944 turbo spindles, steering geometry

Wally · #1 January 25th 2008, 05:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by punchbuggyracer

you guys who are running the 944 turbo front calipers and spindles on your 1303's, do you need to bend the steering arm to replicate the 1303 to improve the steering geometry?

No, never bend steering tie rods!
I did need to lengthen the tie-rods tho. I have the steering rack ('75 1303), so that may be a small difference to your set-up.

Early porsches all convert to 'turbo-tie-rods' for much improved handling, so I guess we need to do that as well as our tie-rods are even longer than porsche's and our heavy porsche wheels and bigger heavier disk brakes don't help either.
Lanner offers a thicker wall tie-rod and I have asked him to make me a set (custom length).

Walter

super vw · #2 January 26th 2008, 12:52

The length issue on tierods for a non-rack and pinion Super beetle can be cured by simply useing the longer rack and pinion tierods, then put your normal tierod ends on. This eliminates any "to short" tierod assemblies that you will come up with (having only 4 or so threads is not safe).

yetibone · #3 January 26th 2008, 15:56

I used one '77 Transporter tie rod to make the lengths correct on my 1303.

super vw · #4 January 26th 2008, 17:56

Nice, the late R&P super beetle tie rods are about 2" longer than the earlier setup if I remember right.

punchbuggyracer · #5 January 29th 2008, 09:21

I had no intention of bending the tie rod. I had heard that the spindle arms needed to be bent to the same angle as the 1303 to improve the ackerman angle, which I'm led to believe makes the steering more responsive.

Thanks 2443TT but I dont know that I can make the car 100mm wider per side.

Wally · #6 January 29th 2008, 10:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by punchbuggyracer

I had no intention of bending the tie rod. I had heard that the spindle arms needed to be bent to the same angle as the 1303 to improve the ackerman angle, which I'm led to believe makes the steering more responsive.

That would be weird as the spindle material is cast iron. Bending this is a no-no with regard to safety afaik.

More commonly practice is to reverse mount the steering joint to get a better (ie less) angle. The spindle needs to be machined for this.
Maybe this was meant?

punchbuggyracer · #7 January 31st 2008, 07:01

You mean like a flip it kit? I have one to fit to it from vdubengineering.

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