The Cal-look Lounge

I'd appreciate comments on this set up.  Expensive yes, but looks like real quality.
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http://airkewld.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=ilvm_fly_showroom_mall.tpl&product_id=444&category_id=94&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=261

If there's anything that I take issue with it's the drilled rotors. Those holes constitute stress risers and can (and often will) propagate cracks. I'm not convinced that they serve much purpose as far as heat dissipation is concerned. If you're really concerned with outgassing (which I understand is largely irrelevant today) then ask if the shop will merely dimple the rotors instead of drilling them through. I would personally go for an un-drilled rotor.

If I had my druthers I'd have a true vented rotor. They dissipate heat far and away better than a solid rotor (drive an old solid-rotor Jag hard and you'll believe). But as compromised as a solid rotor is, it's probably better than any drum available for a VW if only for modulation (drums are prone to lock far before discs are). And I like the idea of a standard offset. This heavy-offset business is for the birds. It screws up scrub radius.

I haven't run Airkewld's brakes yet, but I'd like to upgrade to them someday. I like the calipers, AND the neat ability to swap bolt patterns.

I've been looking into disc brakes on alink pin front end... anybody use these Jaycee/RLR brakes?

(http://www.jayceevw.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/front_brakes.125132540_large.jpg)

http://www.jayceevw.com/special_order_products

Obviously these aren't wide 5 pattern, so I suppose its how original you want it to appear in respect of wheel choice.

I have these exact brakes, actually all the way around.
And yes, the ability to change bolt patterns is AWESOME! 8)
I found the install very straightforward and logical. Parts and brackets are good quality.
I had my doubts about the rear hubs being solid aluminum, but so far they are burnout and standing start -proof!
One option I took that I'd definitely NOT recommend is the 4-pad calipers up front .... WAY too much front brake for a beetle, unless you're roadracing (not just fast street/road driving either) all the time or running some rediculously large and HEAVY wheel/tire combo! I'm switching to two-pads this winter.
Let me know if you have other questions or concerns ...
TxT

I can't imagine it being any worse for sure! Yeah, the theory alone makes the kit superior to VW drums.


Ask more than just that source. If they're doing it then they feel justified but there may be more to it than what they know or understand. Call around to several brake companies and get their input as well. Of course you're going to have to fib a bit and say you're running brakes for another application if you call a vendor like Baer that doesn't support VW brakes. Also, if you can, read the entries about brakes in Carroll Smith's books. He revealed a lot.


Are you also changing the wheel to a 4.5? Those wheels will reduce the wheel track by a full inch (half an inch each side) compared to the 5.5s. In fact i highly recommend doing that. If you're just changing the brakes from drum to these then the wheel will remain in exactly the same place.

 

Understand that the EMPI spindles increase track width by 1/4" each side (half an inch in total). That wouldn't be at all bad if you simply swapped to the 4.5 wheels and 155 tires.

I don't have any experience with the EMPI spindles but they do appear to be forged. That's good. I wouldn't run a cast spindle on a dare. Bear in mind that they are likely made in China, though. That's not to say they're inherently bad but it leads one to question the quality control.

It's sort of off topic but if you do the 155s up front consider getting a set of 185R-15s down the line for the rear. That would be especially cool if you did the 4.5" wheels up front. That way both the wheel and the tire would be an inch wider. The bigger rear tires fill out the rear wells.

I bought the empi spindles for one of my cars and was not happy with machine work and sent them back and got CB spindles. I have them on both of my cars. And the off-set was more like 5/8 on the empi spindles, Measureing from center of king pin to the surface where backing plates bolt to and did the same on stock spindles. I narrowed beam 5/8 of a inch on each side and still use stock shock towers.

Hi John, I wanted to narrow 5/8 a side or 1.250 total. If you are going to add adjusters you need to remove inner center peice that holds torsion bars. It is 1.50 wide if I remember right. So now beam is cut more than I needed ,So I had to make spacer to get the width that I was trying to acheive. Made spacer from donner beam (Thanks Randy) Here Are a few picture to show what I did, Let me know if this helps or need more pictures.

i liked the kit on my old car but as said above 145 front tyres and four pot wilwoods made the front lock up unless you are careful
and the different bolt pattern is a great idea :D

Couple shots with adjusters

An additional note ... though I did order the kit with the spindles, I decided to use my original lowered spindles that I installed some 12 or so years ago as they were, I felt, a bit nicer and ALREADY INSTALLED (don't remember the brand).

