narrowed irs

[roo]

well i'm in the process of narrowing my rear irs and have the torsion tube narrowed 2" per side and have learned alot. the process is really not hard. i used hose clamps to guide my cuts and used a 4.5" grinder with a cutoff wheel for cutting but had to break out the hacksaw to finish off the cut. the reinforcement tab from the tosion housing to the rear cross bar has to be cut and i ground it flush and did a little grinding and filing on the torsion housing and you'd never know there was a tab there. the spring plate mount on the trailing arms i ground the three welds i could get at with a die grinder and torched the one weld i couldn't get at off. i did a little measuring and the pitch of the trailing arm pivot bolt is 9/32"rise per inch so in my case the swing arm pivot has to be moved back towards the rear of the car 9/16" (9/32 x 2"narrowed = 9/16). since i'm using a hiem this will be easy. with the spring plate mount off the trailing arm i drill and tapped it out so there are 5 holes instead of 4. since its tapped i can bolt the spring plate from the back and lose my outside spring plate and this actually gains me an extra 1/2" or better. measured from the drum to my springplate mount is now 8.5". not bad for a couple days work! i'm going to use coilivers but i may have to fab up a new upper mount much like 55superbeetle because of the angle of the shock. i don't think this is a problem on swing axle cars converted to irs since the upper shock mount isn't angled but once i get it figured out i'll let you guys know. ps i have pics of the proccess but need time to get them up.