Would it be better to just start from a new bulkhead altogether? rather than work with the set designed one? use a different gastan(or Porsche one) etc....


E

The only reason I'm keeping all the stock chassis is that someday I will take it off this bug and put it on another. I want it to bolt on and off, maybe even build kits to sell so others can do the same.

The design I'm working towards also gives space for a radiator WITHOUT cutting body metal, allowing a radiator to be place where the beam used to be.

Jason

I personally think that working from the existing chassis is the best bet, however working around the front framehorn is really limiting, so I intend to cut it off.

once I get the front done I'm going to look into doing the rear suspensiom as well.

Only factor is I don't want to cut the body, pans are disposable (got access to as many as I could want.)

Pics!
 

Shadowbug, got to see some pics for your progress. How bout adding another page to your site?

Jason

got sidetracked by other stuff, currently in the process of incorperating my business
DSS Web Services

Progress is coming along so well. All the varaiable seem to be taken care of, and now its down to the final details of bolting to the pan, and I have yet to tackle the link from the steering shaft to the steering rack input shaft, but I'm not to worried. Here's a taste of one of the plans we've been working off.

Front Plate

Jason

Pictures man, pictures! :D We would love to see the progress as well.


E

hey i was just browsing the photos over on the Samba and came across this design looks very nice may give you guys some ideas

http://thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_p...p?pic_id=84705

Look good. I wonder if anyones ever driven it. Nicely done from what I can see.

Jason

OK, watcha think?

http://www.geocities.com/volkdent/FrontEnd.html

Jason

Sure looks purdy Jason. I see accommodations for camber adjustment, what about caster? Shims at the inboard upper control arm mount (front to back)?

The angled shock placement - though looking good and in all aspects "classic", results in falling rate on the spring rate, pretty much opposite of what you want. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of ways around it unless you go with a push/pull rod system and rockers like a modern formula car set-up. Just something to be aware of (if you weren't already).
I'm guessing you've worked out the camber curves, what kind of ride height is it optimized for? Any anti-dive incorporated?

Any of the parts off the shelf except for the spindles and ball joints, like the a-arms? How much do you figure it'll cost you to build it, roughly? When I was briefly looking into this for my car I was thinking around $2.5K.
(Sorry for the 20 questions!) :laugh:
Jeff

All of the designs look grea. I like the fact that it may also add some weight to the fron of the car as well as more controlled handling. Price, what price? lol



Ephry

I've asked the designer about the anti-dive and more castor adjustment, but he says that for the travel we are working at, that it really won't be a factor. Apparently anti-dive is for cars that dive, which this one won't. Hot rods with big V8s over the front end and traditional big NA cars may need this, according to him, but this little bug with controlled limited travel won't need it.

I personally would like more castor adjustment built in, as the only castor adjustment now will be by the stock eccentric bushing, but this suspension is designed specifically for my car, so the castor is already dialed into the design. I have a small rake on my car though, so I do wonder if I'll need any more. This is prototype 1.0, so there will be some kinks to work out when it gets on the road I'm sure.

Everything is custom, except for the rack, tie rods and ends, spindles, and balljoints. Once all the kinks are out, I'll be looking into finding parts that might work that are off the shelf, perhaps at a slightly wider track etc.

Jason

Ooops, oh yah, Cost? what ephry said. I've so far spent about $1100 just designing this thing, so I'm really not counting pennies. I have a pile of spindles, brakes, balljoints, bushings, and a few other things that I've purchased but where discarded as plans changed. I really haven't been keeping score, as it really doesn't matter, the end result is the end result, whatever the cost. I will have the best double wishbone suspension I've ever seen on a AC VW, and it will bolt on, so that says something when there have been a few million of these little bugs running all over the world with people as crazy as me thinking about this possibility.

Jason

The Mustang II hardware might be of some interest. All the stuff is readily available, nice (Wilwood) brake set-ups, all off the shelf. Some of the parts are a little expensive, depending on who makes and sells, one of the more interesting sites I've come across (from a cost perspective) for this hardware is Speedway Motors:
http://www.speedwaymotors.com/default.asp
Click on theit Street Rod products, then down to Chassis and Mustang II suspension and (tubular) controll arms. I know using 'merican products on the old Bug might rub some folks the wrong way - but you can't beat the availability of mass produced parts. This suspension design (and supporting parts) doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. All you'd need is a custom subframe (like the one you're developing) that accepts the bolt-on tubular MII arms, spindles, brakes, R&P, etc. Having the subframe available allows the user to pick and choose from various manufacturers for the other items. Their complete tubular kit, including rack and (vented) brakes is $1400. Just need the appropriate subframe to attach it to! You have to admit, that would make a nice tidy package. Only drawback I can see is the available bolt patterns - but lots of alternate (non German) rims available. Wilwood might even have a blank hub and rotor combo that could be set up for 5 x 130mm. Might have to call it "German Resto-Mod Look". :cool:

Don't get me wrong, one-off is cool and can be beautifully done, but unless you go into production for all the custom items, if one ever needs to replace anything they'd have to start from scratch. I'm doing the same on a rear suspension, all mostly custom. I wish there were off the shelf parts I could use, but the stuff isn't out there. Just thinking out loud - you're custom suspension looks great Jason, definitely looking forward to hearing how it works on the road!
Jeff

That sounds very good. I wonder how one can build it at home with just the parts that work(hint) I like the fact that one can turn a standard VW and turn it into something worthy of the German Look name. Plus, being able to add just a little more weight to the front of the car is always a good thing to balance things out.



