Torsion bar indexing..NEED SOME HELP.

[Johnnyw]

Today I re-indexed my torsion bar on the passenger rear side. I have gathered information from various people and it seems with the rear rocker about 12 1/2 inches above ground and the rear arch at 28 1/2 inches with standard size tires this seems to be considered a standard ride height. I feel I’m currently sitting about 1 1/2 above normal ride height. Based on the factory manual the spring plate at 27° is considered a standard ride height. My goal today was to hit 27°. I was surprised when I checked the angle of the spring plate and it was at 25°. I proceeded to make changes to the inter and outer torsion bar spine settings to achieve a 27° angle. To my surprise, when everything was put together and the car lowered and driven a few miles I actually raised the right rear side about a half an inch.!!
Possibly I miss read the initial setting, but not the final setting of 27°. It’s my understanding to lower the car I should increase the spring plate angle. Is this correct??
Why does a 27° spring plate angle that’s recommended in the factory manual set the car well above standard ride height??. Obviously I missing something but not sure what. Any help and comments are certainly appreciated.

Regards, John.
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[mondshine]

No, increasing the spring plate angle will increase the car's ride height.

Think of it this way:
As you increase the spring plate angle, the spring plate end is closer to the ground. So by increasing the angle, the spring plate is pushing the body farther away from the ground, (raising the body).

Now that you've had some practice, it should be easy to make the correction you want.

Good luck.

[Johnnyw]

Mondshine.,

Thanks for your reply. It is always appreciated. After rereading some earlier information I realized I had it reversed. My goal was to achieve a 27° spring plate angle as stated in the factory manual. Also, I did check the level of the car before starting the process. I guess I’ll disregard the 27° angle and work from the tables to reduce the spring plate angle to achieve my ride height goal.

Thanks again for your reply, John.
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[mondshine]

Funny thing...

During my early days in The Thingdom, I had always gone by the spring plate angle as specified in the orange Bentley manual; I think it was 22º.

Then one day, I bought a Thing Shop reprint of an "official" 181 manual at a swap meet.

On the page that deals with spring plate angle, I was somewhat surprised to see that the original specification had been removed, and replaced with and a hand scribbled edit, (ostensibly) by the Thing Shop.

So WTF?
Like you, I believe that 27º is the target spring plate angle, but I have no credible confirmation for that specification.

Good luck, Mondshine

[Wildthings]

If ride height is higher than you want chose a lower angle and set both sides to it. For some reason I seem to remember using 23 1/2° but its been a decade plus so wouldn't be at all surprised if my memory was wrong. I might be able to find the gauge block I made to set the angle though and pick the angle off of it.


I don't remember is this was for my bus or for the Thing, but it makes for quick easy adjustment, with no worries about the car being level or if you are adding where you should be subtracting:

[modok]

The main problem is you went backward.
But why would the needed angle be different than the manual?
-car is lighter
-torsion bars are bigger than stock
or
-The spring plate angle specification is with the car level.
If the car is not perfectly level, say at a two degree angle higher in the back, you have to add that to your reading on the spring plate.

[DesertSasquatchXploration]

I would ditch the whole spring plate angle method Your just confusing yourself for no reason every car has different weights on different tires every driver is different some fat some not every torsion bar is different some are old and sagged out some are not. Let the car tell you want it wants scribe a line with the torsion bar unloaded that's your current setting you have a visual reference.

In this pic I wanted to raise the car a small amount. You can see the spring plate is just slightly lower then previous setting no guessing I know for a fact this going to give a me a lift. If its not enough I can go more and compare pictures. If you need to lower the car your going to cover up the line slightly scribe a new short line to mark your changes.

[Johnnyw]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Yes I understand now I was going the wrong direction but at the time my goal was to reach a 27° angle, which I did. As suggested, what I’ll do now is pick a number below 27 degrees, maybe 22 maybe 23 not sure yet.

Modok, you may have discovered the issue why the 27° angle didn’t work for me. Reading through some documents one of the previous owners had different torsion bars installed.

After I replace my garbage disposal and fix a couple of sprinklers I’ll get back to the Thing.

Once again, thank everyone for your contributions.

Regards, John.
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[Johnnyw]

An update:

Indexed the rear passenger torsion bar today. Moved from a 27° spring plate angle to a 22° angle. Doing this resulted in lowering the passenger side rear tire arch from 30 1/2 inches to 29 inches. Also lowered the rear rocker from 13 1/2 inches to 12 1/2 inches. Seems like the difference would be the same for both areas but it was not.
I’ll do the driver side in a couple of days and post the results at that time.

The torsion bar appear to be a new condition and measured a little over 24 mm. Appears to be a standard thickness.

Also, a special think you to “Mondshine” for posting pictures of his custom compression tool in other threads. I made something similar and it worked very well for me.

John
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[Johnnyw]

Update:

Re-indexed the driver side today. Made the same changes on the driver side as I did the passenger side by lowering the angle almost 5° which results in a 1.3 inch drop according to the charts. A quick measurement seems to confirm the 1.3 inch number. Both sides are within 1/4 to 3/8” of each other. This is the same number I had before starting this project. I thought I might try and fine-tune the difference, but in the heat of the battle, I decided to just go with the same Change as I did on the passenger side. The bolts and nuts on driver side were not in the same condition as the passenger side. I had to go with a couple of different sizes to get the car back on the ground. Will replace those at a later date.
Again, another thank you to Mondshine. He recommended loosely attaching the torsion bar cover before lifting the spring plate onto the perch. I did this, and although still difficult to tighten down the tightening process was much easier than before.

John
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[DesertSasquatchXploration]

Forget the angle method. You can lead a horse to water but cant make-em drink.

[Johnnyw]

After understanding the process better, the angle method worked well for me. I knew I wanted to lower the ride stance by about 1.25 inches. Referring to the tables I determined how many inner and outer spine changes I needed to make to achieve my goal. In my case I was looking for about a 5° angle change. Knowing my starting point it was easy to determine final angle. To me this makes more sense than trial and error and doing the process two or three times. I’m an old man doing this job by myself and I wanted to get close the first time. I am very happy with my results. I understand cars are different and torsion bars change over time. But to me, mathematics was on my side to get me close to my goal.

You can lead a horse to water but sometimes the horse feels water is better to drink elsewhere.
_________________
1997 Eurovan camper
1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA