Rear camber on 69 IRS

[vwboat]

I have quite a bit of neg camber in the rear of my 69 irs BAJA. The pass side is a little worse than the driver side. It has been this way since I bought the car 2 years ago. Car drives good and no tire wear (thats weird).

I am going to take the pass side apart and replace all the bushings and reindex 1 inner spline to raise the rear then do the driver side. Any suggestions on what to check for the bad camber? torsion arms bent, just bad bussings,etc. Torsion arms don't appear to have any damage that I can see at this point.

Thanks for any info or help.

John

[Dale M.]

Camber issues on IRS may not be just a bushing issue... IF car sits level and has excessive camber the problem may be the trailing arm could be bent ....

Doing a one spline adjustment on IRS will probable not do much for camber, it will just raise/lower body some ....

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

[Ian]

i would throw it up on an alignment rack or frame table and bust out the tape measure, only real way to figure it out
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[vwboat]

I am reindexing the rear to gain height in the rear not fix the camber issue.
In looking a little closer at the cv joint, it appears that the cv is angled down .
I think that the trailing arm is twisted to the left causing the cv to be angled and the wheel to have the neg camber.

Thanks for the replys.....

John

[utahclaimjumper]

I recently went thru this with my 72, both rears were negative. I notched my spring plates 3/8ths,, rotated one outer notch down with the torsion bars.. After checking the trailing arm bushings, found that the right had both washers on the outside and the left had both on the inside of the bushings.. After correcting all that I had a four point alighnment done,, the tech had to pull the spring plates farward, then the camber was perfect and alighnment spot on!!>>>Dan ( I ended up with an extra 2 1/2 inch lift at the engine sump for a total of 14.5 clearence with 29 inch tires)

[Q-Dog]

Check the bearings too. I had a whiny bearing on the rear of mine and replacing it also fixed my camber issue.
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'69 Dune Buggy
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[vwboat]

Thanks for all the replies.

Almost have torsion arm out. Do not see any damage on arm, When spring plates on stop at full drop it appears that I still have neg camber.

Have drum off and do not see anything wrong with bearings, don't really know what or how bearings affect wheel camber(need some info here).
Finish pulling arm off today and will check it against a know good one.

Pivot bolt bushings look bad,hope this is part of my problem. Also the tow in out looks off.

John

[vwracin2win]

Most likely the trailing arms are bent. The stock ones bend really easy. Get some boxed ones and be done with it

[dirtkeeper]

Have you tried adjusting the trailing arm to the spring plate attachment ? if you loosen the 3 or 4 bolts and pushed around with a jack and some force i was able to get quite a bit of adjustment out of mine i started with positive camber. i pulled the rear of the hub down and the front at the bolts upward . the opposite might help you

[Multi69s]

Its kinda of funny that hear the general concensus is that the trailing arm is probably bent (I agree, been there done that). However, when I bring it up on the stock bug forums, I am told that I am full of sh%t
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[vwboat]

Thanks again for the replys and info.
I have not played with the trailing arm to spring plate attachment yet. Been held up for a day on other project(granddaughter). Will try the adjustment of the arm and springplate soon. Not sure how the springplate or arm moves forward since both are connected to a fixed point at the front, but that seems to be the way to set tow so it must move somehow.

John

[dirtkeeper]

[vwboat]

Dirtkeeper,

Thanks for your replys. I hope to try and get some change in the camber playing with the spring plate to arm position. have everything loose and now ready to try and see how it moves and what happens.

Thanks again for everyones help.

John

[vwboat]

Loosened bolts for arm to springplate, can move arm back and forth in springplate to affect tow in/out but not camber. Nothing I do to arm and springplate relationship changes the camber in any direction. checking camber with square to flat floor in grage. about one quater to a half inch differance from bottom of drum to top of drum Pulled arm from car and the bushings don't look that bad. Still cannot see any damage to arm. Need to check arm somehow. moving on to check bearings and such.
Kind of stumped now on what is going on. may get another arm and see if it makes any differance.


John

[vwboat]

What FUN I am having with this suspension.

#1 Found trailing arm bushing badly worn on the inner top edge of the metal insert and the top edge of the mount on the framehorn that the pivot bolt threads into. just going to replace bushing at this point.

#2 Found bushings on the outer and inner springplate bad also.

#3 I cannot get the springplate to drop off of the stop. I have it up over the stop but will not move out and down to release pressure. Need to do this to reindex one spline and replace the bad bushings. FUN FUN FUN.

#4 Good news, My new lifted spindles and disk brake showed up under the tree today..More Fun soon.

Any ideas for #3

John

[Ian]

You need an old jack and a bolt and and a piece of scrap metal and a welder.

Once you have that made up, then jack the spring plate up with it. Then I use a framing pry bar cause it's skinny and put it behind the spring plate. Use jack to slowly lower plate and it will usually slip down the pry bar. Sometimes this method will pop the torsion bar off the inner splines too, so I hit the torsion bar with the ball end of a ballpeen hammer to seat it in the splines so it will separate from the plate.
_________________
All your Buses are belong to us.
Love and good roads!
IN LOVING MEMORY OF ROB CRESS 1968-2012
**ACHTUNG DO NOT USE AA BRAND PRODUCTS OR BUY ANYTHING FROM PACIFIC PARTS INTERNATIONAL IN CALIFORNIA**

[vwboat]

Thanks for the reply. I have the real VW torshion tool and it works fine for raising the springplate.

Happy news, I have everything off and new bushings in the trailing arm and both outer and inner bushings in the sprangplates.

All back togather need to torque everything up and put drum on then check to see if I did any good with camber. I don't have a warm fuzze that I fixed my camber issue but we will see.

John

[vwboat]

All lback togather but not real happy.

All of the bushings were wore on the top inside edge really bad. This seems to be caused by something twisted or bent causing the trailing arm to tilt up
and eat the PIVOT bolt threds in the framehorn and the springplate to tilt and ware its inside bushing at the top edge also causing the negative camber.

By replcing the trailing arm bushings and the torsion bar/spring plate bushings, I have helped the neg camber issue somewhat but not a whole lot. Also the problem causing the wear on the bushings is unknow at this point.

The PIVOT bolt wear on the bolt threads on the framehorn is of concern, if it continues then MAJOR work on the framehorn to keep this car.

Need to find out what is bent or twisted. trailing arm,springplate or torsion bar housing.The outer bushing for the springplate coverplate does not seat on the springplate outer tube equally all around and it looks like the tube is bent somewhat upward. More checking and fiddling to come..

John

[NJ John]

When apart, I think you can index the spring plate and bearing flanges. The bearing flange has a small amount(1.5 deg) of neg camber from the factory.
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[sixfootdan]

Look at this about halfway down the page.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3...p;start=40
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