Ghia Road Course Setup

[DORIGTT]

Fiatdude,

What kind of rubber do you think you'll need to harness the power? I'm putting 245-40-17's out back.

[GS guy]

https://ronlummusracing.com/product/irs ... -narrowed/

[Piledriver]

That Dumb chick that "helped" you recently at the car show might have given you some leeway, but the thought of changing the shape of a Ghia in any way hurts some. AWD would help the fat tire need a lot...so would an ecu with a good traction control setup.

Tubbed/narrow rear end is the usual way.

[Fiatdude]

I believe at the current HP I'm at, I need about a 255 very sticky tire on the ground in the rear and maybe move the 225's from the rear to the front replacing the 205's I've got there....

I'm really a fan of what Mike Lawless did on his Ghia - http://lawlessdesigns.com/wkr.htm - or maybe something like what lumus offers like this https://ronlummusracing.com/product/irs ... r-chassis/ ……………………

Ron's arms are narrowed 5" which is more than what I'm thinking, which is 3", which is what Mike did on his Ghia. With a mini tub, he was able to put 10" slicks on his Ghia....

With my 225's I've got the fender beading pinched and the fenders slightly rolled out (not that you can tell) and there is a paper thin gap on the outside. On the inside I had to grind down the bolt heads on the swing arm about half way for the clearance I needed on the inside.


I was going to do the narrowing of the torsions beams by 3" route but ALL my frame tubes seem to tie into the end of the torsion tubes and I don't want to do a complete rebuild of the cage ever LOL. Of course if I did that, I would be able to move the main roll bar back about 4" so I could sit in this thing with a helmet on and not bang it LOL (I'm 6'4" in case you're wondering)… So it looks like some custom swing arms attached to the torsion tube and coil overs are one of 2 solutions left to me (the other is to take off the turbo and kill some power)…….


FJ, why you just buy this thing from me and put me out of misery. It's in Missouri now so the shipping costs would be half of what it was before LOL.

[vdubhead]

FJC,

I've applied just about everything you've posted here to my '59 bug road/track car. thanks for this great info. I managed to get a set of Atomwerk 1" drop plates w/ needle bearings instead of bushings and slightly stiffer 26mm torsion bars. I set the rear wheels to zero camber and zero toe. I limited the axle down travel/"jacking" from +7 to +5 degrees of camber, do you think that's a good number or should travel be limited more? up travel is limited by shortened bump stops.

Marc

[FJCamper]

Hi Marc,

Swing axles work best when they don't swing much. Go with your current settings and see what happens.

FJC

[Racer156]

Hello,

Waaaaaay back on page two it was stated that the superior upgrade for IRS was to eliminate torsion bars and add coil overs. I’ve been trying to read up on the forums and there seems to be a camp that says the frame horns are too weak and will break even if a Kafer bar system is added for support. In other words a dune buggy only solution. I have a super beetle I’m building as a street car and for light track day work. Type 4, Porsche brakes and coil overs. Other than that a low key, heavy, daily driver. Anyway, can I run coilivers and eliminate the torsion bars safely on the street?

Thanks...

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Hello,

Waaaaaay back on page two it was stated that the superior upgrade for IRS was to eliminate torsion bars and add coil overs. I’ve been trying to read up on the forums and there seems to be a camp that says the frame horns are too weak and will break even if a Kafer bar system is added for support. In other words a dune buggy only solution. I have a super beetle I’m building as a street car and for light track day work. Type 4, Porsche brakes and coil overs. Other than that a low key, heavy, daily driver. Anyway, can I run coilivers and eliminate the torsion bars safely on the street?

Thanks...

Butting in here if you don't mind.

The Kaffer bar is there to try to control "the dance of death" that the tranns mounts can allow as they are only supported by the front pivot of the trans and by their welding to the torsion tube. The commercial Kaffer (aka truss bars, traction bars and several other names) has a spreader bar connects between the shock towers then the trans mounts bolts to it via a pair of connector rods. For IRS cars only there is the same thing except for the Mendola "Stiffy" that has a secondary pair of rods that connect to the trailing arm pivots. The shock bolt is used to connect both the upper shock mounts and the Kaffer bar end brackets in place. A lot of un-intended loading on the forging for the shock towers.

