TULZ - Part Ten
Veeduber
FRONT END MAINTENANCE & ALIGNMENT
The steering and front suspension on older Volkswagens needs a lot of
attention to keep it working properly, reflecting the 1930's origin of the
design. In keeping with the design philosophies of that era the steering
and suspension systems are overbuilt by modern-day standards.
Although it takes more work to keep these antique vehicles running, the
tasks are relatively simple. Designed to be overhauled with a minimum
of tooling, the robust nature of the components makes it possible to keep
these antiques safely on the road virtually forever.
Unfortunately, the above does not apply to the Super beetle. I've found
their MacPherson strut front ends to be less robust than ball joints and
down right fragile compared to king pins, making the Super unsuitable for
the kind of traveling I do. The poor suspension is made even worse by
the steering system used on the '70 through '74 models, a overly
complex design that Volkswagen abandoned in favor of the later rack &
pinion system.
In the automotive world the last person to work on a vehicle is often held
liable for what happens next, even if it happens to a component they did
NOT work on. Do a tune up and get sued because the kid runs off the
road? Sounds crazy but it can happen. This is clearly unfair but so is a
great deal of automotive consumer legislation. The question of liability
causes me to avoid working on Super Beetles or any Volkswagen with a
modified suspension system. My comments in this series of articles are
addressed mostly toward earlier model stock Volkswagens.
Whatever your vehicle, before you can maintain its front end you need to
understand how it works. You should be able to make a sketch, either
schematic or pictorial, depicting all of the components in your front end
and know their names. All of the manuals contain this information in one
form or another but I think the novice will find the 'Idiot' book to be the
most helpful for this task.
Now let's go play. But before we do, note that I use a different sequence
of diagnostic checks than does the 'Idiot' book. Try it both ways then
decide for yourself.
Jack up the front end, pop off the grease caps on the front wheels, take
the slack out of the bearings then jack up the front end and SHAKE THE
WHEEL. You're looking for play; for looseness. Try to lift the wheel up &
down. Then try to rock it back & forth. Finally, grab it at 6 & 12 and try to
rock the wheel in & out. A tiny bit of up & down is okay. Anything else
sez repair or adjustment is needed. No play? Then skip on down to the
steering check.
When you feel looseness the next step is to figure out WHAT needs to
be repaired. As a general rule, any up & down or in & out play indicates
wear in the SUSPENSION; in your ball joints or king pins. Any back &
forth movement indicates wear in your STEERING. (Super beetles are a
special case. In & out movement may indicate wear in your control-arm
bushings.)
On old bugs & buses if you feel a lot of in & out play you may need only
to adjust your link pins. Link pin adjustment is a simple chore, something
you're supposed to do every other oil change (No, not 'Every 6000
miles.') Read the fine print. There's a whole list of things that require
you to change the oil more often. The list of exceptions – driving in dusty
conditions, on unpaved roads and so forth – also applies to your other
periodic maintenance requirements. So use the oil change interval as a
guide. And every other oil change, WHATEVER THAT INTERVAL MAY
BE, lube and adjust your link pins.
King-pin spindles use bushings for the king pin and either bushings or
needle bearings for the link pins, depending on the model year & vehicle
type. Rebuilding king pins consists of removing the spindle from the
trailing arms, taking the spindle apart, pressing out the old bushings,
pressing in new ones then reaming them to fit the new king pin. The
Haynes manual does an especially good job with king pins.
The new king pin and bushings come as a kit of parts but if you're a
machinist you can make your own. The link pins also come as a kit
except on later models there's no reaming; they come with needle
bearings instead of bushings and the needle bearings are already the
proper fit. See the real shop manual for your particular ride. A number
of fellows who have rebuilt their front ends have described doing so in
messages you'll find in the various archives on the Internet.
Newer buses & bugs don't got link pins. Them got ball joints. That's
where you'll find most of your up & down play. See the manuals for the
specs but anything more than a tad is bad.
You can keep a link-pin front end running just about forever but once a
ball joint goes bad you got a major headache. Oh, you can do them. In
fact, they're easier to do than rebuilding a link-pin spindle. But you need
a hydraulic press and some fixtures. And you gotta pretty much
dismantle the front end to get at them, which can take additional special
tools. The reason for the additional dismantling is because the ball-joints
are installed on the trailing arms, meaning you've got to remove the
trailing arms in order to replace the ball joints. Removing the trailing
arms is a no-brainer but the stabilizer bar is clamped to the lower trailing
arms and new, replacement clamps are no longer available. If you're
careful dismantling the old clamps they can be reused but a better option
is to use Sway-A-Way bolted clamps. Cost is about thirty bucks for all
four. I don't know if they've got them for buses.