Ephry

It sure does sound good Ephry. In fact, it sounds so good I think I've talked myself into doing just that! My car is a tube frame buggy anyway - what's a few more tubes to mount those A-arms! This is a big decision - I'm already heavily invested in an all new Balljoint suspension with all the tricks, custom Wilwood brakes, plated custom drilled & studded rotors, dropped CB spindles, Bilsteins, etc. etc. etc. It's a tough call, I'm going to have to give this some serious thought........ :idea:
Jeff

You can always keep the brake setup and such. are the spindles for disc brakes? if so, you may have found a buyer for them already :D



E

Not to throw a big monkey wrench into this whole thing, but this was discussed before. The problem is getting the roll centers correct and then matching up a rack. If you can work out the correct geometry with those, please let me know, as just getting some hubs redrilled for some metric pattern would be a snap. I still don't like the idea of adding Standard parts to a Metric car, but for the cost savings you probably couldn't argue. Just order them up already!

Pure55 made up his own for very little I'm sure, but if you'll read the "Double Wishbone Suspension" post, you'll read that currently the ride is twitchy at speed. I really admire the work he's put into the whole setup, but unfortunately I think he's going to find that the geometry of the whole setup is what is causing the problem.

Off the shelf works for the products they were built for, not for others usually. I may work backwards once I've got everything lined up, but to work forwards for a pile of parts isn't the way to build a correctly functioning suspension system as far as I can tell.

I'm hoping that in the end this system will be available for sale. Not cheap, but available. Once all the tweaks are done I can make a jig and then reproduce them relatively easily. I'm also aware of someone else who's building a doulbe wishbone setup. Currently he's built a rod style one. It is of tubular construction and should be good.

The reason I'm going with the laser cut plates is space. I'm planning on running a radiator in front of the beam area, but behind the body, with ducting to draw the air through. I need the space under there that a tube style one would take up.

Jason

Jason

Drawing looks good the only thing i find that may end up being a problem is the lower shock mount. It apears to be welded under the bottom A arm.
http://home.comcast.net/~1badz/frontendproblem.jpg

It seams that this could be a potential weak point would it be better to weld that mount on top of the a arm that weld could break over time when hitting a lot of bumps or pot holes or apex curbs racing.

Just my 2 cent worth might be something to look into.

The strength is the same whether its on top or on the bottom, so that's really not an issue. As far as hitting curbs there, if that happens to hit a curb, there are many other issue more important than that, for example it will be ripping off the whole bottom of the car. From the ground to that point is at least 6 inches I think, so the suspension would have to be in compression and going over something very bad to be able to hit that. This won't be a rally car, or a hardcore track car for that matter. It's supposed to be a daily driver with autocross or track day potential.

Jason

Agree on your points Jason - Ideally you start from scratch and work it from the ground up - optimizing roll centers, camber gain, all the important pick-up points and details. Sometimes you can reverse engineer a bit, using off the shelf parts as much as possible - similar to what you're doing with the spindles, etc. Sometimes this works out OK, sometimes it ends up being a hack job just to make parts work together that were never intended to. IMO, it takes a real artist to do this (not that I'm even close!), make it work well and look like it was designed that way - as I'm sure you've found out! What the hey though - I wrote Speedway to see if they'll divulge the A-arm C-C lengths and overall front to back widths, in addition to the OEM track width of the M-II. At least get some idea if it's at all feasible. Model it a little and see if it'll even fit, what the compromises are. At a minimum you'll be converting the car to front steer, which is a pretty significant change in iteslf! That might ease up on those steering shaft u-joint angles though.
Jeff

Bob, (the designer) has been under the weather lately, and although we are apparently very close to the design being completely finished, the last details are not yet finished so I have to wait till Bob's back on his feet again.

The custom struts for the rear turned into going with the KW Variant III coilovers that fit a MKII body. I wasn't going to have the travel I needed with the modified strut, thus the stock fitment size, so I'm going to have to cut a hole in the top part of the wheel well for the strut to go through to the inner superstructure. Anyway, they showed up and their gorgeous, I can't wait to get this thing on the road!

Jason

Design is complete now. Next up fabrication.

Front End

Looks great. What shock/coil combinations are you looking at?

This looks very interesting, when do you think it will be ready to sell?

Shock is currently a QA1 unit, spring to be determined once the car touches terra firma on rubber again and is weighed. I'd like to get an Ohlins remote reservoir one eventually, but I just want to get this thing running first, then I'll spend the even bigger bucks to get the really good stuff.

