Eyeball vs Mendeola Bot-on A-arm conversion
 

Guys.. anyone did a comparison between the two?

I am really impressed by what Bruce & the guys are doing over at Eyeball..
Their narrowed version (i think) will be useful for those who wanna stay with the stock fenders.. They cost $3,000 without spindles or brakes... no coilovers too i think. Not necessary a bad thing since one can use whatever they desire accordingly to their individual need.
However I am quite bummed about the obvious lack of a front sway bar..

Mendeola A-arm includes the lot at just under $4,000. Hmmm...

With my limited knowledge on suspension/steering geometry, I have no insight on any technical comparison.. Anyone?

Mendeola would win hands down for me, I really don't like using steering arm ball joints for wishbone joints, I've had bad experiences of this before...

I'm with ricola, The eyeball kit is overpriced and has a lot of slop built in by using ball joints. I'd be afraid to track that setup or even drive it home. The mendeola I've had eyes on since it was in hot vw's. I've been thinking of another fun project with a friend and it would probably get the mendeola front. It's just built right, double shear, sway bar mounts, and is compatible with super beetle pan heads.

I agree with Humble and Rich. Eyeballs goes some way there but on that arrangement I would use rod ends for ultimate adjustability. On both of them the arms could be longer given that its almost a clean sheet of paper. Mendeola's arms appear even shorter so the camber change will be harder to control in roll. If you are going to fit a double wishbone front why not go the whole hog and use very long arms with maybe bell cranks and monoshock? Or is that too radical?

Clive

I'm not totally thrilled with either, if I could I'd take the sway bar, structure, and some of the design of the Mendeola and mix it will the bolt on of the Eye-Ball. I spoke with the guys from Mendeola about this a long time ago, but they insisted it couldn't be made to bolt on, I don't think they tried hard enough. I suspect a version 2.0 or 3.0 out of Mendeola will be the hot ticket.

Jason

I think the latest version is mostly bolt-on with a little bit of welding for strength

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=401807

How does the Red 9 Design compare?

I've been searching alternate front end solutions as an exercise and found this forum. While they deal with the more 'rod type stuff this suspension solution looked at the least interesting.
http://www.shoptalkforums.com/viewto...p?f=33&t=68746

Anyone know anything about it?
http://www.wizrod.pwp.blueyonder.co....ifs1_small.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_a4hBuFEztOQ/TQ.../FrontEnd4.jpg

I also was turned onto this one as well. This one is designed for a volksrod (I think) and includes a 12 inch stretch built in.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_a4hBuFEztOQ/TQ.../FrontEnd1.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_a4hBuFEztOQ/TQ.../FrontEnd2.jpg
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_a4hBuFEztOQ/TQ.../FrontEnd3.jpg

What operates the rockers on the volksrod front end?

It appears that the upper a-arm is attached to the rocker.

That's what I thought but couldn't believe it! The classic way is to use struts off the bottom ball joint area working a crank that then gives the opportunity to vary the ride height and the wheel rate without touching the coilover unit. The arrangement shown is very neat and without any other indication you would swear it hadn't got any suspension with the body on.

Clive

Seriously cool for looks that's for sure.

I have not been in these forums for a long time. Sorry.

Here are pictures of what you get for $3300 (everything from spindle to spindle) and it will fit under type one stock fenders. the last picture is the rear kit. This kit allows for camber and toe adjustments to truely tighten the handling up. Our test car put down 1.05 "G's".

I understand that people are still trying to figure out what the differences are between the A-arm kits. Here is what I posted up for some guys over on the Samba....


Just looking at them the Mendeola looks to be beefier and stronger. Welding is always fun so I wouldn't mind that, but I'm not to keen on the big in your face advert for their company on it, kinda vain. I'd say leave that off and give me a decal I could put on the window if I wanted to. The UK model looks good, but I like the videos on the eyeball site. What's funny is in my Jegs catalog you could buy one of these for a Mustang for about $2k or less, so why are these so expensive? I like the other products on the Mendeola site and wouldn't mind an entire pan from them, if it didn't cost so much. I'm not naive, I'd rather pay for quality than for some cheaply made crap, but someone on these websites needs to say WHY their product is better than another, not just because they say so. Look at Jack Raby at aircooled.net YEARS of testing go into his products and he's not afraid to show off the test data to prove why his stuff rocks.


Sorry,
I had to jump in here on this one.
Like Jake Raby we spent and spend endless amounts of time to fully refine our products. If you look into our transaxle line we've been known for quality products.
Our new chassis line went thru a lot of testing. We first looked at the Red 9 and the Eyeball, we also looked at the Pete's a-arm bolt on kit. They all had good and bad points. Just for the sake of examples here are some of the things we did and did not like. Also to achieve the high level of performance we wanted, we had to design our own.
Please understand we are only pointing out our findings before designing our own. Hell, we made our front end handle so well we needed to design a rear system to tighten up the rear suspension also. Our rear kits features the same great Fox racing shocks, a rear sway bar, toe and camber adjustments. Originally we did not intend to sell these to the public, however after I drove one of these and being a VW guy for over 20 years, I knew I had to make these available to all type 1 based vehicles.

Red 9:
The good
good design
very strong

The bad
no sway bar
shipping cost
wait time to clear customs
very little adjustability
steering knuckles being bolted onto the spindles

Eyeball:
The good
bolts on with out removing the body

The bad
Difficult adjustments. in a-arms
No sway bar at the time we looked it over
Bolts being in sheer
Overall design seemed to light weight possibly a little weak?
Reeling on the sheet metal portions of the pan to support the twist
the use of tie rods in key pivot positions

Pete's A-arm kits
The good
plenty strong
bolt on
uses a stock beam style bolt on frame so that the weight of the car is supported just like it was originally Bolts not in sheer

The bad
not very adjustable
no sway bar
not really designed for street cars more for off road
out weighed a stock beam by 12 lbs
Cost (you still have to get spindles and buy the sway bar)

As far as the MENDEOLA name on it. It's not that we are trying to show off or act like we are better then anyone else. It is to protect our investment. We have 6 major lines of transaxles in current production and a few years back we had a company copy three of the 6 lines. They splashed almost every part. You could even see our Mendeola name in their first cases. Needless to say they saw the inside of the court room a few times over this. Having our name on it does two things. For us it protects our investment. For the customer it say quality. If you ever want to sell your car it will add value.

If you want one of our High Performance a-arm kits or our rear kit here is the link to our add on the Samba
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifie...php?id=1076832
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifie...php?id=1076832