Project Slowly Underway: Berrien 295

[MadMike]

My screen name is from my Business M.A.D. Racing( Mike's Atv,Dirtbike) or Mom And Dad racing my wife sez Motorcycle And Dog racing(she's a Musher)
I'm just a fun luvin O'l Hippie (rofl Hope u can make it down, This Show/Swap is a MUST see for us Mid-west VW nuts

[Ruffuss]

Feb 26, 2014 7:25:39 GMT -5 MadMike said:

My screen name is from my Business M.A.D. Racing( Mike's Atv,Dirtbike) or Mom And Dad racing my wife sez Motorcycle And Dog racing(she's a Musher)
I'm just a fun luvin O'l Hippie (rofl Hope u can make it down, This Show/Swap is a MUST see for us Mid-west VW nuts

How fun luvin depends on the med crop....right?

[MadMike]

(rofl (rofl)All my V.A.Doctors are amazed I'm doing so well, It does Really works for me!!!

[vanapplebomb]

[Deleted]

[vanapplebomb]

Glad you got that worked out of your system there Dave. Better out that in.

[vanapplebomb]

Hey, next weekend I am thinking about doing a cut and turn on my front beam. I don't have a pipe cutter large enough to cut through the beam. What have you guys done that works well? Would masking tape and a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade do the trick? I don't want to end up with a gap any larger than the thickness of the tubing.

Thanks!

[dubfreak1]

I've had good luck cutting the tube with a sawzall. I do use masking tape to make a visual reference to keep the cut fairly square. A piece of angle iron and some hose clamps makes a great fixture. I also do one tube at a time and tack a brace side to side on the beam so the cut tube is between the brace and the solid tube. There are some pics on my "Project 68" thread. You can use the scribed line pictured there to get the amount of rotation you want.

[vanapplebomb]

Thanks for the inspiration!

I'm Gona shoot for a 1/4in. I will have to see if I have enough scrap metal laying around to extend my shock towers about four inches and make gussets to keep them from bending. I got a pair of type 2 transporter shocks I can use up front. They are just shy of 23 inches eye to eye, and have a little over 8in of travel. Should be more than adequate for my needs.

[vanapplebomb]

I had a full ride back up north. Four people, a weeks worth of luggage for each person, and VW front beam in a little Jeep Liberty.

Now that I got my beam up here I can start chopping. On the list are spindle carrier and steering knuckle gussets, as well as extending the shock towers and gusseting them.


The steering knuckle gussets will be super easy to make. Just a straight line between the rod end bore and the inside center of the spindle with the inside shaped to fit the contour of the knuckle.

Shock towers should also be pretty simple. The plan right now is to cut open the top half of the shock towers by a quarter inch. A plate will be slid inside the tower that will stick up about 4 inches. The seams of the shock towers will get welded back up around this plate, and a M12x1.75mm threaded boss will get welded to the top. A gusset will get welded on perpendicular to the shock tower between the threaded boss and upper torsion tube. This will keep the shock towers from folding inwards with the greater leverage from the added hight as well as the stiffer gas charged shock for 68-79 VW Transporters.

The spindle carrier gussets are a little more tricky. I just finished making a cardboard template. There was a little more science to making them fit right. Not bad though. Instead of just trimming cardboard pieces to fit the contour, I decided to be more methodical and base everything off of measurements so that I could make a drawing first.

I will post up the design so that all you guys can copy it for your off road rides.

[vanapplebomb]

For those of you who prefer to build rather than buy, here is my design to make your own spindle gussets. Easy to make out scrap 1/4in bar stock. May require a little light grinding as spindle carriers are roughly forged parts and no two are exactly the same.

[vanapplebomb]

Drawing laid out on cardboard and cut out to make templates. Fits well. Can't wait to trace these out onto steel and cut them out!...just have to shovel away the four feet of snow against the garage door. Gota borrow the the neighbors Yooper-Scooper.

Just noticed that I lost my lower grease fitting. D'oh! Must not have been screwed in all the way and got knocked out during the trip up north.

[vanapplebomb]

Rather than write about my front beam, I decided it would probably be easier to quick edit a video together to show you whats going down. This is just a quick rundown on the beam. I will post up more detailed ones later as I make more progress.




Wow... I just realized how abruptly that ended. Good thing I made another video to follow that one up in the next post.

[vanapplebomb]

In this video I talk about relocating the bump stop horns. I also do a demo on how to install those tough urethane snubbers.

Mike, hopefully YouTubes work on dial-up. Do you recognize the snubbers? Old school Johnny's Speed and Chrome! A guy on TheSamba was clearing out his old inventory and had them posted in the classifieds for cheap, so I snatched them up.

[vanapplebomb]

I cut out some gussets for the bump stop horns to help keep them from tweaking if they get pounded... after all, the shock towers are only thin stamped mild steel. The gussets were pretty simple. Just a 45deg angle with 70mm long straight edges. I radiused the short edge opposite the 45deg angle. one of the straight edges was welded along the leading edge of the shock tower down to the edge of the bump stop horn. Then I just took a hammer and smacked the other edge until it bent around to match the curvature of the bump stop horn, then welded it down. Worked like a charm. I'm going to be out of town for a bit, but I will take pictures of the progress when I get back.