Questions about Big Als ride

[DORIGTT]

Thanks for the reply Big Al.

What plans do you have for converting the front suspension over?

Will it improve high speed stability or are the two suspension types similar at 100+ mph speeds on track?

Would converting the car over to a steering rack help the steering issues? I would think other than using a 356 steering box(shorter ratio) that a rack would be the best way to go with the beam suspension.

Also, what alignment settings are you using with the beam suspensions?

Are those Bilstien suspension components available for shipment to the USA?

I would like to use coil-overs to be able to fine-tune the setup I-ve got, but have only seen rear coil-overs.

Thanks for your help.

[Steve C]

Hi Alex

That must be my wing?

Steve

[Vincent]

that wing looks sweet cant wait to see it installed on a car.

[Big Al]

Thats the wing Steve!

DORIGTT, For the suspention coversion i will use a superbug chassis and fabricate some strut towers and put the chassis straight under my body. The struts will improve suspention travel and give me the ability to play with spring rates much easier.
The steering rack will not gather me more steering lock, but will allow me to position the rack inorder to get the best geometry possible. So at ride hight the arms off the rack are straight not on a angle when the car is lowered, And have shoter ratio steering (1.1:1). With the beam we run about 1-2mm toe in to allow for any slop in the balljoints, I run 3 degrees of camber on the front and 2.5 degrees of caster for the track. With a street car that would be to much camber.

The Bilstien parts are for the strut beetle and are available for shipment to the USA.

Is your car beam or strut?

Cheers alex

[Wild Willy]

Hi brother Al. Good to see you here on the world stage.

[DORIGTT]

My car has the beam front suspension Alex.

According to a guy I spoke/had an email dialoge with, some of the fastest cars in the racing series found at www.boxerpokal.de are the the beam suspension cars. I've been having a serious internal battle with myself as to which way to go. Keeping the beam suspension is obviously easier, but for what I'm going to be using it for will it be best?

Here is a quote from the e-mail that I got from this gentleman.


"Hi Kevin,

of course it's easier to turn a 02 or 03 into race car but the 1200 just
looks better ;-)

For SPAX racing suspension you can look here:
http://www.spax.co.uk/SPAX-competition-page.html
To use them in a beetle you have to remove the torsion bars and replace them
by a axle with ball bearings (hard to explain - especially in english).

I used one 19mm anti roll bar in the front and a 14mm one (Porsche 944) in
the rear for hill races and added a second one for track racing
(http://www.csp-shop.de/cgi-bin/shop2...&wkid=69585125
440)."


"I only used SPAX G616 for the front - for the rear I used Bilstein shocks
and Porsche 944 turbo torsions bars (more due to evolution than any other
reason).
Clearance is not a problem - lots of space left...
The 1st and 2nd place of the German Boxerpokal 2004 (www.boxerpokal.de) went
to 1200, not 1303 Beetles :-)
But it's easier to adjust the front suspension of a 1303 - takes quite some
time to find a good setup for the 1200 front shocks.
But the big advantage of the 1200 is the weight - as soon as you know how to
setup your front, a 1200 should be faster than a 1303..."

This goes against alot of what people think is the hot set-up for the VW aircooled cars. But the record speaks for itself I guess.