Project Slowly Underway: Berrien 295

[Vanapplebomb]

Less than $70 at apple tree auto even. I seriously thought about it. I would need more than just the spring plates though. The way I figured, this way I can use the end caps I already have which are unique to the double spring plates and do not mix with single/aftermarket plates.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[dustymojave]

Are you planning to heat treat the plates after you weld the plates to the hubs? In my experience, 99% of the failures of spring plates are cracks or breakage at the outside edge of the weld. They are made of spring steel, not mild steel. So welding them alters their molecular structure adjacent to he welds.

I'm not saying that they will for certain fail. They JUST MIGHT work well for a very long time.
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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.

[Vanapplebomb]

I found a guy to weld them up who deals with welding specialty alloys, etc. This should do the trick. Kinda the prototype one to see how it would work out. Dual IRS plates, notched 3/8” with five bolt hole slots, for swing axle length torsion bars. Just need to extended the tube another 1/4” or so for full engagement with the outer bushing, then cap it off. Should work slick.

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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Bock]

Those plates are sweet man.

[Vanapplebomb]

Thanks man.

My old trusty one finally bit the dust after many years of hard work. I took it apart to see what went wrong and it had compleately grenaded the pinion gear on the motor shaft. Little pieces of sheared off gear teeth everywhere inside the gear box mixed in with the grease. Fun fun fun

I got a cheap replacement to tie me over for a bit while I work on a few other projects. We will see how long it lasts before burning up. I suspect a couple months with the number of hours I rack up on them.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[dustymojave]

Angle grinder
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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.

[Vanapplebomb]

Well, it was an angle grinder
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Vanapplebomb]

Time to give these guys a good bath and paint them. Not quite sure what I want to paint them with yet. I got epoxi, undercoat, or spray on bed liner. Leaning towards either the undercoat or bed liner... opinions welcome.

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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Brian]

A heavy coat of primer and some gloss black. Truck liner looks tacky imo.
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Wash your hands

'69 Bug
'68 Baja Truck
'71 Bug
'68 Camper

Only losers litter

[dustymojave]

Actually I think the bed liner would be a good idea on rear arms. You need something that will resist the sandblasting from dirt, sand, little rocks, and whatever else your tires throw at the rear arms. And they won't be the bodywork.

I'm not real fond of painting the whole body of a Baja with bedliner though.
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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.

[BUGGUTZ]

I would paint them with Sherwin Williams DTM (Direct To Metal) and then bedline them. I am not sure the bedliner works well with raw steel. Just a thought.

By the way, Ive been away from the thesamba a while. Its looking great Dirk!
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66 Baja
73 standard
14 Jetta TDI
95 Escort
89 CUMMINS in whats left of a dodge body

Everyones gotta be somewhere!

[Vanapplebomb]

Thanks guys. That Sherwin Williams paint looks pretty interesting. I may have to try that out.

At any rate, I started getting the little odds and ends ready for assembly. Started painting the bearing caps, torsion covers, and brake backing plates. Hopefully I can finish up assembling the brakes and painting the trailing arms this week. I figured out where I want my bump stop. Going to weld on a pad to the original shock towers, drill and tap it. The trailing arm will swing up to it and hit it rather than having the numb stop in the arm itself.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[flashho]

Lookin Great!!
I would go with a flat color, just so you can easily spot any leaks.
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rant _ classified ads with out pics are almost worthless

[Vanapplebomb]

Rear brakes assembled.

These are what I call “poor mans disk brakes.” Reason is they have bigger wheel cylinders in them. The wheel cylinders come from the front brakes of a Super Beetle, which are 23.8mm in diameter. That’s much larger than the stock 17mm cylinders, or the standard beetle 22mm front wheel cylinders.

The Super Beetle wheel cylinders are not a drop in swap through. There is a little mod that needs to be made to make them work.

First off the mounting bolt to mounting boss center to center distance is larger, not by much, but enough that the bolt won’t go through the existing hole. A small worm tail file makes quick work of slotting the bolt hole. It’s only a mm or so you need to slot it to make the bolt fit.

Second, the distance from the mounting face to the center of the cylinder is shorter than standard beetle cylinders, so a spacer is needed to push the cylinder farther into the drum so the shoes fit in the wheel cylinders. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy. I just made mine out of 18 gauge sheet metal.

Other than those two things, the brakes go together as normal. I put anti-seize on the adjusting stars, and the e-brake pivot pin. I used brake grease where the shoes ride on the backing plate, the adjuster and cylinder slots, and the e-brake pushrod slots. Personal preference, you do what you like.

Seals also got pressed into the bearing caps.

Figured I would post up the pics of assembly. Maybe it will help someone down the road.

More to come next week when the trailing arms get painted.

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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Vanapplebomb]

Started painting my trailing arms today. Got half way through and realized I forgot to drill the 5th bolt hole for my modified spring plates.

Oh well. I’ll drill it when it dries and touch it up. Bone head move.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Vanapplebomb]

Problem solved. Set them up in the drill press to drill the fifth hole, cleaned up the edge where they intersected an existing hole, and touched it up with some paint. Like it never happened.

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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[Vanapplebomb]

This rear end has been kicking me in the butt, and this one is entirely my fault. I broke my golden rule of verifying all parts are good before using them...and it came back to haunt in the form of my passengers side trailing arm. Do you see it? Check out the last picture in my last post. Here is a clue...Look at the bearing carrier on the arm at the left.

Camber is way out...visibly so, in fact. You know it Is bad when you can see it. I measured it and sure enough, over 4deg off!! Toe was also out of whack a couple degrees.

At any rate, rather than start over I cut 90% of the bearing carrier free, knocked it back into place so that toe was parallel to the spring plate and reset the built in camber to -1.5deg, then welded it back in. Have to clean the paint off and respray it.

Crises avoided.

On the plus side, the drivers side trailing arm is just fine, painted, and has the pivot bushing installed. Silicone based grease between the steel sleeve and urethane bushing.

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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[dustymojave]

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson...
"Dohhhh!!!!"

Sounds (or reads) like a good fix. Tough to measure though. I'm curious what method you used to ensure it was "correct".
_________________
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.

[Vanapplebomb]

Yup, said it just like that too.

I used a digital angle finder to locate the bearing carrier once I verified the spring plate mount and pivot were lined up. A line perpendicular to a vertical line on the face of the spring plate mount should pass straight through the center of the pivot end. Then I just stuck the angle finder on the spring plate mount, zeroed it out, and moved it onto the bearing carrier to set toe/camber. It was pretty easy to do. As is typical, the problem was between the spring plate mount and the bearing carrier. They always seem to bend in that spot where all the force is. I have yet to see one bend between the spring plate mount and the pivot. All in all it was a pretty easy fix, fortunately.
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1800 Type 4 Berrien 295

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487021

[dustymojave]

Good job!

That's how I would have measured it too. Some folks can get pretty wacky with trying to measure the camber on an arm. It's not all that complex if you get down to it, but it seems to confuse many who try. And lots of folks think that there is no camber to the arm, that left and right are the same except for the shock mount and snubber. Including some who have made and sold arms. Taint so McGee.
_________________
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.