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Spring plate re-indexing at last!
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Technut27
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Joined: May 18, 2015
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Location: Cleveland
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 9:00 pm    Post subject: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

I've owned my 74 for going on 6 years (I think) and at long last I did something about the sagging right side. It was a very obvious sag. I'll say that it was challenging as a first timer but not a terribly hard job.

I made myself a DYI spring plate tool for maybe $16 and it mostly survived the task. The bottom washers got chewed up quite a bit since it took me 3x as many tries to get things figured out on my first go.

- 3/8" threaded rod
- 3/8" coupling nuts the two at the top drilled/pinned in place
- 3/8" forged eye bolts because they have insane strength ratings and didn't cost much
- I had some random steel bushings that I cut down make the eye bolts fit better in the frame hole
- misc washers, the bottoms ones were not up to the task, v2 will be slightly different
- misc lock nuts at the bottom but I never got near them, and I didn't bother cutting the rod down
- 100s of wrench turns, I eventually got out a spare scissor jack to speed things up

I've read a dozen posts and watched every YouTube video I could found but am clearly still missing something when it comes to the indexing chart. I needed to raise the car up by ~1.75 inches to level it. The chart on https://vw.zenseeker.net/Wheels-TorsionBars.htm says to get a change of 1.73 inches it takes a +8 and a -8. When I dry fit those changes in both directions it was clearly going to be wrong. I went with the angle change method instead and it took far fewer clicks to get there.

I was pleasantly surprised that the bar/bushings didn't appear to be original. The bar was greasy and clean and the bushings were both pliable. I expected hard as a rock rubber an old crusty bar. I did replace the bushings.

A set of longer M10 1.5 bolts were a necessity. My first couple tries to get the plate back on the stop before putting the cover on were futile, the bar shifting made it impossible to line up the bolt holes after. I used the long bolt trick to start the cover and hold the bar in place, then lifted the plate into place and drew the cover down on it with the long bolts, then swapped the original bolts in one at a time.

Its not perfect leveled across the tail lights after cruising around to get things settled back in but its so much better than it used to be. I won't be going back in for that last click anytime soon though Smile

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kenj06
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Joined: November 28, 2011
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PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2021 6:30 pm    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

Nice work! Sounds about like what I did with mine going by the angles method. Never did use a level on it, went with the eyeballs and it looks good to me.
Maybe your taillights aren't level. Laughing
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Technut27
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PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2021 9:15 pm    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

Thanks! Well I clearly wanted to ruin a perfectly good Sunday by doing something that on Friday night I never intended on doing again and I tore it all apart one more time. It all went well until I shredded the threads on the rod and had to go buy a new one and rebuild my tool to put it all back together again, got it a little closer but it looks great IMO.

I've looked in the books I have and is there a torque rating for the cover plate or is the goal to simply get it cranked all the way down on the bushing to close the gap? TBH I don't have it seated all the way down while I read more. It felt like it was going to require an excessive amount of torque to get it down and I'm always afraid of stripping out threaded holes. Maybe let the new bushings compress/break in a while and snug it up more. As soon as that upwards pressure pushes up on the bar and everything shifts getting the bolts in is a real chore. Granted I know I you can run a bolt through and just do it that way if it goes bad.

A smarter person would have just left it alone after the first go, my wife rightly gave me a hard time. The cover plate has seen much better days I doubt it has many more trips off/on left in it. If I was to ever do it again I think I'd end up with adjustable spring plates and new covers Smile
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74 Thing
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PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2021 10:39 am    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

How did you get the spring plate over the trailing arm? Were you able to lift it up and over or when you dropped it off the ledge did it clear?
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Technut27
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PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2021 5:48 pm    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

It almost made it over the top jacking it up. I had to pop it past the spot the arrow is pointing to with a small pry bar and that gave me enough room. If you were to do it that way be careful not to jack the wheel assembly too far and jam the bump stop mount in to the stop at the top. They were very very close and as the car lifted off the stands while I was 1 part jacking the spring plate up and 1 part taking it up with the home made adjustment tool that gap grew and shrank. I think it would be easy to crush the two halves together by accident and bend something.

RIP adjustment tool but it did the trick.

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Technut27
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PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2021 6:00 pm    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

kenj06 wrote:
Nice work! Sounds about like what I did with mine going by the angles method. Never did use a level on it, went with the eyeballs and it looks good to me.
Maybe your taillights aren't level. Laughing


The whole car is a little crooked, good thing too if it was a show car I'd be too afraid to take it anywhere, this is all for fun.

I pulled the 8 track after all and dropped in a cheapo Jensen head unit with some speakers. I didn't switch it with the ignition, I just put an inline switch on the side of a now heavily modified under dash box and reused the 12v accessory line. Its pretty great.
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Wildthings
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PostPosted: Tue May 25, 2021 11:42 pm    Post subject: Re: Spring plate re-indexing at last! Reply with quote

Did you use talc on the bushings? That helps things go together.
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