Lowering
Contents
Why
I decided to lower the van to improve the
handling and the looks. At first I was going to take it to Justin at
Wagonworks in liphook but due to him being very busy and not answering the
phone I eventually decided to do it myself with the help of a mate Keith (IHOP
on Kamperchat) Thanks mate
 .
I brought a JustKampers adjuster for the
job. picture
blatantly nicked from JK
The fitment of the adjuster can be seen
here so
I wont go into the full details. A few points to note though.
1) If only lowering about ~5 inches you can probably get away with only
fitting one of them. I think this will make the suspension a little firmer
than fitting 2 as the one of the torsion bars will always be preloaded a
little (the non adjusted one). This will also mean you will only get half of
the lowering potential but its not a problem if you don't want to slam it.
2) Make sure you fit it the correct position as the JK description is bit
vague in this area.
3) If you decide to fit both adjusters then you may well get away with
leaving the torsion arms on, then again you may not (looks as though it may
be possible)
4) JK don't mention what to do with the holes after you have drilled out the
spot weld, I'd recommend blanking them off somehow to stop all the grease in
the beam coming out (Keith just welded some bits of tin over them).
Have the right tools
(that you may not have).
The job itself looks fairly easy (and it
would be on a new bus), but on mine most of the parts looked like they had
never been apart in 32 years so big hammers, levers, ball joint splitters
and swear words are needed to help the job along. Oh and a bloody big torque
bar for the socket set, or at least some tubing to extend it. I was
fortunate enough to have a 6foot 1.5 inch steel bar for some of it, the main
use was to get the shocks back on as a hammer just bounced them on the
rubbers, oh and levering off the beam.
The job itself
Getting the beam out was going great
until the last thing needed to drop it, the ball joint on the steering gear
was completely stuck, I tried the 2 jacks and leaver (6 feet of it) method
and belted it with a lump hammer for about an hour and it still didn't
budge. in the end I got Lee (Keith's other half) to run me down the shop and
got a ball joint splitter, then it came off in under 30 seconds
 . Then just some hammer work
and a big leaver to get the rusted on beam off.
Once off a quick clean up we followed the
JK instructions. Ours differed in that once cut and drilled the centre block
was bloody stiff and only moved with the help of the old bolt and a hammer.
This is probably down to the fact that we didn't have a spot weld drill bit
and the burr's left on it caused some friction. It may also have been
distortion in the beam from being jacked up under it or even it was like it
from new.
Once welded we replaced the beam and gave
up for the day, leaving the re-assembly until the next day.
There are a few jobs that we did on
re-assembly (less than I originally wanted to but as I was knackered and
time was short I was more than happy to leave the others). The steering play
was adjusted out by Keith (it now goes in the general direction you point it
 , and new anti roll bar
fittings were put on, the rubbers looked ok and a nightmare to change so we
left them in for now). I was originally going to change the throttle cable
and heat exchanger cables but decided to leave them as well.
Getting the auxiliaries on was to prove
frustrating. The problems found/caused when taking it off like broken split
pins in ball joints etc all seemed a bigger hassle due to the fact that what
was thought to be a 6 hour job was now in its second day and I was feeling a
little tired . There were some problems with nuts that were so tight you'd
think they were stripped (they weren't), The steering linkage bolt refusing
to pick up the thread until a bit of wet and dry and mole grips with a
gorilla like squeeze were brought in. A quick check is a must at this stage
to make sure you've tightened everything up ok as when your tired and just
want to get done its easy to miss something
Once the wheels are on its time to set
the height, as our original stiff block now seemed immovable without a
hammer and with the difficulty of getting a hammer in to higher the van I
decided to leave it a bit higher until I have the new wheels on. At the
moment its probably got about a 4 inch drop I guess.
I took the van for a spin and found the
ride to be fantastic in comparison to the old bouncy and rolling van. It
actually feels a lot lower inside when driving it than it is.
Conclusion
You can get away with only one adjuster
as long as you don't want to slam it. I still can probably go another couple
of inches lower on the single adjuster I used.
Looking at the way the beam works, if you know how far you want to lower it
and can work out how much to move the centre block you could just remove the
bolt and spot welds and drill a new hole for the bolt. This wont be
adjustable other than the original setting and the new one but it would save
nearly £100 on parts.
If your not sure about doing this yourself then don't, myself and Keith have
both done a fair bit of mechanics in the past and with his knowledge of vw's
and my knowledge of swear words took nearly 2 days (lots of fag breaks and
chatting though
 ). I'd say take
it to someone if your not sure of what your doing (or get someone to help
who knows how to get a 32year old rusted bolt out as that's the biggest
difficulty).
The van in its
slightly lowered state
Before
After
 
Before
After
 
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