This car has covered very little ground since it was built, Chris never really had a chance to get it dialed in. Last weekend I helped rectify that. The suspension needed some fine tuning- it had settled down too low, had no front sway bar and the tires were 15+ years old and hard as rocks.
We installed beam stiffeners, 14mm Thing sway bar, raised the left rear ≈1" and adjusted the front up a scosh. And new tires (185/60's, 215/65's) which saved over 11lbs. It’s far more composed and controllable now. Some adjustments still need to be made on the sway bar (standard sway bar on 2" narrowed beam) but it's getting there and a huge improvement over where it was.
The front end grips very well now but the rear end with its original 21mm torsion bars, Z bar delete with camber compensator feels pretty sloppy to me. Feels like it's ready to lift off oversteer when pushing it. I wonder if earlier 22mm bars would be a decent improvement (math says 20% stiffer) or go with some much larger SAW 24mm bars...
Whose beam stiffeners did you go with? I've been debating getting a pair for my '67, the Empi ones look like crap but the CSP ones might not fit my 2" narrowed beam.
They were original VW. I put CSP on the GTV years ago and from memory they seem to be exactly the same. This ‘67 also has a 2” beam and the stiffeners do just barely fit… however the grease zerks are now inside the clamps (inaccessible) and I did have to trim away the steering stop bracket but it wasn’t being used anyway.
The Cal-look Lounge