As far as when to sell, that one is still up in the air. Bob has mailed me a CD with all the files on it, and I just got a call today that for some reason the price of laser cutting the plates went up from $250 to $300 out of the blue, no changes or nothing!

The original estimate was just for the plates, but Bob has included more parts to be laser cut, as they will be far less expensive then if Walt has to custom fab them up.

Jason

volkdent what spindles do you plan on using? CB Stock other?

thanks
rip

Currently the design uses Karmann Ghia spindles, so stock KG. With the same geometry you can use stock drum spindles then to a disc brake conversion. The idea is to keep it simple and use the parts that most cars already have. Using dropped spindles will lower the car more, but the geometry will be off from the ideal the suspension is designed for. As it is, the car will be very low with the current design, you'd be scraping with dropped spindles.

Bob sent me a CD with all the parts of the design on it as well as a 3D model of it. Walt from Walt's Custom Services has it in his hands, and I'm waiting to hear back from him as to what is next.

Jason

volkdent (or any one else of course ;) )with all of this homework you've been doing i was wondering if you've run across the difference between the upper and lower ball joints?

On a lot of double wishbone suspensions the lower arm takes the load, and the upper simplily supports the spindle through the motions. But, does this mean that the lower ball joints are made differently. Other than the fact that the mounting of the lower and upper ball joint differs, if they could be interchanged, would it work?

Can one upper balljoint work for anothers lower?

thanks
Rip

The lower balljoint takes most of the load, its true. The orginal plan for this crazy project was the use of Porsche 928S spindles. The lower balljoints are quite heavy duty, but it IS a V8, and we are working on a VW, much lighter. I had reservations at first, but after reassurances from many sources, I am using the stock VW lower balljoint, and a Ford Galaxy tie rod end for the top one. I have a pair of Volvo P1800 lower balljoints that fit. They are designed for that location, as that car is double wishbone as well. They are a lot more bulky, and the attachement is odd compared to how cleanly the VW one will work. It may have to be changed later, but that's what we've come up with thus far. The VW ones are not interchangable as far as I know, as the top one is longer to go through the eccentric and the thick washer.

Jason

I really really really really really want this to work and quick! You know not to rush you. I just placed an order with cb performance for my new puma beam, dropped spindles, and other misc. stuff then I read all about this new a-arm setup your building. All i want is the estimated time frame, so just in case I can post pone the front suspension and move to the rear and cancel my order. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS or else they'll send my order and you'll lose a customer on this slick concoction (spelling?). :bawling:

There is at least a couple more months before the actual suspension is built. Then it has to be thoroughly tested and tweaked to make sure its up for sales quality. Then theres the possible rebuilding to be able to produce it more inexpensively and quickly. I'd get let your order carry through, because though its going to be amazing when it's all said and done, given how long it's taken to get this far, I'm not thinking its going to be ready for sale for at least 6 months, maybe longer.

Fortunately, except for the beam, all the parts you'll be ordering now will bolt right up to the final product I'm putting together. What I don't know about is if it will be TOO low for you, as it is currently designed with stock KG spindles, and to be a good low ride height. Also, the dropped spindles may actually create geometry that is detrimental to the performance being designed into the system in question.

Sorry its not ready now, I know that I would have loved to just plunk down the cash for this thing myself, but be warned, this will be a large chunk of change when it is ready for sale as well.

jason

Jason
This is by far the sickest setup
Iv been dreaming of this day..
I will get 1 for sure.. Thats a nobrainer
So after you make it,Test,Tweak,test,tweak..
You say 6mo or so..
Sounds good ..
whan you say Avalible But not cheap is that in the
$1500-2500 or $2600+
Thanks Man I just want to be the first to send a check
Peace Troy
P.S.
Whats Instore for the rear?

Hey Troy,

Cost wise I really don't know.

Honestly, I'm just maintaing the energy to actually finish this thing. The idea of making a jig and going through the motions again isn't something I'm thinking about right now. I just want one for me first! It's been a VERY, VERY long haul, and has consumed a lot of my time and money, but once all the kinks are out, it would be much easier to reproduce.

I just emailed the laser cuttting place again, so hopefullly this week I get a quote.

As far as the rear end is concerned, it is currently composed of VW mkII lower control arms and subframe and KW Variant III coilover struts.

Jason

No biggy
I can only pretend i know what was invalved in this project..
very intence..
With all the prep work & Detail hope you wont have many things to tweak..
Many Thanks Troy

FINALLY! Yesterday I got a reply from the laser cutter. The quote was $500 for cutting and some press brake work. So, theoretically, a couple of weeks from now I should have many of the parts needed to start fabrication, and I'll be sending everything to Walt to get going on it. Is that a small flicker of light I see at the end of the tunnel?

Jason

And it's a really bright light!

Just got this file from Bob. It is a 3D model of the entire suspension. If anyone wants to see this thing in real time, drop me an email and I'll send it to you.

You'll need this reader:

http://www.modelpress.com/download.htm

Laser cut parts should be done on Monday, then Walt confirmed he's ready to get started fabbing this thing up.

Jason

Suspension Mods
 

Hi, is anyone doing any mod for a super?