Its also a good idea to re route the rear caliper brake pipes to under the a arm, or at least to the rear of the a arm upper seam, its a perfect scissor crush job in the stock position, i see them crushed on a regular basis, heavy engines cycle through the suspension travel range more and its more of a problem on really low cars, but they can be crushed on not so low cars with just cut down bump stops, i replace many in the 'shop and re route them as required.

Nothing new on the bug, it just gets driven with no issues! All I've done is to wire up the brake warning light in the multigauge to come on with the radiator fan as I can't hear it with the engine running!

My main news is that I sold my 996 Carrera 2 and bought this as my new daily:

http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/misc/996t_1.jpg

http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/misc/996t_2.jpg

The bug is still quicker in a straight line until aero effects come in but this thing certainly shifts around the twisty bits!

Must be fun/interesting the first time you compared the turbo bug to the porsche turbo after more then just one test drive :-)

Nice car, though the color of the P is a bit boring though...

I know what you mean Wally, but the last thing you want is to stand out in traffic in something this fast!

Bugshow 2014
 

I finally got to meet Richard at bugshow, his Convertible is just awesome :eek::eek:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/280...536/w8VE3S.jpg

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/280...538/23nYpK.jpg

Yes,the convertible is awesome! That Karmann is fantastic also!

That one picture shows 2 of the 4 most amazing Vdubs I know of! Nice work on the Turbo P car!

Jason

Time for a mini project! A while back during the MOT test I was slightly concerned with how much the wheels moved about when the tester spread the front axle on the pads. Having seen a few designs of A arms at Spa and online on the boxergasse forum I've decided to give it a go myself! I wanted to do it as a completely bolt on swap. Part of this change is to de-couple the stock anti-roll bar from the geometry so this will be spaced down underneath the A arm. I've seen people put it above but my radiator is in the way and I have plenty of ground clearance.
The inner spherical joint will be M10 and the forward tension link section will be M14, I will also be using sealed boots to keep them weather tight. At the spindle I'm using the original design ball joint. Some people re-position the lower axis as they run very low.

Before I took the stock suspension off, I put the car on stands and with the steering dead ahead and a vertical level marked up the position to the floor. This is obviously just to get the geometry about right, I can fine tune it afterwards.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_geo.jpg

The key part to the swap is creating a forward bracket, this aluminium block spaces the anti-roll bar downwards with the stock saddle clamp and gives plenty of meat to mount the forward joint.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_block.jpg

The block fitted, not how it is fitted to the chassis form. My mate, Seb, machined up some tube end fittings for it.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabri...ock_fitted.jpg

The first lateral link tacked together
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_lateral.jpg

and fitted to the car, now to align the hub and measure up for the tension link. The last bit will be to work out how to connect the anti-roll bar.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabri...ral_fitted.jpg

Inspiring thoughts & work as usual

It's gunna be cool!

Tension link tacked in at nominal geometry position. Some people will fit a clevis type joint to the lateral part but I only wanted minimal adjustment. Welded will give better stiffness.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabri...al_tension.jpg

I trawled ebay for a nice short anti-roll bar that I thought I could adapt and ended up with this from a Mk2 Ford Mondeo, less than £5 delivered for the pair! It was a case of making up some fairly simple adapters to bolt on to the standard 1303 anti-roll bar ends.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabri..._drop_link.jpg

Brackets to weld on to the new A arms
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabri...nk_adapter.jpg

Finished A arm ready for paint
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_welded.jpg

Finished 'kit' ready to be fitted! Note I did machine down the blocks some more compared to earlier pictures to maintain the stock pick up position heights and maximise ground clearance.
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_kit.jpg

Ball joint pressed in and rod ends adjusted with their rubber boots to give them a bit more life
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_ready.jpg

All done!
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_fitted.jpg

Closer view of one side..
http://www.ricola.co.uk/images/cabrio/Aarm_fitted1.jpg

So, the verdict: in summary well worth it! The front end feels so much more alive and communicative but NVH is hardly affected at all. The tyres seem to work a lot better as they are not moving around so much and the steering is even a bit lighter too. Even on motorways you can feel what's going on with the most subtle of movements. Overall it just gives so much more confidence in what the car i doing and that means a lot!

For anybody else that wants to try something similar this is what I used:

Inner joints: M10 male rod ends with high misalignment spacers

Forward joints: M14 rod ends with standard misalignment spacer, additional 18mm spacer inboard

Stock lower strut ball joints

1 1/2" diameter 0.1" wall thickness CDS tubing

Mk 2 Ford Mondeo/Cougar rear anti-roll bar links

If you can't work out the rest then frankly you probably shouldn't be trying to copy it!!

Impressive work, as always! Very nice.

+1!

Very nice as always. Thanks for sharing, I may just have to do it!

This may sound a little anticlimactic, but I wanted to throw a bit of caution towards an awesome design. Where the 2 major control arm tubes meet and are welded I'd like to see some sort of gusset. These old super bodies move more than we think, so I can imagine a weld fatigue occurring at that point. Years ago while doing a track event at Laguna Seca I witnessed a prototype lower control arm fail on a S4 and it wasn't pretty. Just imagine sudden failure of that weld joint. Some sort of gusset would either prevent that or at least provide a preview. I love the concept, especially the sway bar!

Jason