Front Torsion Bars Sand Rail

[Dan_Lockwood]

Hi again!

Just working on the sand rail and got to thinking about how light the frontend is on this thing. Maybe 250# at best on the front wheels.

I've watched tons of videos for off road and dune running of sand rail type buggies and unless they've taken out the torsion bars and running coilovers, I don't see much travel going on with the front wheels.

Since the two front torsion bar sets are designed for a FULL bodied VW, has anyone taken out one set of bars and run with just one torsion bar set?

I did a couple searches and couldn't quickly find any reference to such a mod.

I'm guessing that if you took one set out, the bottom set, you would drill the end caps of the bottom arms and run a rod through with the threaded locking collars at each end like with coilovers???

Any thoughts or experiences with this mod?

Thanks in advance!

Dan

[Dale M.]

Pretty common practice on super light front ends to remove one set of torsion bars and run a through rod to keep trailing arms in the tube where the bars are removed....

Only time you may want to consider coilovers are if both sets of torsion bars are removed and you need the adjustability of coilovers....

Also if going coilovers consider bracing the shock towers, they were designed for the dampening action of shocks not for the unsprung weight of spindle/drums/wheel/tire...
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“Fear The Government That Wants To Take Your Guns" - Thomas Jefferson.

"Kellison Sand Piper Roadster" For Street & Show.
"Joe Pody Sandrover" Buggy with 2180 for Autocross (Sold)
============================================================
All suggestions and advice are purely my own opinion. You are free to ignore them if you wish ...

[Dan_Lockwood]

Thanks for the reply.

I have the red urethane arm bushings that I will be using upon reassembly. As long as the torsion bar is complete, I should have not issues with the grub screws holding the arms in place.

I'll get a long 1/2" rod and thread the ends and use 1/2" NF split locking collars to retain the upper arms in place. I'm thinking that I need to have something in the center of the rod as an anti-rattle spacer. Could be a piece of fuel line siliconed to the rod in the center.

Or, what about using shoulder bushings on the arm end center holes and just put in a longer grub screw in the middle to hold the through rod solid and centered. Then let the rod just spin a bit in the bushings on the ends of the arms. Thoughts?

If I ever do go to coilovers up front, I would probably go with a twin A arm setup and remove the bean altogether. But that's for another time, maybe never if this thing rides halfway decent.

Thanks again for the information!

Dan

[beeniebug]

I replaced the bottom torsion bars with a 5/8" diameter thru-rod, threaded on the ends with threaded locking collars. Also cut the upper tube and welded in an adjuster. Night and day difference in ride, both on and off-road. On washboard or similar surface it's amazing how much difference in suspension action and ride. Highly recommend it.
There are pics of my rail somewhere here, but I haven't looked at them lately, and can't remember if any of them were taken after the change.


Edit; I just checked and I do have pics. Not that it's hard to imagine without a pic. You can click on my user-name and see the pics.
Stan

[67rustavenger]

[WaterBuggy_24]

I removed the upper torsion bar on my link pin suspension. It was way to stiff as I couldn't compress the front down at with al my weight. It seemed completely ridged. I'm still restoring my buggy so we will see soon. I'm glad I'm not the only one who did this.
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They will not float indefinitely!

[Dan_Lockwood]

Thanks all for the replies and suggestions.

I think I'll remove my lower as well, not the upper. Adding the select-a-drop on the top beam seems to be a good idea!

I'll do this before I put it all back together.

Beeniebug, I see you also have the red urethane sleave in your beams. What did you grease them with? Are they squeaky or quiet?

Nice looking buggy for sure!

Dan

[Dan_Lockwood]

Stan,

I see after blowing up your picture, that you have grease zerks in the beams. Did you cut holes in the red sleaves in the center area of each sleave?

I've heard that sometimes the urethane sleaves and the torsion donuts in the IRS tend to squeak a lot. If you do grease your front beams, what type of grease do you use and how often do you grease them?

Thanks, Dan

[beeniebug]

Dan,
The red urethane was there when I bought the buggy. I was thinking they were just seals, with the original bearings in place, but now you've got me wondering! I don't think I've had them apart, but I really can't say for sure. I've got CRS ( can't remember shit ).
They don't sqeak, or my half-deaf ears can't hear it if they do. Buggy also had urethane rear torsion bushings when I got it, and I could hear them sqeaking.
They were also quite worn, and I could hear bumping when on rough stuff.
I replaced them with OEM style rubber, no more sqeaking or bumping.
I think I greased the front with lucas red grease.
Thanks, it is a nice looking buggy, but I can't take credit for that, I bought it. Been working on it more or less since I've had it. Latest change is an automotive glass windshield and some body panels. If I ever get through I'll put up a post with more pics.

