Has anyone narrowed a vw pan and drivetrain?

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I just bought a Subaru 360 van and it needs a ton of work. I'm going to upgrade the motor and drivetrain and one of the options I actually saw on a customized Subaru 360 van was an air-cooled VW motor and I assume the drivetrain. But, the biggest problem is these vans are about 10 inches narrower then a VW bug. I was thinking you could possibly narrow a pan to make it fit. Has anyone done this and if so, what was involved? Any input or direction would be greatly appreciated.

[chickengeorge]

Building your own pan halves is pretty straight forward. Cutting down the torsion tubes out back and abandoning the torsions in favor of coil overs or air ride would also be fairly easy. If you went with an IRS rear, you could have axles made to length. The rear is going to be way more difficult than the front, but the front has it's issues as well. Narrowing the beam that much might require rack and pinion steering or something. When you narrow the beam as much as what it would take to get it under that little Subby, the driver's side steering arm gets really short and can cause scrubbing, terrible bump steer and other issues.

[chickengeorge]

http://www.trucktrend.com/cool-trucks/0909mt-1969-subaru-360-van/

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[vwuberalles]

If you can't narrow the beam and rear end enough you can always run Bosozoku style wide flares!

_________________
1973 Superbeetle: 1st car, owned since age 12. Update thread --> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9919140#9919140
1967 Kombi: Owned since age 17, Dad's retirement project.
1966 Beetle: My new project. (SOLD) Build thread--> https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=678040

[chickengeorge]

[slalombuggy]

Doing a short axle swing is WAY easier than IRS. You can buy 3 and 5" shorter axles, although you may have to do some digging for the 5" as they aren't made by SAW any more. I found mine in Europe and shipping was pretty cheap.

Cut the rear torsion tubes, use 21 5/8" torsion bars and early spring plates with the snouts on them and matching torsion covers, easy peasy.

The front is also pretty easy. You can do a rack like I did or you can center mount a the steering box and use a jointed steering column.

If I were doing your project, I would abandon the VW floor pan altogether and start with a simple tube chassis. You can use square tube for the main part, it's easy to cut, get, square and build off of. Draw out your Subi 360 dimensions on the garage floor and build from there. Here's my narrowed buggy project. Probably won't apply to much but might be some stuff you can use or get ideas from.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=687219&highlight=

brad

[finster]

the swedish style vw trikes, where the engine is between the riders legs, use a shortened axle and custom swing arms - see this us site
https://badasstrikecompany.webs.com/badasstrikestore.htm

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Still doing research on this. One question if I do something like the reversed formula Vee setup with the motor and trans flipped, what has to be done with the trans mission to get it to run backwards?

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[chickengeorge]

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[slalombuggy]

That's a lot of work to gain nothing. You can centermount the steering box and then just use a double jointed steering column. Much less work.
brad

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Ok, let me ask this. I'm thinking about using a dune buggy rack, but flipping it forward. When you do this the steering is opposite. To correct that I have to flip the steering arms from back to forward. My question is, can I flip the trailing arms so they point forward, this way I could have access to forward facing steering arms or will this cause me some kid of handling issues?

[slalombuggy]

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Brad, I have to access the rack from the front because it is a van and the steering comes from in front of the beam the front, not the rear like a normal vw. I thought about just flipping the spindles, but I don't think that will put the steering arms far enough forward. I thought about doing the flip and then extending the steering arms also.

[slalombuggy]

could you just mount the rack so the input is straight up and down?

Don't mess with the length of the steering arms on the spindles, that will bring a whole other bunch of problems with steering geometry.

You could flip the whole beam and run the arms out the front. I've seen that on a couple of ratrods on the interweeb. Not sure about the ride quality, but it would give you all the clearance you needed.

brad

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I thought about flipping the whole beam, but was concerned about handling.