VW Spring Plate thread-How to

[Bug@5speed(US)]

I promised a while back that I would start a thread, but with two little ones, a wife and work finding time beyond just reading has been tough. Scored a few minutes since both went down early, and msot of the evenings chores are done.

Most questions that I have seen revolve around cleaning up the VW spring plates and which torsion bar covers, and bushing should be used. I will cover the actual spring plate clean up as I thought this would be benefitial to anyone restoring there bug.

Removing the spring plate can be considered a thread onto itself, I will suggest anyone removing spring plates to invest the 20-30 dollars and buy the spring plate retaining tool, you will need this a few times so might as well be safe and do it right. There are a few threads covering this so I won't go into those details.

1. Equipment Needed- As far as what I used to remove the bushing from the plates can be seen in the below pic. Essentially, a saw to cut large chunks, a chissel set to remove smaller chunks. Just use caution to not score the spring plate, a few grinding wheel attachments. I believe one is a 3M pad from autozone for removing paint and the other was a scotch bright material pad. Lastly a brass or aluminium cleaning brush. Take your time and it will all come off.





2. Spring plate options. Essentially there are three options that I am familiar with.
Option1 is utilize a cut down 944 torsion bar cover plate. This requires some trial and error to cut down just enough of the 944 cover to fit and not interfere in the bug wheel wheel. Essentially you will utilize (From left to right)- 944 cut down spring plate cover, 944 outer bushing, 944 Spring plate and VW bug inner bushing (OEM rubber style shown)



Option2 is utilizing VW OEM style torsion plate with VW beetle OEM or Poly Bushing. From right to left- Poly VW inner bushing>944 Spring Plate>VW Outer Bushing>OEM style cover



Option3- is utilizing a GWD torsion plate system. GWD is a german tuning company that specializes in bugs. They were part of the germanlook shootout that was in VW trends back in the day.. If interested I have scanned copies of that article somewhere.. Here are some pics, but essentially they use a delrin bushing that mates to the outer spring plate section, and they run through an alum housing that has a sealed bearing. Some grinding of the delrin bushing is needed to ensure a snug fit onto the spring plate but overall Pretty nifty.







These are the three popular approaches that can be utilized without going uniball style plates. Incidently the GWD can be utilized without Torsion Bars (TB) and coilovers if needed.

More to come on next post.