If you have a roll cage then where the rear down bars connect to the floor then maybe a kaffer bar type of arrangement could connect, via. the floor) to the down bars and have the cage stiffen and share loading. Putting on motor mounts may or may not be a good idea but is popular in some forms of playing with bugs.

My opinion is worth less than you paid for it. Lee

[Piledriver]

Unfortunately a t1 lacks any real structure for a true rear motor mount setup.

Wheel hop is not a thing on a late t3... it totally lacks frame horns, mount crossbar in back and at trans nosecone.

Of course another option is use the crmo frame horn setup sold for buggies, and/ot a t3 rear torsion swap, it is designed to bolt in and has nice weldable sheetmetal shock mount bits. the chassis would require the mounts to be added, but its viable.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Not that familiar with a Type 3s but on my type I will have to have a motor mount made that will (probably) connect to the cage to support my V6 tied to a bus 091.

buggy4.jpg

buggy7.jpg

The motor mount (arrow [but the mount to the engine is not shown here]) probably would not completely rid the problem with the type 1 trans mount/pickle fork necessity. As thick as the square stock is I am not sure it will handle off-road; this was taken years ago when it was to be a street legal buggy not bouncing around in the sand.

With both the motor mount and a Kaffer bar the commercial Kaffer bars might work but it is still a lot of loading on the shock mount eyes.

Lee

[Racer156]

I looked at the stiffy bar set up on the cool rides site. I can see what you mean. It definitely takes lateral loads but not up and down support. On the other hand the body is there to support the load similar to how the front struts are supported. Seems hard to believe that that while the body is bolted on that the cast Al supports would break from the load supported by removing the torsion bars.

Anybody agree or am I way off?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Got some pictures of the area we are talking about. Like I said, I am not familiar with the type 3s.

Lee

[Racer156]

Oh sorry, I’m not sure where type 3 came from. These questions are for a super beetle. Heres a pic from the mendola site of what I want to do except for with stock control arms.

https://images.app.goo.gl/aDSMJUzFJn8uV2Az7

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Ah, the kind of coil over shock shown isn't that bad of a system. It is the other style, a version of the overload shocks, that are so bad. They take away from the torsion bars and neither component then works well.

I'm not sure what you mean by the stock "control arms" unless you are talking about the forgings that the shocks and body attach to (I thought they were castings also but "Dusty Mohave" corrected me on that. Forgings, as I remember, are much stronger than castings.

Bilstein shock mount - Copy copy.jpg

This is the a Bilstein or Bugpack Kaffer/truss bar which I think I have (I bought it along time ago so I have forgotten just who/where).

One thing that could be done is to box the forgings to the stiffening surfaces but they you still have the knob on the top where the shock bolts through. The pix shows the connection to the shock tower with Bilstein 6000 shocks. They use adapter spacers to mount stock eye shocks (not spherical eyes which I think later style shocks use) which made the length of the bolt they supplied too short. Even then I didn't like the capability of there being too much loading on the eye part of the forging and snapping it off. I have seen that happen in the sand when guys buy a used rail then go out and beat the puddin' out of it before learning it's capabilities; they go out whole and come back lame and defeated so the weeks stay turns into less than a couple of hours.

IMG_0917 copy.jpg

This is what the mount to the shock eye and bolt looks like on the Kaffer/Truss bar I have. The wide length of the Truss mount plus the shocks with adapters make the bolt to hold them together roughly about 6" long which I feel is going to put too much off-set loading on the forging's shock eye.

If you need more pix I have some. Since I went with a bus transaxle my original design for a truss bar may change... we'll see.

(in reference to the pix) I hope you don't forget to put floors in on your pan (giggle) .

Lee

[Racer156]

I’m calling the orange things in the pic control arms:
https://pin.it/7g7z5cfatvaa3u

Not sure if that’s the correct term, but was just trying to understand if there was a structural problem bypassing the torsion bars completely like in mendola pic. If those shock supports are forged and not cast then it seems like they would be strong enough but if you’ve seen people break the shock mount eyes out of them then I guess I better leave the torsion bars in and find a nice set of shocks