Muir and a lot of others say ball joints should only be replaced by a VW
dealer. That may have been valid back when John was alive but today
such advice is little more than a bad joke. Nowadays the typical
Volkswagen dealer wants nothing to do with you and your antique ride.
They don't carry your ball joints, they don't have the tools to replace
them and their mechanics are not familiar with your vehicle.
If you take your veedub to the dealer to have the ball joints replaced,
odds are they will order rebuilt trailing arms from an after-market supplier
who specializes in VW front end components. The trailing arms would
arrive with the ball joints already installed, reducing the repair job to
nothing more than dismantling and reassembly, a task anyone can do.
Indeed, you can do exactly the same, saving yourself some serious
bucks along the way. Check the ads in the magazines for outfits offering
rebuilt trailing arms.
Buying rebuilt trailing arms is probably the most common method of
repairing front ends but there's really no reason you can't do the entire
job yourself. Ball joints are inexpensive, which is good because they
don't last very long. No grease nipple. 'Lifetime' part. An hydraulic
press makes their replacement easier but a twenty-ton bottle jack is
strong enough to pop the ball joints out of the arms and to press new
ones back in, assuming you have a suitable pressing frame and the
necessary fixtures to support the trailing arms while you do the pressing.
You can make the required fixtures from sections of steel pipe of the
proper diameter. The sections of pipe have to be notched & shaped to
accept the trailing arms (you need a left & right fixture for each). The
notching is done with an angle grinder and the trailing arms themselves
serve as the pattern. I was out of Prussian blue so I begged a tube of
lipstick from my wife to use as spotting compound. (You press the parts
together then grind off the high spots, as shown by where the lipstick
transfers from the trailing arm to the fixture.)
The pressing frame is just a rectangle about two feet high by a foot wide
fabricated from sturdy (2 x 4 x 1/4) steel 'C' section, welded or bolted
together at the corners with gussets. (I say 'about' because it has to be
sized to accommodate the height of the fixtures you make and the
particular jack you use.) In use, you position the old ball joint atop a
short section of pipe that serves as the 'drop space' to receive the ball
joint when you press it out, then put the pipe-section driver on the bottom
of the ball joint and seat the hydraulic jack atop that, extending the jack
until it contacts top of the frame. Then just pump the jack. The old ball
joint will be pressed out of the trailing arm. Installing the new ball joints
calls for a bit more care. There is an alignment notch that must be taken
into consideration, your fixtures must be a very nice fit and the trailing
arm needs to be propped up to keep everything aligned. It sounds sorta
hay-wired but it works okay. The first time I did it, it took about four
hours to make the fixtures and another hour to replace the four ball
joints.
SLOPPY STEERING
Now let's check the steering. Start by lowering the vehicle. Your front
wheel bearings are still tight (ie, all the play has been taken out; see the
previous procedure). Your ride is parked, wheels on the ground, engine
off, e-brake set. Reach in through the driver's side window and use ONE
FINGER to turn the steering wheel.
How far did it go before you felt resistance?
That's too far :-)
It should only go about ONE INCH. Time to go find your partner,
because diagnosis of steering problems takes two people, one to move
the steering wheel, the other to figure out where the lost motion is going.
Your steering gets sloppy because of accumulated wear, mostly in the
steering gearbox. See that little adjusting screw on the steering box?
LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE. That governs engagement of the roller
with the worm and odds are, it's okay. (The roller adjusting screw
wanders around from model to model. It's on the top of the steering gear
box in bugs, on the side for buses.)
There are three main places for wear to accumulate inside the steering
gearbox. Two of them are on the roller, the other is axial play in the
worm, which accumulates wear more rapidly than the others due to the
gear ratio between them. But in recent years an entirely new problem
has cropped up, one that is due entirely to age and as such, is not
covered in any of the manuals.
On early bugs & Ghias the steering gear is connected to the steering
wheel through a compliant coupling. Before you start adjusting anything,
inspect the coupling. That takes two people, one to move the steering
wheel while you inspect the coupling. What you're looking for is any
deterioration of the rubber puck in the universal joint. Also inspect for
any motion on one side of the coupling that does NOT get transmitted to
the other side.