Stan

[Dan_Lockwood]

Stan,

The new auto glass windshield install, how are you attaching the glass to the frame hoop?

Mine had an aluminium small angle pop rivetted into the inner portion of the main frame tubes. Then they used the pull in with the bead seal strip rubber gasket.

I've seen some pictures of guys using the beading glue that windshield companies use and just set it in that inside a perimeter edge of some sort.

With that in mind, "IF" a person's front windshield hoop was totally flat, no warped twists etc, could one just bead up on the crown of the tubing and set the glass onto that without any main channel framing? Now that I've said that, probably not a good idea, even if it would stay put. Driving through the woods and hitting the edge of the glass could crack it I suppose...

My old original front windshield hoop was two tubes upright, one per side of course, continuing up and over to the rear hoop. Then cross tubes were welded in giving it square'ish corners. I have a new JD2 Model 32 tubing bender all setup waiting to get started on all my new mid-rear loop and all of the overhead tube loops etc. I have their 4.5" radius die. I used a 9" paint can lid and it traced the tight bends on the centerline of the rear hoop over the motor area. I took a wild stab that the factory used 4.5" radius dies.

But my new windshield hoop will be an upright on each side going over the top and back down the other side with the 4.5" radius upper corners. I'm thinking about just welding in a 3/4" wide 1/8" thick flat land all around the windshield seating area. I'll probably glue in the glass as it's a LOT cleaner look and should be just as strong, while still giving maybe just a tad of flexibility in the process.

Let us know how the glass install goes and how you did it...

Thanks, Dan

[beeniebug]

Maybe this will show how it's mounted. Glass is glued into the frame from the back side by the auto- glass guy, before I mounted it to the buggy. Four tabs welded onto the uprights, drilled and tapped for 1/4-20 screws, clearance holes in the frame. Had to open the clearance holes to about .030 over due to tabs drawing a bit from welding.

[liquidrush]

I know it's a little off subject but I did my windshield in a similar fashion. I made and fitted my frame from angle, made bends at the tops to match the tube frame and also did the mounting tabs. Once fitted and installed I cut a cardboard template and took that to the glass shop. They made me a piece of laminated safety glass and I was lucky because it dropped right on. I did the final install with 3M windshield urethane and it's in there. It worked out very well and is so much better than plastic. I went through 4 or 5 of those darn things over the years.

[iconic_schlieper]

nice wiring.... looks very good to me

[BFB]

I never have understood a windshield in a rail, cant imagine trying to drive with crap all over the glass and no wipers ( on that note, if you have a windshield the state requires you to have wipers here and thats just too much work and b.s. on a rail. If i wanted all that it’d be a Baja bug ) not to mention how many guys ive seen run regular glass or plexi instead of safety glass.
I have some tube mounts that have bolt holes on the face and zip tie around the tubing so you could bolt them to a piece of glass or lexan and zip tie to the front “windshield” tubes. I like the idea as it’d make it easy to take off & on and allows things to flex. I did have a windshield in one of my first buggys, broke the first ditch i drove through…
Dan, yes you can just urethane glass in between the tubes. I had a buggy i rebuilt that was done that way, the glass was cut just a little bigger than the inside dimensions of the windshield frame but not some big as it sat on the tube centers ( if that makes sense ) this way it recessed into the windshield opening some but didnt fall through. Probably take a pretty good glass guy to do it
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"You are the Engineer and the Mechanic.  
Build it your way not the way someone else does it. Their way might not work for you." - clonebug
An interesting thing happens in forums where everyone starts parroting the same thing and "common knowledge" takes over.
“ The monkey see monkey do mentality seems to run deep in VW people. "Gene Berg said it was so 30 years ago so thats the way it is" “ - bdkw1

[PhillipM]

[Dan_Lockwood]

Sorry for bringing up this old post of mine, but I'm at the point right now of working on the front beams.

I plan on removing the lower torsion bars and putting in a ride height device like on Stan's blue bomber...

I see that his is mounted, welded in, with the adjuster bolt in the direction that would "raise" the front end, or put more tension on the top torsion bars.

I'm thinking that's what I should do too. But where do you start with the "home" position of the adjuster? Do you set the adjuster all the way to the stop and then weld it in at the original inner torsion mount position?

If you remove one set of torsion bars, will one set be enough without any tweaking to do the job? I know, each sand rail is different, and each need a bit different spring rate. I'm "assuming" that I won't need to lower the front end with just one set of torsion bars in the upper beam. So, having the adjuster able to increase the lift somewhat, would be the direction to weld it in. I have no experience whether the stock rotational position of the top beam center torsion bar mount would be the rotational position to weld in the adjuster.

I know that I jumped around a bit, it makes sense in my mind, but may be hard for someone else to decipher my thoughts...

Thanks, Dan

[DHale_510]

How much down travel vs up travel do you want? A stock car is about equal, but maybe you want a 1/4 to 3/4 ratio here, your call.
Set the car down on the tires and jack it around to get this number. Likely you have about 8" total travel so 2" compression would give you the point to weld the center piece.
Those big heavy front tires are going to want about 5psi, and that will likely be most of your front spring rate. The final spring rate will be a combination of the spring [maybe 20#/"] and the tire rate [similar at 5psi], maybe 10#/".
With stock dual springs [40#/"] and those tires, maybe 20#/". With about 50# per corner buggy weight and 6" of travel, you can land most of the buggy on the front end, not so much with half that.
Dennis

[Dan_Lockwood]

[beeniebug]

Dan,
You're at the point where I should have done a little less drinking and a little more thinking! I actually got my adjuster rotated a few degrees farther forward than I wish I had. Meaning, I can lower the front-end more than I can raise it. Looks pretty cool lowered for street driving, but it rides worse due to the trailing arm angle being rotated past parallel with the ground.
Hitting potholes or ditches across the road, where both wheels hit at the same time is noticeably rougher than when the adjuster is in lifted position, which lets the trailing arms rotate back and then up when hitting the same holes/ditches. I usually keep it raised to the max all the time now, because of the better ride. I'm not looking for the lowered look anyway.
If you measure your resting ride-height as is, then take out the lower torsion-pack, lower the rail off the jack and bounce on it a couple times and measure again, that will show you where you are and give you an idea of how much to rotate the adjuster when you weld it in, so that it puts you where you want to be. I didn't do that, so I'm a bit lower than I'd like to be.
I could cut the adjuster and rotate it more but I'll prolly leave it be. I don't do any really rough off-roading anyhow. We did put quite a few miles on it in Baha last spring and never had any issues, but 2 or 3 more inches clearance would have been nice.
I guess a much less wordy explanation would be "measure twice, weld once".
Good luck.
Stan

[Dan_Lockwood]

Stan,

Unfortunately, I've never been able to drive this sand rail since I purchased it. I tore it apart and been going strong ever since.

I'm just forward thinking and thought that now is the ideal time to do the front beams. They are ball joints trailing arms and I'm running "oil filled" front stock shocks. Since I started this thread and asked about the single torsion bar pack versus the normal dual bar packs, I think I'm making the correct decision removing the lower and keeping the upper. That way the adjuster is up out of harms way on the top beam.

My thoughts were that welding it in at the same rotational orientation as stock, would give me plus height and no negative height. That is assuming that the single torsion bar pack will maintain original ride height being a sand rail and so light up front, but just being "softer" in ride etc.

Stan, I'm looking at your adjuster as it's set now. I'm guessing you have it cranked all the way to the plus side. I have NOT yet welded mine in, but made some sleeves that I slid tightly into the beam tubes and those same sleeves fit snugly into the inner diameter of the adjuster tubing. I saw on line that the adjusters and beams are not the same outer diameters and make it hard to do the angle iron clamps to align the adjuster, so the sleeve idea was born.

I can rotate my adjuster now to whatever orientation I desire. I think I'm going to weld it in with the lower, minus tension, orientation is in the stock location. That way without any adjustment, I would be as stock on the torsion bar pack. AND then I would have the full adjuster to increase front height or tension if needed.

I like your front bumper too. I have to do one and I'm thinking yours would be a great one to duplicate. I have the JD2 Model 32 tubing bender with the SWAG Off Road with their Harbor Freight hydraulic upgrade. Now when bending my tubing, my thumb is the only thing that gets a work out... I have been doing all 1.5"x.095" HREW tubing, which is what the original frame was made from. I have now put almost 120' of new tubing into the sand rail. I completed their fable attempt at stretching it into a 4-seater. I have a 1.5"x4.5" radius die. I can bend the tight front bumper curves quite easily. I just have problems getting the two ends to be at the correct dimension after the bends. This is my first tubing bending job, so gaining experience very fast!

Thanks for the input on your beam modification.

Dan