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Suspension adjustment step by step?
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hoserbug
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:59 pm    Post subject: Suspension adjustment step by step? Reply with quote

Is their any step by step instructions on adjusting the rear torsions on a 1970 standard beetle?

I have read adjusting them in 4-5 different articles but they are polluted with so much info that does NOT apply to my car we cant figure out exactly what were suppose to do, the reason why we just dont go for it is the stored energy the springs hold, we have not found any clear concise direction on dealing whit this, the explanations I keep reading give you 5 options by time we finish reading have no clue what the danger really is or what we have to do wrong to make parts fly...

I guess what we are looking for is BASIC instructions that only apply to a 70 standard beetle.

Something like

Jack up and level car

Remove rear tires

Remove shocks

Remove bolts

etc.

Follow me?

I am sure people that have done it read the instructions and fully understand.


Thanks in advance
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Bugs'n'Pugs
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:42 pm    Post subject: Rear Suspension Alignment/Adjustment from VW-Resource.com Reply with quote

This is from Rob and Dave's Aircooled Volkswagen Pages:

Quote:
Rear Suspension Alignment/Adjustment

Someone asked - I have a sand rail and the rear tires drag and screech down the road. The rear tires are running outwards when rolling down the road not straight down the road. I have been told my trailing arms might be bent, like it was slammed against a tree or curb. Is there any way to fix this; that is, to "align" the rear suspension?

Rob responded -- There certainly is -- for toe-in/out anyway. The track (toe-in/toe-out) is adjustable over a small range on the VW rear suspension. The trailing arms are connected to the brake hub assemblies on elongated bolt holes. The correct amount of toe out (yes - toe OUT) is 0.5 degrees (about 1/8th inch difference at the wheel rims front and rear side of the axle), so when the wheels are under power the tyres tend to push the axles forwards and run parallel.The spring plates have elongated holes in the rear end, so the brake assemblies can be moved back/forward a small amount.

Note: The spring plates are the flat metal pieces which attach to the torsion bar at the front and the brake hub at the back -- they are the "lever" which twists the torsion bar. They are called spring plates as on the swing axles models they have to twist (spring) as the wheels move through their arc of travel. When the spring plates are badly out of adjustment the car LOOKS like it's squatting at the rear.

There are three bolts (or is it four on the IRS suspension?) just in front of the rear brake hub - have a look at it when you have the engine out. You could try laying a long straight edge along the rear wheels and comparing with the outer edge of the running board - this might give you some indication of a misalignment. It won't be much - the elongated holes allow for only about 1/2 degree total movement.

The correct alignment is about 1/8-inch toe OUT on the rear (and about 1/8-inch toe in for the front). This is for radial tyres. For the older cross plies - it's 1/4-inch instead of 1/8-inch (both ends).

The rears are under power, so trying to force the axles forward into parallel alignment, and the front tyres only have rolling resistance, which tries to push the wheel backwards into parallel. That's why the toe-out at the rear and toe-in at the front.

Some front drive cars use toe-out at the front for exactly the same reason - the power through those wheel tries to push them forward into parallel alignment.

If the amount of adjustment is not enough to correct your problem then the most likely cause is the torsion bar tubes getting bent and allowing the trailing arms to move rearwards. A really hard knock (like running hard over a large rock etc which either catches on the tubes themselves or causes a real shock at the front of the wheels) might be enough to bend the torsion bar tubes backwards. If that's the case you might be able to see the misalignment by looking along the torsion bar rubes - they should of course be exactly at right angles with the centreline of the car.

That's a difficult job to correct and would probably need a specialist suspension place to correct it.

It's much less likely to be the trailing arms themselves. You'd be able to see clearly if one or other side HAD been bent. They are straight flat plate arms, and in any case bending one of those would move the axle forwards, not backwards, so you'd have that side toe-in and the car would be crabbing down the road.

Someone wrote - I've noticed that the right rear end was sitting a little squat. I felt like I even noticed it while I was driving it.

Rob responded - You certainly can feel it once it gets bad. The back end feels a little squirly or wollowy.

