996 vs bug back end

[speedy]

anybody know the disk face to disk face measurements, the reason is that there have been several 996 complete rear suspension setups on ebay for between 400 and 600 pounds , i am putting a full internal cage in my car next year and was going to tie in the gearbox mounts and do away with the frame horns for easy porsche gbox addition , the thing is by the time you have paid out for the rose plates and rear shocks etc you begin to wonder weather it would be more cost effective and give a far superior ride to make a suspension jig to locate the new 996 suspension and weld that in to the cage as well , anyway i have 2" over wings so probably have about 150-180mm of additional trackwidth over a standard bug to play with without to many probs .
any ideas cheers jon

[ricola]

That definitely sounds like a good idea if do-able, I'm getting more and more extreme with my plans for the cabrio under the skin so may well end up doing a full chassis at this rate!

I have some technical data from Paul Frere's book:

996 rear track with 17" wheels is 1500mm (1480mm with 18" wheels) so if you know stock wheels specs you can work disc to disc width out..
You may end up not using the Porsche central section and could tune the width to what you want, although keeping it stock would help keep things simple with driveshafts and geometry.
Car width is 1765mm but I presume that would include wing mirrors...

Rich

Keep us updated with progress!

[ricola]

I've just measured my chassis as the body is off at the moment...

IRS with 944 trailing arms and 996 rear brakes the track is 1560 (measured approximately at outside of rims which are 17" x7J cup 2s et55).

[Steve C]

Hi

That sounds very interesting, this info may help you. On my 1303 I measured wheel bolt face to wheel bolts face.
Type 3 drums 1405 mm with stock Beetle IRS arms
early 944 alloy arms 1490 mm with stock 944 discs

A Porsche suspension guru was telling me about this and that for the quality of the parts that you would need to buy from a dealer, they are reasonably priced.

Steve

[speedy]

v, interesting, so if i am reading this correctly the rear end of a 996 is the same as if not narrower than a bug with porsche 944 a arms on , to be honest i am a little suprised by this , but the numbers seem to be similair so from a first appraisal it seems a very real possibility, more reserch required , i will keep you up to date with any new info
cheers
jon

[speedy]

here is a website with all the track with stats, anybody know how track width is measured ,is it middle of tyre to middle of tyre or disk face to disk face , from these specs it all looks pretty promisinghttp://www.paul-stephens.com/data_911b.htm

[ricola]

I'm sure it won't be based on disc to disc measurement.
I was speaking to Mike Ghia about this earlier, he has bought a 993 rear end for his project car. He says track is normally measured at the centre of the contact patch which would make sense. More so when you see that track gets narrower with wider wheels, I guess they bring more of the width inboard than outboard.

[Steve C]

Hi

Track is measured from the centre of the tyre, then you need to add the wheel ET to calculate disk face to disk face.

Steve

Originally Posted by Steve C

early 944 alloy arms 1490 mm with stock 944 discs

Steve,

Are these Turbo parts? What year alloy arms? By early I assume you mean the narrow 85.5~86 parts? Where's these the same for turbo and non, or is that just on the later wide alloy arms?

Peace be with you.

[Steve C]

Hi

These are early NA alloy arms, the steel 944 arms & brakes will give around 50 mm increase over stock steel VW arms.

Steve