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Mr Bill, What part of TX are you in? Let me know what time to call. I know when I’m in Houston it’s an hour later here than there. I would have to agree that there is something shady with the ball joints or install job if your spindles are binding with no tie rods hooked up. Even if your control arms were out of index again you should not get binding from it. There would have to be a huge amount of pressure either against or in tension of the ball joints to produce binding from the control arms, and I doubt you’d be able to assemble them if there was. They should be stiffer than the old ones were that were worn out but I can’t imagine that you’d feel any significant amount of stiffness through the steering wheel. There’s definitely something out of whack. I’m going to dig through some of my repair info and see what I can find.
They won’t necessarily hang at the same exact angle, but they should be close. That’s why I said it sounded like you had one the upper indexed 90* out on your first assembly, and it’s easy to do.
How hard are the spindles to move back and forth with the tie rods disconnected? Also, if your have your steering boxrotated on the beam too high or too low it could cause some amount of binding, but it shouldn’t be too significant. I would start by disconnecting your tie rods and cycle your steering box lock to lock. If you don’t have any binding there, grab each spindle and move it back and forth to see if either/both bind up. If they’re free, reconnect everything and cycle the steering with no weight on it. If there is no binding there then let the car back down and see what happens. If it starts to bind now then you probably have an issue with the steering box either having really worn components that are binding up under load, or maybe it is rotated out of index and binding the tie rods or another suspension component. <> Here’s another thing I just thought of…I can’t remember if it’s possible or not, but check to see if your pitman arm is mounted upside down and causing the tie rod to hit the steering arm or any other components. And here’s one obvious question but I’ll ask anyway so as to leave nothing out…Are the tie rods mounted so that the right is on the right side of the pitman and the left on the left side of the pitman? It might be helpful to have someone else turn the wheel while you watch what’s going on up front. If you can post a pic of your steering box area let’s have a look at it.
willie239578.4706018519
Mr Bill, It sounded to me like you had the top set of springs out of index a quarter turn. If I were to venture a guess I would have told you to take your upper control arms off and index your springs around then reinstall the control arms. Your upper and lower spring packs were fighting each other. Sounds like you have everything put back together correctly now. If you are using used springs and non-gas shocks you should find you get very little settling effect. Even though you removed leaves, you basically corrected the spring rate back to somewhere near the original bias which should already be settled out. Good luck!
Some of you may find that you will need to buy shocks for a lowered front beam. Lowered or raised front beams whether balljoint or kingpin style can be bought through a number of mail order houses or just about any dune buggy shop. Cofap has been a name that has been around aftermarket vw stuff for a long, long time. One of the suggestions in this thread was to get a set of coil-over shocks to try out. The problem with that is you will increase your spring rate which is counterproductive to what you are trying to achieve. You want to reduce your spring rate to something more adequate for the weight bias and lower the ride height to your taste. The only way (and the cheapest) to properly accomplish this is to buy an adjustable beam and remove some leaves. Turning the OD of the torsion bars in the rear is a good way to soften it up. You’ll want to make sure the OD is polished after it gets turned so you don’t leave any stress risers in the torsion bars. You also want to make sure that you put them back in the side they came from. It is also helpful to mark everything prior to removal so they are indexed right when they go back in. Chasing an uneven suspension because the rear torsion bars are out of index from side to side is a royal pain!
Well that answers that I suppose. For the record though, I have my own machine shop and do fabricating and welding as well. I have scratch-built frames for tubbed street rods and the like so I wasn’t really worried about that part. I also have pretty good working knowledge of vw’s from building 6 rail buggys over the years. Having no knowledge of these bodies (yet) I figured I’d ask. I don’t know why the body would “have” to be lengthened and widened due to front engine rear drive. We’ve stuffed v-8’s into chevettes, vegas, mgb’s, and even a big block in a late sixties beetle with a full cage, front engine, mustang II suspension, etc, but I guess I’ll have to size up the body a little better when I get hold of it. I was mainly looking to see if there were any truly negative reasons why it wouldn’t be practical, and I have my answer now.
I’ll know more about this thing soon enough I suppose. As to why I would want to vs. something else; I’ve always liked these kits since I was a kid, they have great classic lines, and I like doing things a little different than the next guy. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t v-dub this one and get another one to play with. From what I read here it appears that once you have one, they get under your skin pretty good and you starting looking for another to save…
