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jeffrey8164
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Joined: January 06, 2018
Posts: 4108
Location: Georgia
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 Posted: Mon May 19, 2025 12:59 pm Post subject: Re: Squeaky Clean 68 - Father/Son Project |
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Hopefully, you got the shorter spring packs and tie rods as well or it’s going to be a short frustrating weekend.
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wrdrew
Samba Member
Joined: December 13, 2018
Posts: 85
Location: Chicagoland Indiana
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2025 10:15 am Post subject: Re: Squeaky Clean 68 - Father/Son Project |
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Indeed I did!
Shortened tie rods and leaves are sitting on the work bench ready to go in as well.
Luckily when I was ordering the beam, JBugs prompted me to add them to the cart. Otherwise, I would have made that rookie mistake for sure, given that this is my first experience with a narrowed beam.
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1968 Beetle - Father/Son Project |
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Buggeee
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Joined: December 22, 2016
Posts: 4893
Location: Stuck in Ohio
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wrdrew
Samba Member
Joined: December 13, 2018
Posts: 85
Location: Chicagoland Indiana
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 6:37 am Post subject: Re: Squeaky Clean 68 - Father/Son Project |
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Got the beam in this weekend. It ended up being way more work than I remember the old beam being, but a bit of that was self-inflicted.
I managed to screw up and only order one pack of 2" shortened springs, which resulted in us having to clamp, cut, and drill out one of the packs from the old stock-width adjustable beam. I was convinced the packs came as a pair from JBugs... Oops!
Getting the old beam out was a breeze, but getting the new one in came with a few small challenges.
(It took a bit longer too due to being distracted by watching the Indy 500 the entire afternoon while we worked  )
My dad hurt his back earlier this week working on some other project, so one of my buddies came over and helped me out a ton. Shout out to my classic BMW fanatic best friend of nearly 20 years, Tyler for the help! (I'll convert him into an air-cooled guy eventually)
After we got the beam in and everything assembled, we started to notice a few issues.
Issue number 1 was that the new tie rods were hitting the bottom of the gas tank pretty solidly. This also appeared to have been happening for quite some time. There was a pretty big dent there with some solid scratches. I did some forum searching, and apparently a lot of guys raise their gas tanks up a bit to compensate. Since I'd prefer not to puncture my tank and die in a bath of fire, I decided this would be the way to go. I used some 1/2" skinny steel rods cut to length and placed under the edges of the tank along with some longer bolts from the local hardware store.
Limebug makes a tank raise cradle that I'd like to eventually get to do this a little more properly.
https://limebug.com/product/t1-1961-modular-fuel-t...JODTBtm7bO
Anyways, after that was sorted, we put the car down on the ground and started to adjust the tie rods to do a makeshift alignment.
After the "alignment" was done, I started turning the wheel, and noticed that it wouldn't turn right hardly at all. Got under it, and immediately noticed that the pitman arm was hitting the little notch in the beam. This was issue number 2. After about a half hour of screwing around with the steering box placement on the beam, all was good! I was about to grind the end of the pitman arm off in frustration.
After all of that, I was finally able to see the new stance, and I LOVE IT! Way less tire rubbing, and I was able to go another notch down on the beam adjustment from the old height with even less rubbing. This was worth every penny, and minute of time!
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1968 Beetle - Father/Son Project |
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