Question continued - Slowly and carefully, we pulled the spring plate off the end of the torsion bar and rotated it counterclockwise what I believe was one notch. In rotating it counterclockwise, we dropped the rear (rear is rear of car) end of the spring plate closer to the ground. That was all we did. Now after reading your procedure, something tells me that we completed only half of the procedure. It sounds like we should have pulled the spring plate along WITH the torsion bar out, and the other end of the torsion bar which would be somewhere around the middle of the car, which has less or more splines, should have been rotated the opposite direction one notch.

Rob - The inner end has 40 splines and the outer 44, so one spline down on the outer-only results in 8.1 degrees of spring plate movement - that's a LOT.

Question continued - It gets you to a halfway point between the two points that the first rotation will give you.

Rob - Not half way, but you have the gist of it.

Continued - If the first rotation between two notches will give you one inch, but you need to be at only half an inch, you have to rotate the thing the opposite way to get back to the half inch point. The question I have is....how do you get the torsion bar and the spring plate out a bit at the same time? I think that the spring plate came off without pulling the torsion bar out at all.

Rob -That's normal. What I do is leave the rubber bush on, and pull it just enough so I can get my fingers behind and grab the torsion bar, then wiggle the whole thing and pull out the spring plate, bush AND the torsion bar, and rotate the rear of the torsion bar one notch on the inner spline - that about 6-8 inches at the rear of the spring plate (I forget exactly, but it's 9 degrees exactly).

Then push the whole assembly back on to the inner spline, and then pull the bushing etc off the outer end of the torsion bar and rotate it back up one outer spline (8.1 degrees), which will result in the rear of the spring plate now sitting just a little lower than before - maybe an inch.

If you do the whole procedure again you'll see that you can lower the rear of the spring plate (which raises the car) by about 1-inch per down-and-up rotation.

You are looking for an angle of about 21 degrees on the spring plate (body level). This varies a little froom model to model, but that angle gets you in the ball park.

If you have trouble with the "grab the torsion bar with your fingers" method, then no problem - just note the height of the rear of the spring plate off the floor prior to removing it, then pull the spring plate right off the torsion bar, grab the torsion bar by the outer spline, pull it out a few inches and rotate it one spline "rearwards" (top to the rear). You can mark the end of the bar with some white-out etc to make sure you can see that it's rotated. You can actually feel the spines "latch" if you are careful, so you can feel for one notch only. Then reattach the spring plate so that the outer end is only about an inch or so lower than before. If you get it wrong, the spring plate will be either WAY too high or WAY too low compared to the original height, so it's easy to tell if it's right.

Question - Even if I can get the torsion bar out, how do you know how many splines you have rotated since the other end of it is back in the tube where you cannot see?

Rob - You do it by feel, since on inner spline is 9-degree rotation and it's easy enough to guess about 10 degrees, so you know when you get it back in that it has to be right. Taking note of the height of the rear of the spring plate for each movement helps too.

It's almost impossible to rotate is MORE than one notch up or down at a time - the spring plate will be almost 45 degrees down with two rotations on the inner spline by istelf (18 degrees plus it's initial downwards angle).

In other words, as you do it it becomes "natural" if you keep an eye on the height of the rear of the spring plate, and always do "one down one up" as a complete rotation.

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hoserbug
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I fabricated a spring plate holding tool out of some 3/4" threaded rod, 1/2" bolt, 3/8" bolt and a piece of 1" ID pipe.

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We remove the tension on the spring plate and readjusted the spline to 21 degrees then tried to assemble we cant get the outer plate in far enough to start the bolts, if I used longer bolts I think I could draw it up tight enough to use the factory bolts again, is this normal?

Thanks again


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Air-Cooled Head
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

hoserbug wrote:
I fabricated a spring plate holding tool out of some 3/4" threaded rod, 1/2" bolt, 3/8" bolt and a piece of 1" ID pipe.


if I used longer bolts I think I could draw it up tight enough to use the factory bolts again, is this normal?[/b]

Thanks again

Yes, this is normal. Longer bolts to get started is recommended.

