Newbie Baja bug

[GonzoGravy]

Hello Samba, I am diving in to the baja bug pool. The subject is a 69' German beetle. I bought this bug in Arkansas for $600 bucks. I didn't realize how much rust that I had purchased, but I would soon find out. I have gained a lot of knowledge from this site from various builds and I hope to gain more in the future. I plan on building a moderate off-road machine with solid abilities. I hope some experienced eyes will observe and make suggestions,critiques, and insults. I welcome them all.

This is the donor. I love the color, and plan on using it when all is said and done.

[GonzoGravy]

This is the floor condition. I knew it was bad, but I would soon find it was much worse.

The body comes off.

Now for the pan inspection.

Someone thought it was a good idea to zip screw sheet metal to the existing
floor pan. It accelerated the rust in an exceptional way. Under normal rusting conditions the pans would have decayed and left most everything else in relatively good shape. In this case it held water and destroyed on a much broader scale.

I removed the sheet metal from the pans and realized to true condition of the pan and tunnel.

[TDCTDI]

Ughhh, the floors are the easy part, the heater channels & bulkhead is gonna suck. Congratulations, I think.

Keep the original rear pan supports in place & keep the original seat tracks, the aftermarket ones suck.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[GonzoGravy]

well, I appreciate the encouragement, but I am building a complete new chassis. I do not want to rebuild the tunnel, which is what would be required. I plan on installing an a-arm front suspension, and a neutral swing arm rear suspension.

The body is pretty cancerous , but I will make do.

The tunnel is in bad shape. In my opinion, it is a loss.

So this is where I started. I took some readings and used the original body mount rail for the pattern.

[GonzoGravy]

I used a 3 cut and it worked out pretty well.

So, I tacked in the rails to check for fitment, and things looked pretty good.

[GonzoGravy]

Fitting up the frame.

Tacked up and square.

Time to start the front suspension.

[GonzoGravy]

You can see the porosity line in the weld here. I looks like a fan was involved, because it is in the same spot on all the arms. Pretty sloppy.

I am going to clean them up and do some re-welding , but some people don't have the equipment or the skills to re-work something that should have been right in the first place.

I will know more once I complete my spindles and my wheel and tire set up. Thanks for looking.

[GonzoGravy]

*I meant to post this above the previous post*

I bought an a-arm kit from Protodie. I am not sure that they are going to work in my situation, but at least I have an example in front of me. I honestly
cannot recommend them to anyone. They are pretty flat and straight , but the weld quality is pretty bad.

[Dale M.]

If this is example of purchased front suspension components (the welding) I agree that they are not acceptable... Their fabrication seem like good designs but welder needs to go back to school...

But it looks like you know what you have gotten your self into (by now), and know what you are doing.... Keep up the good work, keep us informed...

Carry on...

Dale
_________________
“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)
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All suggestions and advice are purely my own opinion. You are free to ignore them if you wish ...

[bullnerd]

Protodie makes minibuggy parts.

I dont think they will be sturdy enough for a baja, unless its a trailer queen.

What does this mean? Not semi-trailing?

"neutral swing arm rear suspension."

[GonzoGravy]

Yeah , They are a mini buggy site, but this particular kit was advertised as a VW front suspension replacement. I will mock everything up and make a final judgement then. If not then I will make my own or reinforce these. I was willing to spend the money just for the example alone.

What I mean by neutral swing is no arc of motion change. The stock swing arm brings the rear wheel in towards the motor on the upper half of the suspension travel. I am going to experiment with decreasing or eliminating this aspect, depending what I can get away with on the axles. I saw an example made by "Doug Bug" on youtube, but he never ran them and switched to an a-arm rear end. He was running u-joints on his a-arm set up, but I have read that they prematurely wear on the transaxle.

[bullnerd]

Ahhh...I didn't know they made vw buggy stuff. Sounds good.

I always thought camber change was good for handling and axle length?

[TDCTDI]

The good thing about the factory trailing arm configuration is the fact that large impacts force the trailing arm rearwards & upwards, which is easier on the suspension components than just trying to transfer that force into just a straight up & down motion.
_________________
Everybody born before 1975 has a story, good, bad, or indifferent, about a VW.


GOFUNDYOURSELF, quit asking everyone to do it for you!


An air cooled VW will make you a hoarder.


Do something, anything, to your project every day, and you will eventually complete it.

[dustymojave]

If the OP had started out by ordering a Bug with A-arm front from Crumco, the quality would be vastly better, and the rear arms would be ready. Rick builds all his cars with parallel pivot rear. The pivot axis for the rear true trailing arms is at 90° to the axis of the chassis. Not at an angle like VW builds them. Rick feels it deals better with mogul bumps where with stock pivot geometry, a bump on one side pushes the car to the other side. Not so with the parallel pivot arms. Maybe not as good for slaloming. But probably good for drifting.

I know it's a long way between here and Missouri, but he's sold cars to Australia. So Missouri isn't such an issue. My son was at the Crumco shop last night building arms after he came home from testing at Barstow for the race this coming weekend.
_________________
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.

[GonzoGravy]

Good information. I checked out some of their stuff, but it's a little pricey for me. It looks like good stuff, but I plan on fabbing up my own. Maybe with the information you have brought to light I will leave 2 degrees or so in the suspension swing.

I am at work in northern Minnesota for 3 weeks, but the next time I am home I plan to have my spindles and get the front end mocked up for testing.
I want to drive it already!

Thanks.

[Fenix]

Need to share this with greggl4321.

[GonzoGravy]

So, I am back home for my break and time to get to work.

I started by drilling the holes for the front suspension. The tube will pass thru to the back side of the rec tube for extra strength. I really don't like using rectangular tubing, but I felt the learning curve would be easier seeing how I have never built a car before.

[GonzoGravy]

I am finally using my bender and it is a sweet machine. I haven't painted it and put on all the information stickers , but I really like it. I figured out that my bend back is 3 degrees.

The bends turned out pretty good.

[GonzoGravy]

With the bending done I started fitting the lower tubes.

[GonzoGravy]

I am setting the rake angle at 3 degrees.