Make sense? The coupling is a rubber disk. Two bolts hold it to the
steering wheel shaft, another two hold it to the steering gearbox. If the
coupling is bad you end up with a lot of play in your steering wheel even
though there is absolutely nothing wrong with your tie-rod ends or
steering gear.
So check it. Look for axial motion in the gear box shaft as the steering
wheel is turned. (If the steering joint looks suspicious, pull the fuel tank
and examine it more closely.) (Note: Axial means in & out; motion along
the axis of the part. Radial motion means movement ACROSS the axis
of the part; along the radius of the part.)
Early VW steering uses a worm & roller arrangement and is meant to be
periodically adjusted to accommodate wear. The worm gear is on the
end of the shaft to the steering wheel; when you turn the steering wheel
you rotate the worm gear. The worm gear engages a roller gear that
gets pushed from side to side as the worm turns. The side-to-side push
is what's used to move the wheels.
Most of the slop in your steering gear is due to wear on the shim at the
upper end of the worm gear and is adjusted by loosening the large lock-
ring on the bottom of the steering gear box then turning the deep multi-
point socket-type adjusting nut. Odds are, you don't have the wrench for
the locking ring nor the socket for the adjuster. But you can make both
of them.
To make a wrench, draw the shape of the nut onto a suitable piece of
steel then use the best available means to create the hole. The usual
procedure is to drill a series of small holes then hold the blank in a vise
and use a chisel to 'connect' the drilled holes. Once you've made the
opening you simply file the hole to fit. Since you probably will be using
mild steel, make a box-end rather than an open-end wrench.
The internal multi-point socket can be made using any commonly
available METAL-FILLED epoxy. To keep the epoxy from sticking to the
nut, spray the cavity with silicone lubricant. The keep the epoxy from
oozing out before it cures, use tape to secure waxed paper & cardboard
over the epoxy. To provide a means of turning the newly molded socket,
you may insert a large-diameter coupling nut into the epoxy or fabricate a
more elaborate matrix by welding a nut to a steel plate ground to almost
fit the socket. In this latter case the metal-filled epoxy must bond to the
matrix so provide plenty of keying surfaces and keep the matrix perfectly
clean.
The adjustment is straight forward: Take up the slack until you have the
spec'd one-inch of play measured at the steering wheel. There is some
interaction with the roller gear so you may need to make a SMALL
adjustment there as well. But be careful. You can force the roller into
such tight engagement with the worm that it will cause the steering to
bind. You'll discover this when you go around a corner… and keep right
on turning, up over the sidewalk, through the drugstore and back out
onto the street, round-and-round you go. It can ruin your whole day.
The Haynes manual (#159) does an especially good job of illustrating the
steering gearbox adjustment procedure.
Lost motion in your tie-rod ends usually appears as the rod-end being
pushed up or down or leaning to one side instead of smoothly
transmitting the push or pull. If you grasp the suspect rod-end in your fist
and squeeze tight while your partner moves the steering wheel, the play
in the rod-end will be clearly evident.
Replacing tie rod ends are a no-brainer. You unscrew the old ones,
screw in the new ones. But there are a couple of Gotchas! The first is
how to get those suckers apart and here again, you need the proper
tools. One tool you DON'T want to use is the beloved 'pickle-fork'.
(You'll end up bending a tie-rod.)
The proper tool for popping loose ball joints and tie-rod ends is a
fulcrum-type press. You slide it on the joint, turn the big bolt then give
the SIDE of the eye a sharp rap with a SMALL hammer. The shock
causes the stressed parts to pop apart like magic. You loosen the nut
but leave it on the fitting to protect the thread.
Nowadays its getting hard to find just the tie-rod ends. They want to sell
you the whole tie-rod. If that's all you can get, fine. They've also
stopped putting Zerks on the tie-rod ends. Instead, they are 'Lifetime'
parts, meaning they'll only last about half as long as they used to.
Progress, eh? :-)
SWING ARM PROBLEMS
This applies only to Transporters.
In the bus, the steering gearbox is in front of the torsion bar housings,
what most folks call the front axle assembly (it's actually part of the front
suspension system). But the steering tie-rods are BEHIND the axle. To
transfer the motion from the steering gear to the wheels Volkswagen was
forced to use a different arrangement than they used on the sedans and
Ghias.