NICE work as always, Danny!
TxT

Torsion bars I flipped , cut and redrilled. Then with beam back in car assembled with wheels on and setting on ground, I did a quick alighnment with 1/8 toe and sterring box adjusted to center I figured tie rods. If you have to cut tie rod lenght. I machined a peice that tapped in tube and welded. Also drilled holes in tube and rosette welded to center peice I'm sure there are many ways to do this job, Its just how I did mine.

Actually those American-style wheels are 5". They have a 3.6" backspace for a 15.25mm ET (positive offset). The chromies are 5.5 but they have roughly 3.875" backspace for a 15.875mm ET. The torker wheels will actually move the tire out (widen the track) .02" on each side. That's not much to fret but it won't move the wheel in either.


And that car works. I'd copy it. You can lower a kingpin car and still maintain ride quality so spindles really aren't necessary (the suspension geometry sucks as far as handling and braking is concerned anyway). Dropped spindles are almost obligatory to lower a ball-joint car as the joints bind if you lower the car very much by the beam only.

One other thing to consider are the forged dropped spindles that came out a few years ago. I can't remember who made them but they might have been from Germany or something. From what I recall they didn't increase the wheel track at all.

You're smart by doing the homework before buying the parts. Most people do it the other way.

I'm worried about seeing John's '63 with Torkers. It may look so good that I won't be able to handle it.

Let me get this straight.... Rayburn has 5" Torker's, stock beam, drop spindles, Porsche drums, 155's, and it fits and doesn't rub?

Ok, that would make more sense. I run 145's on 4 1/2" wheels with CB drop spindles/disc brakes on a stock beam and it would still rub during aggressive cornering, even with a fat 3/4" sway bar up front. The spindles do preserve your ride quality, but the added track is a real downfall.

Why not a CB 2" narrowed beam and drop spindle wide five disc brake kit? One stop shopping.

It wouldn't be the best deal for another reason: scrub radius.

Scrub radius is the distance between the kingpin centerline and the center of the tire's contact patch as measured on the ground. A little bit of scrub radius is good as it uses the wheels' rolling resistance to preload the steering assembly to a slight degree (there's always a tiny bit of slop somewhere). That helps make the car feel more stable. A car with zero scrub feels vague and wanders. Bear in mind that this is an entirely different dynamic than caster.

The aftermarket wheels and the beam don't just widen the track; they do so by the worst way: they increase the scrub radius. According to CB its kit increases the scrub by 3/4-inch. That's big in itself. And the Torker wheels he wants to use increase the scrub radius another 3/4-inch more than it would be with a stock wheel. That's a full 1 1/2 inches additional scrub radius than the stock design called for. The wheels alone or the spindles/brakes alone probably wouldn't create much of an issue. But together that's a lot of leverage on the steering.

It's not only a lot of scrub radius; it's the worst kind: positive. A car with lots of positive scrub radius will steer in the direction of a bump. So if the right side hits a big bump the car will steer to the right, even if only slightly. That disrupts the car to an even greater extent than simply hitting the bump. Guys who run reversed wheels on american cars will tell you that a good bump can wrench the steering wheel from your hands.

But worse yet is when a tire loses traction under braking (ice, hydroplaning, gravel, etc). A car with excessive positive scrub radius will steer towards the tire with most traction. That transfers weight to the side that has least traction. That's a recipe for a good spin.

I know that people frequently compensate for offset wheels, brakes, and spindles by narrowing the beam. And i know most people will never have a problem with it. But that doesn't mean someone won't have a problem from it. It's not the best remedy.

So what is the best remedy? Wide fenders? The recipe Brian suggested works, and works quite well.

That sounds great and all. But have you actually had a car with this setup? I`ve had a few and they drove just fine.

Wide fenders wouldn't be a good remedy either. The excessive positive scrub radius would still exist at the expense of aesthetics.

The correct remedy would be to design and manufacture suspension and brake components and wheels to specifications that preserve or at least come close to factory geometry.

It isn't impossible; Airkewld and So Cal Imports both manufacture disc kits that don't alter the offset. One is expensive but it's also light; the other is heavy but it's also inexpensive. I think a lot of people think that it's impossible to combine a zero-offset disc kit with a low-offset dropped spindle but when I got into this market in 1986 everyone thought an affordable, zero-offset, wide-five disc brake kit that would work properly on the street was impossible (wide-five disc kits existed as early as the mid '70s). Hell, that was the case well into the late '90s.

