Adjustable Sway Bar Setup, Corner Balancing,Alignment Advice

[Bill K.]

I'm getting close to getting my car aligned. I'm looking for a good starting point to learn the car without getting into trouble quickly.

It's an IRS bug:
*Whiteline adjustable sway bars front (20mm) and rear (24mm)
*24.5mm torsion bars, lowered 2.5" front/rear, dropped spindles, caster shims, GR2's
*Yokahama ES100's on Fuchs -- 205/55/16 (F), 225/50/16 (R)
*Widened track -- +4" (F), +6" (R)

My questions:
1. What should I start with for front/rear camber, front/rear toe?
2. Do you recommend corner balancing before alignment or just leave it level?
3. How stiff should I set the front/rear sway bars?
4. Will adjustments to the sway bars affect alignment?

Thanks, Bill

[Marc]

Is this for competition (and if so, what kind) or street use?
Swaybars should have no effect on your base alignment settings....their only purpose (unless it's a Super - yeccchh!) is to transfer spring rate from the inside wheel to the outside wheel. I've always preferred getting the car to handle as well as possible (through alignment & spring-rate changes) without swaybars, and then introduce them.

[Victor H]

Hi Bill, this is one of my favorite topics as road course beetles are great fun. First is a section from an e-mail to John C re the whiteline sway bar.

They are onto a pretty good idea from an engineering standpoint but the execution is a bit off.

I?m not referring to my earlier e-mails about the narrowed front-end since that?s my problem. However, the bar ends where the sway bar turns back to meet the drop links are not bent square resulting in interference with the shock absorbers. They should be at least be bent in 90 degrees to the main cross bar, and in fact I had to bend a little more for adequate clearance. As I mentioned in an earlier e-mail the lower shock mount brackets are lousy as is. They should be provided with window cut-outs, which I did on mine so it fits flush with the shock mount and is level for the drop link.

Other item is that the drop links are too long for a even a mild to moderately lowered car. Stock suspension is fine (who runs stock height anymore) but with a lowered front end the bar will sit at an angle interfering with the bottom part of the upper control arm. Fix for this problem was to thread the drop link up another inch or so so that it could be shortened and the bushings moved further up so that the end result is the bar sitting more square. Finally, there is a potential interference problem with the sway-away adjusters, I had to cut about ½? of the threaded stud off the adjuster and also buy some hardened washers to put between the to thick 1?x3? torsion bar plates to space the bar forward to avoid interference with the adjuster nut.

I haven?t had a chance to try it out yet, but I have a track event this weekend, so I?m hoping I?ve fixed all the issues and it performs well ( I think it should). All in all it could be a one hour install but so far it?s taken about 8 hours to get everything the way it should be. Don?t know if you want to write some separate instructions to go with these as the instructions provided are marginal and don?t address these multiple issues.

I have subsequently taken my car to the track and can say that the front bar is very nice, but takes a bit to set up.

1) RE the adjustment, I used the second from the lightest setting (back of the bar) but this was too firm (I have 20mm bar) and will change to the lightest setting.
2) Camber- I run 1.5 degrees negative up front. This with stock alignment of appox. 1/8"-1/16" of toe gives great bite up front in the corners. If you can get that much negative camber in the rear without exessive lowering that would be optimal. I lowered my rear end 1 inner spline, but when combined with new bushings the result I got is 0 camber.
3) If you can corner weight your car that would be optimal. I have not done that and was able to keep up with Mini Ss with optional sport suspension without too much difficulty. I'm running 195/60/15 tires AVS ES 100s so you should get even better performance with your tires.

Good luck and have fun.

[Bill K.]

Marc -- it's just for fun (fast, fun) -- a 70 std. I'll cruise the hills, try autox, and local track (Thunderhill). I won't be putting to many standard street miles on it, so tire wear is not a big deal. If I had to make a trade-off, I'd favor more cornering ability than high speed stability.

Victor--I had problems with the whiteline instructions too and had to buy some hardware, but it fit without major modifications. Here's some pictures.

After reading the article by Greg Ward on ACN, I'm thinking:
Front: -2 degree camber, 2mm toe-out, 3/4 stiff sway bar setting
Rear: -2 degree camber, 2mm toe-in, 3/4 stiff sway bar setting
Your thoughts?

I'll probably have the corner weights checked to see where I'm at. How much difference would you consider to be significant and worth tweaking the rear end for?

Thanks for the pointers.