The swing arm pivots on a pin supported by bushings. The pivot is
highly stressed and sees a lot of motion, resulting in fairly rapid wear of
the bushings. This wear is a major cause of sloppy steering in buses.
When the wear is minor you'll see a slight cocking of the swing arm as
the steering wheel is turned. That's all it takes to totally screw things up.
When the wear is extreme you can actually rattle the swing arm with your
hand. IF you find one this bad, DON'T DRIVE IT.
The repair is similar to doing your king pins in that you remove the old
bushings, press in new ones, ream them to size and install a new pivot
pin. Read all of the manuals then decide how you want to tackle the
task. You'll probably end up following the procedure in the 'Idiot' book. I
prefer to pull the whole front axle and simply swap it, partly because I've
got a spare but mostly because I do better work standing up than lying
down
FRONT END ALIGNMENT
After working on your front end you need to check the alignment and
you'll probably hear more bullshit – and waste more money – on this task
than any other of your many periodic maintenance requirements.
The first Myth and money-waster is that the work is so esoteric and of
such precision that it can only be done by an alignment shop. Not true;
not a bit of it.
The truth is, of the four factors effecting your alignment (caster, camber,
toe angle and king-pin inclination), two of them (caster and king pin
inclination angle [the term applies to all vehicles, even those without
king-pins]) are not adjustable in the normal sense; they are built-in to the
Volkswagen front axle assembly and unless you've suffered collision
damage or modified your suspension, caster and king-pin inclination are
fixed; there is no adjustment, no matter what the fellow at the alignment
shop has told you.
Of the remaining two factors, you set the camber when you rebuild your
king pins or replace your ball-joints. With king pins, the camber angle is
set using shims and all of the manuals give the appropriate shim-stack
data. All you need to do is make sure the shims are NEW (ie, of the
proper thickness) and check the result with a protractor to insure camber
is correct when you are done.
With ball joints, camber is adjusted by turning the eccentric barrel on the
spindle in which the upper ball joint pin is mounted. Here again, you
need a protractor of some sort. The spec for camber is about half a
degree (check your manual). You can buy inexpensive (ie, about $30)
wheel-alignment protractors that are accurate to about one-quarter of a
degree (J. C. Whitney carries them) or you can make your own using
plywood and a plumb-bob that is accurate to about three seconds of arc
[ie, about one-twentieth of a degree] (see the article titled 'The Camber
Checker Thingee' in the archives of the Type 2 Mailing List
[www.type2.com] ).
That leaves only your toe angle.
Your toe-angle will change as wear accumulates in your front end and
steering. This is normal. So you check it periodically. This too is
normal. I do it every other oil change because on my old bus, that's
when I adjust my link pins. Any time you adjust your link pins you will
probably find your toe angle has changed slightly. So you adjust it.
To adjust your toe angle you measure the difference between the front
and rear edges of the rims of your front wheels. The wheels should be
slightly pigeon-toed. With fifteen inch rims, the front edges should be
about an eighth of an inch closer together than the back edges. To
make it so you simply loosen a tie rod and turn it. Making the tie rod
shorter will pull the rear edges IN forcing the front edges OUT. Turning
the tie rod in the opposite direction (ie, making it LONGER) will have the
opposite effect.
Read the toe-in adjustment procedure in the 'Idiot' book. It's as clearly
written as most.
Are you all done? Then adjust your front wheel bearings, put the grease
covers back on and safety the speedo cable. Since the wheels are in the
air you might as well adjust the brakes, too.
-Bob Hoover
-10 May 2K
u...@ftc.gov
http://www.vintagebus.com/howto.html
Veeduber <veed...@aol.com> wrote:
: The repair is similar to doing your king pins in that you remove the old
Sean O'Reilly
suspension / steering system on the torsion bar beetles was "overbuilt"
when compared to modern cars, but was met with skepticism and that any
japanese car is better than a vw. in the first paragraph, Bob H., the
venerable and experienced expert says
the same.
Take a look at most Japanese or domestics. the ball joints are smaller,
tie rods thinner, control arms made of thin pressed steel, etc. etc.
when compared to a torsion bar beetle. and these are mostly front wheel
drive cars w/ an engine & trans. bearing down over the front wheels!
My car is a 71 Super-B and I also agree that the strut design was not
one of VW's stellar designs. This car had the shake for several years
before i solved it - i was not plugged into this NG at the time, and did
not have access to the real experts. I seriously considered getting rid
of the car, because of the prob., but now it is fine.