Any tips or pit falls when narrowing a front beam on a 1970 1500 beetle?

[paulgrey]

Hi I am looking for advise on narrowing the front beam of a 1500 1970 beetle, I have to narrow it to fit a new set of 18" wheels. The narrowing is to stop rubbing from the wheel onto the strut tower... I figure once I have narrowed the front beam I can then space the wheels out a little... Is doing all of this going to effect the suspension of the car?. Is there going to be problems with shorteneing the sway away bars?.

[RonR]

The section that you remove from each side of the tubes should be close to the beam mounting brackets. You don't want to be cutting the tubes in the area of the trailing arm bushings and don't get too close to the mounting brackets such that the welds interfere with the mounting surfaces. Also, make the cuts using an abrasive wheel, preferably with a radial arm saw. Nice straight parrallel cuts make the job of aligning the tubes much easier. A piece of angle arm as an alignment tool is also helpful.

I asume you have taken all the necessary measurements and taken into account the offset of your new wells. But keep in mind that if you narrow the beam too much, you will have inside clearance problems.

Properly narrowing the front beam is not a difficult process as long as you take your time to do it right.