As I wrote earlier, taken by itself either a high-offset disc/spindle kit OR a high-offset wheel wouldn't be so much of an issue. It's when you combine the two that things get sketchy.

 

Yes, I have owned Volkswagens that have had lots of positive scrub radius. The worst was a '66 that had copycat EMPI fives (increase scrub radius by .88") on a suspension with JT Forge dropped spindles (at least .5" more scrub increase). At best that was 1 3/8" scrub increase. The steering wheel would tug whenever one wheel hit a bump harder than the other--you could really feel the whiskey bumps in the steering wheel when you changed lanes. And it was grabby under braking--like borderline scary if you were trying to scrub off a lot of speed on a patchy road--the car would dart.

I later installed Centerline bubbles on the front of that car. Their 32mm ET reduced the scrub radius more than stock wheels would have ('66 and '67 wheels have a 29mm ET). At the time I didn't understand why but the dartiness and steering input went away. The car turned in way better and got easier to steer.

As I wrote earlier I know people run lots of scrub radius and never notice it. But that doesn't mean it's correct to do it. Moving to a place where road ice is an issue caused me to think more critically. The prospect of hitting a small patch under braking makes me wince. Performance is measured by more than simply acceleration. 

Maybe I'm a fool for doing so but I'm just trying to increase awareness of these often misunderstood dynamics. If we as consumers demand more of the parts we buy inevitably at least a few manufacturers will oblige us. Otherwise it's just status quo and nothing will change.

... but what would you be if you didn't even try, John? You have to try.

Sometimes while pondering it's possible to over-analyze. I know, I do it all the time ;)
TxT

... but what would you be if you didn't even try, John? You have to try.

I'd be the same except still have clean hands and fingernails if I don't go there.....    ::) ::) ::) ::)

Well, I'm sure they'd look good ...
And I don't think I  could help trying them, especially on a black car!

Lowered spindles brings only one good thing... softness. And mounting stock disk brakes if you need them.
I definitely see the need for it on a balljoint car, but a linkpin beam has a better suspension geometry for lowering.
So it's not feeling that stiff in use.

All other aspects of them are bad, they ruin the geometry like Chris say, and they are only supported beneath the wheel centre (linkpin).
And not least they ruin the look of a Cal-looker... moving the wheel out of the cal-look position (front half of the wheel arch). To me this looks like that car has been hit.

I think that if a link pin car is lowered too much without drop spindles then the wheel gets pushed forward and it looks bad. If it`s only dropped a couple of inches then there is no need for them. And as far as scrub radious goes, don`t you think John has already affected this by running 5.5 inch chromies? Seems that with the offset of these it would affect it. 4.5 inch chrome wheels on the front would be ideal.

Good points, bryan. I would go so far to say that a bug lowered too much looks bad in itself. Too much of a good thing can be bad.

Regarding the 5.5 wheels' effect on scrub. They increase scrub by 3/4-inch more than a pair of 4-inch smoothies. that's the same amount as the american-style wheel that he wants to run. it's narrower by half an inch but it has less backspace. As I wrote earlier, 3/4-inch is probably not much to really affect things. It's not correct by the book but it's not terrible either. Now if that was increased by another 3/4-inch by suspension or brake changes...well that MAY  cause  handling problems.

Of course simply lowering a car and downsizing the tires has its own set of consequences. But  just how many compromises we stack on a car is a decision we have to make. It's nice to at least know the consequences so we can make an informed decision.

The movement of the wheel is evident by the time you have lowered the same amount as drop spindle gives. Look at DKK Fred's signature.
This would mean that all bugs lowered from the early seventies to mid ninety's looks bad, and I'm just not of that opinion, I actually prefer the early traditional lowered look. Just my opinion.


My point exactly


From a theoretical point of view he has, but I doubt he will notice it. But it will add up with spindles in addition.

I can't stand how it looks with the wheels pushed forward! I think that is one of the advantages of using drop spindles, the tire remains in the center of the opening, where it started out and where it belongs.

if the wheel placement is so great then why do we change it by lowering the car?  ;)

I totally see your point and I especially agree if the wheel sits too far back. But I have to side with jhu on this one.  if you're trying to replicate an era it pays to copy the flaws common to it...at least the endearing ones.

I agree, and as much as I hate it, the next car I build will have that "flaw" ::)

I agree with you Jon.. I'm working to get that same "wheel forward" look on my '67. It's part of the era that the car was originally built.