 2" narrowing parts available.
Is there anywhere that offers those parts or are they really meant for through rods and rack and pinion?
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dustymojave
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not only are ball joint and king pin beam tube spacing different, the tube diameters are different too. Bugzyla's conversion beams use kingpin tube size so the kingpin trailing arm bushings and arms fit, and are spaced so the fit into the ball joint frame head.

The ball joint tube spacing with kingpin spindles almost completely eliminates the caster change through wheel travel inherent in a kingpin or ball joint stock setup. The VW engineers MUST have had a reason for this caster change, such as perhaps resistance to steering feedback or steering effort change through bump in a stock VW on the street. But with longer travel in offroad use, eliminating that caster change is a good thing.

I believe the 2" wider conversion beam uses link pin torsion leaves cut in 1/2 and re-drilled for inner set screws at the adjusters and that those leaves would be the same as those used for +6" or +8" kingpin beams.

The tie rods are another issue and depend very much on what you do for a steering gear and tie rod ends. I suggest you contact Daryl about them.
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Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
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71StandardReduction
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright that works. I do more of the slow speed woods traveling, so the caster isn't a big concern for me.
Thing spindles and trailing arms seem to be a creature that disappears when I actually have some cash to buy them.
So this with the lift spindles might would be an easier to accomplish upgrade for me.
I also have two king/link front beams in stock form, one with rack and pinion.
And an early bus beam with the lifted spindles, always wondered if they would fit on the type 1 beam setup, but I recon that would be a different thread.
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dustymojave
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I figured that in Louisiana you wouldn't be concerned about high speed desert use of your car. More trees and mud.

With your stock linkpin trailing arms, you could use Tweeds lift combo spindles for ride height and ground clearance.

The Bus spindles are also interesting. There are a couple of issues with installing them on Bug arms.
1. The Bus link pins are larger diameter and won't fit in bug trailing arms.
2. The Bus steering arms are down low on the spindle and this can cause tie rod issues.

The link pin issue is not too difficult. You can turn the bus pins in the area which fits into the arm down on a lathe. Or you could use Bug link pins and make bushings to go in the links with Bus OD and Bug ID and then use Bug link pins. Although length is then an issue as the bus pins are a little longer than Bug pins. Custom pins could be machined out of 4340 bar.

The steering arm issue is more tough to do right.

Back in the late 60s and through the 70s, there was a guy who lived near me who had a Bug he used to take down into Baja for fishing trips and offroading there and in SoCal. This guy had put Bus spindles on his Bug. He cut off the arms from the spindles and heliarc welded them high up on the spindles with a gusset to brace the arm. The arms he used may even have been Bug steering arms.
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Offroading VW based cars since 1965
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Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
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bdkw1
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The other benefit of this conversion is it gets rid of the pro-dive geometry in the front as the BJ beam spacing is about the same as the link pin spread on a link pin spindle.

What the old timers called a parallel beam.
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dustymojave
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bdkw1 wrote:
The other benefit of this conversion is it gets rid of the pro-dive geometry in the front as the BJ beam spacing is about the same as the link pin spread on a link pin spindle.

What the old timers called a parallel beam.


dustymojave wrote:

The ball joint tube spacing with kingpin spindles almost completely eliminates the caster change through wheel travel inherent in a kingpin or ball joint stock setup. The VW engineers MUST have had a reason for this caster change, such as perhaps resistance to steering feedback or steering effort change through bump in a stock VW on the street. But with longer travel in offroad use, eliminating that caster change is a good thing.


Yeah, us ol' fogeys call them "parallel beams" because the trailing arms are very close to parallel. Stock VW setup in either king/link pin or in ball joint will have arms closer together at the beam ends than at the spindle ends. So they are not parallel stock.
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Richard
Offroading VW based cars since 1965
Tech Inspection 1963 - 2012 SCCA/SCORE/HDRA/MORE/MDR +
Retired from building Bajas, Fiberglass Buggies and Rails in the Mojave Desert. Also Sprints & Midgets, Dry Lakes, Road Race cars. All types New and Vintage
SoCalBajas Member
Kicked Cancer's A$$...1st and 2nd round...Fight ain't over yet.
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BugZyla.com
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 11:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dustymojave explained our conversion beams pretty well. I will add a few details. All of our torsion beams come with steering dampner mount and beam to body mounts. We also place the adjusters out on the beam far enough that you can cut 1 set of torsions in half and just redimple them, no need to buy 2 sets of torsions like other beams. We offer the conversion beams in up to 8" narrower and up to 12" wider. We also offer several shock tower lengths from stock, 8" travel, and 10" travel, and can also make them to any custom length you want, as well as without towers. We also offer them for coilover suspension without adjusters and towers made to clear the coilover spring.

We also make conversion front arms in stock and 2.5x1.

And be sure to watch All Girls Garage on the Velocity channel on May 3rd 2014, they will be installing one of our coilover conversion beams on a baja. Cool

If anyone has any question feel free to call the shop 480-545-1400 M-F 8A-5P Mtn Time.
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MetricMuscle
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

BugZyla.com wrote:
Dustymojave explained our conversion beams pretty well. I will add a few details. All of our torsion beams come with steering dampner mount and beam to body mounts. We also place the adjusters out on the beam far enough that you can cut 1 set of torsions in half and just redimple them, no need to buy 2 sets of torsions like other beams. We offer the conversion beams in up to 8" narrower and up to 12" wider. We also offer several shock tower lengths from stock, 8" travel, and 10" travel, and can also make them to any custom length you want, as well as without towers. We also offer them for coilover suspension without adjusters and towers made to clear the coilover spring.

We also make conversion front arms in stock and 2.5x1.

And be sure to watch All Girls Garage on the Velocity channel on May 3rd 2014, they will be installing one of our coilover conversion beams on a baja. Cool

If anyone has any question feel free to call the shop 480-545-1400 M-F 8A-5P Mtn Time.


The Conversion Front Arms, are they designed to fit in a OE ball joint beam?

The Conversion Beam allows us to use regular OE LP arms or aftermarket?

I would not want to try and use Conversion Front Arms in a Conversion Beam, correct?

Just trying to get all of this straight in my head.

What advantages are there to using a Conversion Beam vs. just using the Conversion Front Arms?

Thanks for you patience with the Newb.
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crickifur
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2014 7:53 pm    Post subject: Bugzyla Reply with quote

For those of you that haven't really heard much about this guys shop, I did business directly with him in his shop in Mesa in 2011. I had just finished the preliminary build on my 69 Baja and had him do some minor fabrication for me. The squareback Baja in his profile was still being worked on at the time and he was just picking up his Thing. The guy is a stand up guy and does great quality work. Its always great to support a small business rather than the big guys. The beams are great. Two thumbs up!! I only wished I still lived in Arizona to have him do the cage on my new buggy project.... Sad
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