Front stock suspension.

[Zed999]

Quick bit of background...
Me:
I have some idea what I'm doing and have successfully worked on and set up many, many buses suspension. Hell, I'd even do it without being asked if it was horrendous and I became a bit of a camber setting maniac after discovering so many bus lowerers didn't bother, couldn't do it or simply didn't know it needed more than aligning the notch to the centre. But not just lowered buses. To be honest in 8 years I did this full time I never found a bus I checked where the nuts weren't simply centred after ball joint replacement or other work up front.

So, I have camber gauges, tracking gauges, tools and half an idea. But nowhere to comfortably work.

My current bus pulls slightly left (we drive on the left here) and drives like a boat in a gale in any kind of wind. There's no slop, all new wheel bearings, idler bushes, trackrod ends, ball joints, box centred etc etc. There are no sloppy parts, the geometry is spot on BUT to get left wheel camber correct I have to adjust the nut fully to one side which seems to point at a bent arm?

It's not a case of "that's what they're like". I'm not a believer of that anyway but this is the worst and the only one out of scores, maybe over 100 that I haven't been able to make drive properly. Typical that it would be my own!

From experience it feels like camber imbalance but I'm satisfied that it's correct at rest. Passengers (one anyway) squeeked a bit when I turned right, saying it leaned too much but I don't percieve that myself...I think I would but never say never...

I use it to pick up bags of smokeless, up to 200kg sometimes, all in the passenger footwell and seat because the rear is my winter shed and rammed. So I know the more weight, the worse it is.

That's the background and as many clues as I can think of. Not wanting to do "the job" twice in a stoney unlevel car park I'm trying to figure what to try. Seems like the leaning could be a snapped leaf or three? Seems like the weight making it worse could be same and/or a bent trailing arm? Whatever, I'm sure it's something bent or broken and not adjustment.

I think you'd have to slide sideways into a kerbstone pretty fast to bend a trailing arm? I've seen rear diagonal arms bent where they enter the hub casting after doing this but not the front.

Plan is to inspect the leaves and replace if needed. If no broken springs replace the trailing arms, but I want to do this all in one hit so I'm gathering used parts.

Trailing arms it's hard to judge other than inspecting the bearing surfaces.

Leaf springs: I'm feeling cautious about fitting pre-loved springs the wrong way round as it were so I'd have to get them from a beam myself and keep left/right as previously fitted. My imagination says 40 years of twisting one way could snap if fitted the other way. Am I right? I don't want to spend on new because they might not be broken.

Any other ideas, however off the wall appreciated, I've periodically banged my head against this for three years. Yeah, I know, take it apart and inspect, get what's needed and reassemble. Not going to go down well in the fancy marina car park, I need it done and dusted in one hit to avoid falling out with the management here where I live on my boat.

Thanks for reading.

[airschooled]

[Wildthings]

I have learned to never set the camber such that the mark on the eccentric is more than 45° from center and if that doesn't give you book spec to make the camber for the other side match even if that side too is out of spec. You gain very little extra camber by turning the eccentric past 45° while losing lots of caster. While I have never owned a factory new ACVW I have owned low mileage ones and most seem to defy having the caster in spec on both sides.

Yes do not swap the sides of the torsion bars as that can increase the fatigue occurring in the metal of the bars. The rear bars are likely prestressed at the factory to work on only one side, while I don't know for sure about the front leaves are prestressed, once they have been loaded in one direction for millions of cycles it would be a good policy to keep them on the same side.

[Zed999]

[Zed999]

[Zed999]

All tyres were new also 3 years ago, good quality van rated stock tyres. I swapped front/rear wheels and tyres last year just to see and no difference. I can't detect any odd tyre wear.

It feels kind of slippery sometimes making small steering adjustments at 30-40mph if the road is greasy, feels like overinflated tyres but they are at 32psi now and previously at 30psi no different. No difference in the cold season when they tend to loose a few psi before I correct them.

[tommu]

[wcfvw69]

Having done thousands of alignments a few decades ago, I can tell you it's rare that camber will cause a pull. 95% of the time it the caster causing it. What is the difference in caster side to side? I recall 1/2° was the most our shop would allow side to side.

The second biggest cause of a car pulling to one side or the other was a tire. You should jack your VW up and swap the front tires side to side. Does it still pull the same direction? I had so many customer bringing in their car with a pull to one side or the other and automatically "ass/u/me" it was the alignment being off. I'd put the car on the alignment rack and do a quick alignment check. If the alignment was close, I'd swap the front tires side to side. The vehicle would then either drive straight or pull to the other side now.
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[Zed999]

[Zed999]

[SGKent]

you need a 100% level pad to adjust camber or caster beyond 'about right'. Caster in a VW bus is pretty well determined by the suspension and beam mounting points. I guess you could slot the frame but that brings its own issues. Camber can be set with a simple bubble gauge but again, without a perfectly level pad the results will be approximate. Rear toe can be set with a long piece of string and tape measure. One can use a track bar but the toe has to be equal on both sides from the center line of the car. As to camber causing pulling, yes it can but it takes a significant difference between sides to do so. I set my own toe using a track gauge but there is a guy downtown who does old time cars for a living using tape measures, bubble gauges, and bars. He has a perfectly level rack, and his price is so reasonable it isn't worth screwing with it myself. Also Larry will let me stand by and over see the work. I have more faith in him than modern racks with lasers etc. Also, and this is a big also, everyone here should be periodically inspecting and measuring the tread wear on their tires. That will give them more information on what is going on with their bus suspension and tire pressures than any instrument. FWIW all the fine tuning at the track we used to do was relying on tire wear and a pyrometer.

http://www.warrenbrake.com/Warren_Brake_and_Suspension/Welcome.html
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[Abscate]

[Zed999]

[SGKent]

[Davydomes]

[Zed999]

Small world, not far away.
There are quite a few bay windows in the area but most disappear from view over the winter.

[tommu]

[SGKent]

[Zed999]

This is my 5th bus over 20 years and I spent 8 solid years fixing just T2's for a living during which time I drove hundreds. On my country commute I'd amuse myself by getting all 4 wheels off the ground at 70mph if the road was deserted which it normally was. Buses inherently drive superbly at speed over rough roads, it's one of the big pluses for me and only the self emptying cupboards slow me down.

But this bus has a problem that is not born of expecting it to drive like a car or naive driving expectations. We have windy bridges in the UK too where peoples poptops have been known to blow right off and disappear over the side. I still drive it at 70mph if the wind isn't sideways but there IS something wrong with it.

I've located several sets of springs, I think most likely a combination of that plus my oveoading habit are to blame. Fingers crossed.

[airschooled]

Other than the early bay steering box getting stiffer when overloaded, I’ve found excess wait to be borderline undetectable in the handling department. These cars do so well with loads between the axles that I almost prefer to drive mine fully loaded.

That being said, what tires are you running? What pressures are you running them at? I under-inflated my fronts last week and found the car very darty, as if it had too much toe out.

Robbie
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