Lowering the rear..

[Bugscandrift]

Ive heard people talking about lowering the rear of a bug simply by messing with a tensioner arm, tensioner spring, tensioner bolt or something along those lines. I was wondering if anyone would know how to go about this?

Sorry to Bring up such an old thread, but could someone please confirm this process. Yes, I'm new to VW's.

Thanks heaps, Kevin

P.S. Did the search thing and this was all I came up with

[ECBug]

This is probably what hes talking about.
http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ACC%2DC10%2D4011

[volkdent]

Originally Posted by ECBug

This is probably what hes talking about.
http://www2.cip1.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ACC%2DC10%2D4011

Those are adjustable, but you don't need to have the adjustment if you want to keep it simple.

To just lower the rear of your vehicle your going to rotate the torsion plate around the torsion bar by a pre-determined number of splines. You'll need to spray the 4 bolts on the torsion housing cover and the 3 bolts on the axle with a penatrating lubricant(WD40) and leave it for a couple of days doing resprays. Mark the forward/back position of the axle's relationship to the torsion plate so you can put it back there again.

Get the rear tires off and the car jacked up and on jack stands on the rear. Undo the bolts connecting the spring plate to the rear axle, remove the end cap for the torsion bar(you might want to spray some penetrating lubricant into the splines and stop here for a few hours or a day to let it soak in), score the relationship between the torsion bar and the torsion plate with a punch or pen or something. Once the torsion plate clears the bottom stop on the torsion housing, it will spring and can be dangerous. What I would suggest is using a floor jack with a cup style jack point on it placed at the axle end of the torsion plate to maintain the torsion plate's stop position. The cup will keep the plate from slipping off of the floor jack. You could make a few wraps of rope from the plate to the shock tower just to be on the safe side, but the key here is that if the spring plate springs, it's not going to fly off somewhere and hurt you or damage something else. This sounds kinda scary, but it's not a problem AT ALL if you take a couple of precautions and are careful.

Now pry the torsion plate away from the torsion housing a little. I would suggest a real pry bar, a screwdriver or something small won't give you the leverage you need and will make this way more difficult than it needs to be. If the torsion bar is staying in the torsion housing, you can see that the torsion plate is sliding off of the torsion bar, you can keep prying till the torsion plate is clear of the torsion housing bottom stop, then release the floor jack to let the tension off of the plate, and then finish prying the torsion plate off of the torsion bar. If the torsion bar is coming out WITH the torsion plate, once you've got the torsion plate just clear of the stop and the slack off, you need to wedge something between the back of the torsion plate and the housing, then using a brass drift or something that won't damage the torsion bar, tap or hammer the torsion bar back into the housing. If the torsion bar comes out of the inner splines in the center of the torsion housing, you'll totally loose your ability to make a reference for how much your going to lower it.

Now, you just decide how low you want to go, it will lower quite a bit per spline moved. 2 splines is a common drop, 3 is a little extreme, especially for a swingaxle as I recall. I did this over 20 years ago, so I can't tell you exactly how much each spline will lower, you'll have to ask around for that. Once you've decided how many splines to rotate, you just tap the torsion plate back onto the torsion bar splines, when it hits the housing, preload it again with the floor jack to clear the stop, then finish tapping it on and replace all the bolts. If you go too many splines, the spring plate will be bottoming out on the bump stops and the upper torsion housing stop, and will make for scary driving, as well as creating an oil starvation situation for the bearings at the end of the axle for swingaxle bugs.

It would be a very good idea to take the car to an alignment shop and make sure your rear toe is adequate, your camber is going to be to much more than stock, but if your rear is toed out your going to have a lot of extra inner tire wear and have a car that is more unstable.

This is just my take on how it's done, if people have suggestions or changes, please let me know. Then we can make a sticky that keeps this in the suspension forum so people don't have to search for it.

Jason

[Joel]

there is a table somewhere online that shows how many splines amount to what drop
but typically 1 outter spline = 2", 2= 4" and so on

Volkdent,

Thank you for all that. I may not have been clear in my request, but you have hit the nail on the head. Exactly what I was after.

Thanks again, Kevin

[volkdent]

You're welcome, let us know how it goes. I hope my explanation is clear enough.

Jason