Chop and weld Tie rods? or cut more threads? what to do!?

[vdubtt]

Hi everyone I have been doing much research and i am in the midst of creating an end all to all of the narrowing and lowering front beam posts.

i have read hours and hours of useless posts and want to organize this information overload.


heres my question.

There has been two schools of thought with the shortening of tie rods

1) cut and weld take the amout you are narrowing the beam and take half of that out of each tie rod

ex 4" narrowed beam= 2" from each side


2) find the right size die to cut more threads


i am very interested in this second option, and i was wondering if anyone has the die size that i need for my '65 ride..... and also the die size for the later models.

[Cusser]

Note: Tie rods have both left and right hand threads.
_________________
1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[vdubtt]

[Motomazzo]

I'd like to jump in here because ironically, this is what I'm doing today. I too have done quite a bit of research on this topic. I will be cutting and welding for two main reasons. 1) I don't have the right size tap and don't feel like spending any time/money getting one. 2) I looked the other day and I just happened to have the right size chromoly tubing to make an inner an possibly and outer sleeve where I make my cuts. If that's not enough, It was just my time to leave this planet.

Now, I will say that the "half" rule does not appear to work....at least on a 4" beam which is what I have. I say this because I was speaking with another Samba member who I noticed had a 4" beam.....looked like he did a fantastic job on everything he did....and I asked him how much he cut the tie rods. He went 2" per side (half rule) and although 2" was great for the long tie rod, it was way too much for the shorter one. What I decided I would do for myself was to install the steering box and pitman arm. Square the wheels to the front beam to get close to good alignment. Install the B/J's in the tie rods, install them in the spindle and see where the inner B/J's come in relation to the pitman arm. Measure and cut. Simple and correct IMHO. I did everything but install the steering box and square up the wheels, but I can already tell you by looking at where the tie rods terminate by the where the pitman arm would be, that 2" cut off the short tie rod will be way too much.

I approach things fairly logically and methodically (I think!). How about this? When I get done, I will take some pics and notes on what I did and how I did it. As with anything else, there are 100 different ways/opinions on this and always will be. But if anyone would like to use my method/ideas...there they will be.

P.S. - This is also why I began a thread a while back looking for the stock distance of the steering box measured from the center of the beam/tunnel. When doing a body off with a narrowed beam, this is critical for this set up. I was sort of given the "half" rule for the steering box location as well, which I don't totally agree with either. Here is the thread and my reasoning: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=366181&highlight=



Stand by Peeps......

[Joey]

For my 5" narrowed (link & king pin) beam, I cut and welded mine:

2.5" for the long tie rod and 1.5" for the short tie rod. The inner piece is a piece of an old Beetle sway bar - fits perfectly!
_________________
Joey

‘60 Kombi - '74 Bus - '79 Panel - '65 Beetle

[shifty6d]

[Motomazzo]

[Jerry Hundley]

I just did a 3 inch narrowed beam and all I did was cut and rethread. Then you just cut a slit in one side so you can clamp it back down. It is not that hard and you can't tell it has been done. All you need is a 14mm 1.5 tap. You just cut one end not both ends so there is no need for a reverse tap.
_________________
Jerry Hundley (AKA Slammed 66)

Because Stock Sucks!!!!
70 baywindow deluxe
65 slammed bug
69 bug
64 drag buggy

[Joey]

[perrib]

56 oval bug showed the correct way to shorten or lengthen them which I do. It might be over kill if you have a Tig welder but with my Mig I use four plug welds per half or drill into the inner solid stock a bit. You can also slip a tube over the stock rods. That really stiffens up the long rod. Jerry Hundley's method is the quickest way if you already have the tap.

[vdubtt]

what size stock are yall putting inside the tierod to weld to?

[Juice C]

I got a 14mm tap at my local tool store for $8 and just cut off 2" on each end with standard threads. Then I just retapped it. It took about 20 minutes.

[Motomazzo]

[Motomazzo]

Alright guys. I shortened my tie-rods today. I welded mine. Although I could have reproduced the grooves and bolt relief on the ends, I liked the stock ends and wanted to keep them. Like Vdubtt, I have thought that there ought to be some fairly standard numbers for shortening tie-rods per narrowed front ends, i.e. 4" narrowed front end. I searched quite a bit and did not find much on the subject. Here are the numbers I came up with and how I came up with them.

For a 4" Narrowed Front End:

Remove - 1 3/16" to 1 1/4" for the short Tie Rod
Remove - 1 1/4" to 1 5/16" for the long Tie Rod

Overall Dimensions after cutting -
Short Tie Rod - 7 7/8"
Long Tie Rod - 22 5/16"


One thing I never saw anyone discuss was the set-up prior to shortening the tie rods. Three things have to be constant before you can decide on a number. 1) The alignment of the wheels has to be somewhat straight. I picked the front beam as my reference. 2) How much thread engagement you will have for your B/J's in the tie-rods. 3) The location of the steering box on the beam. IMHO, the best reference for this is the center of the tunnel.