[Victor Hirth]

It looks like on your front bar the lower shock mount bracket upside down. That's going to drag on the pavement if you go over any uneven pavement. Flip it around, and when you do you'll see what I mean about the bracket fit.
Also, you can play with the toe but I would run stock setting front and back. I believe if you run toe out that you'll tend toward more oversteer, and the beetle already has enough tendency toward that. I like my cars to be neutral to mild oversteer which you'll get anyway since the front ends of our cars tend to stick so well anyway.

[Victor Hirth]

It looks like on your front bar the lower shock mount bracket upside down. That's going to drag on the pavement if you go over any uneven pavement. Flip it around, and when you do you'll see what I mean about the bracket fit.
Also, you can play with the toe but I would run stock setting front and back. I believe if you run toe out that you'll tend toward more oversteer, and the beetle already has enough tendency toward that. I like my cars to be neutral to mild oversteer which you'll get anyway since the front ends of our cars tend to stick so well anyway.

[Marc]

Those settings sound pretty good for starters. 2° negative is pretty hard on outer front wheel bearings and spindles and you may not be able to achieve it without trick camber eccentrics or bending of control arms - doing so alters the geometry of the front end enough that the spindle is forced to pivot as the suspension travels - ball-joint-generated bump-steer, if you will, so don't go to extremes; if all you can get is a degree or so, settle for it. With stock (positive) camber the wheels are constantly trying to steer away from each other (like leaning bicycles) hence a slight static toe-in is needed to compensate. With negative camber the opposite is true so slight toe-out makes sense. I wouldn't run toe-in in the rear, they toe in a bunch anytime you're on the gas (and out on decel)...but it depends how you want it to react, if you want the tail to snap out on throttle-off to rotate the car (and you can handle that) then dial in some static rear toe-out.

[Guest]

Looking at you pics it shows that you left side tie rod has the angled tie rod near the wheel. I may be wrong but I believe that the angled tie rod attached to the pittman arm.

[Marc]

Looking at you pics it shows that you left side tie rod has the angled tie rod near the wheel. I may be wrong but I believe that the angled tie rod attached to the pittman arm.

True. However if the final front end ride height leaves the steering arm of the spindle higher than the pitman arm it may be necessary to install it this way to keep from overtraveling the tierod end.

[Bill K.]

Thanks everyone for the build QC.

Victor -- I'll flip/clearance the front sway bar shock mount for more ground clearance. Do you have pictures of what you did?

Marc -- My steering geometry should be stock since I have dropped spindles with the adjustable beam set to neutral height, so should I flip the left tie rod assembly? Is it a wear issue if I leave it backwards? What's a more forgiving rear toe setting -- toe-in or toe-out?

Thanks for the help,
Bill

[Guest]

I think that they make a bump steer kit that relocates the tie rod ends from the top of the spindles to the bottom-it is to be used in lowered front ends to eliminate severe angles in the tie rods. I think Aircooled.net has them.

[rsrnate]

I would not put toe out in the rear as that would almost certainly make you spin off the track . With sticky or wider tires in the rear the front end will push before you break the rear end free as there is hardley any weight in the front. By adding toe out in the the front you will have a car that is a little twitchy in a strait line but you will have alot better cornering speeds. I hope to run thunderhill in 2005 with N.A.S.A. maybe i'll see you there

[Plastermaster]

Excuse me for getting off topic a bit...but I just want to compliment the job on those Fuchs and the rest of the car too!

Ron

[Victor Hirth]

rsnate- How do you have your car set up? Most beetles if properly set up will almost never understeer except at very low speeds, or with really high steering inputs at higher speeds (something most experienced drivers avoid). Weight is the enemy of corners and beetle front ends are light and rarely understeer unless something's not right. The rear end is another story. Two problems weight and high polar moment of inertia with the engine hanging behind the rear axle. Ever enter a corner too fast? You don't plow off in heavy understeer, your rear end will swing around like a pendulum and spin you off in a huge oversteer condition. Of course there are exceptions to everything but I think you'll find most beetle and early Porsche drivers wanting more rear end bite, rather than worrying about front-end grip.

[Bill K.]

...most beetle and early Porsche drivers wanting more rear end bite, rather than worrying about front-end grip.

To clarify my understanding, more rear bite =
wider performance tires with lower pressure
wider track w/ lightest unsprung weight
lowered ride height w/ stiffer torsion bar and bushings
negative camber w/ sway bar
static toe-in

I'm going to set my rear sway bar to the softest setting to start.