An even easier spring plate tool can be made by welding a bracket to the top of a standard VW jack. I'll post a pic, if I can find it again.
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Air-Cooled Head wrote:
hoserbug wrote:
I fabricated a spring plate holding tool out of some 3/4" threaded rod, 1/2" bolt, 3/8" bolt and a piece of 1" ID pipe.


if I used longer bolts I think I could draw it up tight enough to use the factory bolts again, is this normal?[/b]

Thanks again

Yes, this is normal. Longer bolts to get started is recommended.

An even easier spring plate tool can be made by welding a bracket to the top of a standard VW jack. I'll post a pic, if I can find it again.


Thanks I would like to see that pic, I dont have a VW jack Shocked guess I better start looking for one heh Rolling Eyes
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Aussiebug
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bugs n Pugs, thanks for the post of the article from our web site.

Hoserbug - I don't use any kids of holder to support the spring plate - I use a trolley jack (or a bottle jack will do) to lift the spring plate just enough so it lift it off the stop-lip (you can see the spring plate sitting hard on the stop-lip in the second of the pics above) and then you lever the spring plate outwards just enough to clear the stop lip, then let the jack down. This keeps the spring plate under your control all the time. Some folks talk about levering the plate off the lip and just letting it slam downwards, but since it supports about 600lb of car it's a LOT of downwards force and will easily break a leg or hand which is in the way, and you still have to jack it up over the stop lip to reinstall anyway (6 weeks later - once your leg has healed!) so you still need a trolley jack or bottle jack.


And yes - using two longer bolts (diagonal holes) to get the cover plate started back on works best, then install 2 of the correct length bolts before removing the long bolts and replacing them with the stock ones.

Regards
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hoserbug
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

IS their any reason why not to drill the 4 holes in that plate slightly over sized so I dont have to have each bolt 100% perfectly lined up for it to even start the first thread? I just spent a good hour fighting them 4 bolts in.

Anybody tried doing this with the fenders on, all the articles I have read about adjusting the torsions shows pics where things are out in the open.
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hoserbug
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

IS their any reason why not to drill the 4 holes in that plate slightly over sized so I dont have to have each bolt 100% perfectly lined up for it to even start the first thread? I just spent a good hour fighting them 4 bolts in.

Anybody tried doing this with the fenders on, all the articles I have read about adjusting the torsions shows pics where things are out in the open.
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There is an EXCELLENT tutorial put together by a guy on Youtube. He does it on his squareback, but the process is the same.

Let me see if I can find the links for it - its one of the best tuts Ive seen!
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 12:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AMxBolHOJR4

Here it is Smile

There are 4 parts to this series and he takes you pretty much step by step through the process. (Of lowering in his case) But this should be an excellent guide to set yours up. (I know Ill be using it!)
Hope this helps!
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FQ69Bug
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 1:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

very informative video, I know I will be using it when I do my bug Very Happy
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:47 am    Post subject: springplate Reply with quote

I just adjusted my 70 baja springplate last week. After i pulled the shock and unbolted the springplate from the trailing arm i just popped the bump stop off and jacked the T-arm up and tied it off as high as i could get it. I didnt have to take the cv off(like in the video above but i have a bus stub axel so maybe i got more travel than stock) and there was plenty of room to work with. DO NOT USE SMALL JACKS. I used a normal floor jack and if i had used a little one or the bottle jack i had, then the spring plate would have been far more likely to slip off. you can work the angle of the jack to put the spring plate where you want it, that springplate compression tool is great so you can feel safe. when i put it all back together i knocked the torsion plate as close as i could get it and lined it up hole by hole, you can put the bolts through the other side to help line up the first two, i didnt need the longer bolts but i cleaned up mine with a wire wheel. A crow bar with a flat angled end on it is great help getting the springplate on and off the stop. Loads of help if there is someone to give you a hand pushing and pulling the plate where you need it. And if you can get jackstands with a larger surface on top it helps when your jacking up on the springplate and the car comes up some. Do it one side at a time. think thats about all when i adjusted it.
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