The first step was I straightened each wheel 90 degrees to the beam. This is NOT an alignment I would drive with. This was soley a CLOSE reference picked as a constant for shortening the tie-rods.

Then, I decided where the steering box needed to be. I reqested this information from some folks with stock beams in another thread on the forum in preperation for this job. This is really more important to guys/gals with the body off like me. With this information, and taking careful measurements from the body of the car, back to the chassis, again...and again....I finally decided (at least for my car) the center of the input shaft of the steering box needed to be 9 7/8" from the center of the beam/tunnel. This results in a dimension of approximately 10 1/8" from the center of the beam/tunnel to the center of the mounting clamp of the steering box. With this dimension set, the pitman arm vertical, and the alignment groove in the input shaft facing up, I was ready to move to the next step.

Next, I decided on a thread engagement for the B/J's. I looked at the pictures I took while tearing down the bug for this rebuild to try to determine how much thread was sticking out of each tie-rod on the aligned front end. Each one looked like 1/2" to 3/4". After much thought and screwing the B/J's in and out, I finally picked 5/8" thread exposure for each B/J. This appeared to be a great compromise if the B/J's needed to be screwed in or out for actual alignment adjustment later on.

The only exception to this was the inner tie-rod on the short end. For some reason at 5/8", it was very close to bottoming with no deeper adjustment. I gambled here a little. If I would have had a tap, I would have tapped it deeper. I didn't, so I went to 3/4" thread exposure and banked on my "alignment" as being fairly close. Call me dumb, but I'm willing to gamble that my front end will be fairly close to aligned. Worst case, on this wheel (driver's side) if there is a need to run the B/J deeper in the tie-rod, I will tap it then. I guess I'll just have a tap handy when I take her to get aligned

With these three things done, I decided it was time to try to measure what the distance from the inner B/J's to the holes in the pitman arm acutally was. This length would be how much the tie-rods would need to be shortened. Well, let's just say with all the angles...and not being able to actually get the B/J's in the arm, there is no way to get an accurate measurement. It's a little hard to explain here, but trust me. Each little movement of the tie-rods either up, down, or side-to-side caused drastic changed in the measurement (Trig). What I decided to do was to cut down the tie-rods in the center incrementally until I could finally insert the B/J's in the pitman arm. This was a little time consuming, but in the end it worked out. I found a piece of chromoly tubing to insert in the tie-rods and hold them in place during the fitment stage. Here is a picture of the tie-rods in place, cut in the middle before I disassembled everything for welding.

Here is how I welded my tie-rods. I found a bolt in the shop that was the exact inner diameter of the tie rods. I cut and fitted a length of bolt inside each tie-rod and then slotted the tie-rods on each side, 180 degress out from each other. Then of course I veed the ends of the tie-rods for welding.

The bolt could not have been a better fit. I had to lightly tap it to get it inside the tie-rods.

Another shot showing fitment and groove for welding.

A little grinding and filing and Boo-Ya!! Shortened tie-rods....cut to fit my car.

Another Pic.

Hope this helps somebody out there. Again, to me it was important to start with a baseline. Wheel "Alignment", thread engagement, and steering box location needed to be addressed before measuring how much to cut. Without those, sure you can cut some given length (I've heard 2" on both tie-rods, etc.) and then compensate for adjusting in and out, but IMHO, it's better to have a baseline. Now, for example, someone should be able to set up the car the same as I did and get similar results. Please remember this is for a 4" narrowed beam. You could take the same process and apply it to a beam narrowed to any length and get the numbers you need....but they won't be the same as these. Good luck and let me know if you have any comments/questions!

Moto

[perrib]

Very nice job.

[Motomazzo]

[IN2RUST]

[quote="Cusser"]Note: Tie rods have both left and right hand threads.


All you really need is either one. You only have to cut one side, then re-tap it. Alot easier and safer than a cut and weld in my opinion, but i have the tools to do it.
_________________
RUSTFARMER....I like anything old and rusty!

[vdubtt]

anyone have a inner diameter of the tie rod? i dont want to cut mine and have to run out and get the steel rod

[CoffinCustoms]

Im building a car from scratch and dont have stock tie rods to go off of. What is the length eye to eye for the two rods stock? I dont need any around the bush answers. I will be able to adjust a little but I'm curious where to start. Or narrowed for a 4 inch (ill do less math


Thanks!
Grant

[slalombuggy]

Cutting and re-tapping the threads is the only safe way to do this. and is the easiest. Yes all you welders will say yours are safe, but tie rods a made to flex a bit to take up bumps in the road, especially the long one. You've just taken out this function.

Borrow or buy a 14mm tap and a hack saw or tubing cutter and do the job right and safely. It takes 20 minutes to do it this way.


I don't know about where any of you live, but if your car goes for a DOT inspection or road side inspection and they see welding on ANY suspension components where there shouldn;t be here, your car is automatically flagged and impounded. No manufacturer has ever used spliced tie rods why should we ????

brad