My 68 irs baja

[cncwhiz]

I have a posting on the samba about my baja bug I am building. Some of the guys over there have been helping my some and suggested that I come here. I just started working on it. It has been sitting in my driveway as a lowered bug for years. The front and rear of the body have been hit several times and its not worth it to build a stock body 68 being that I have two 67's in my backyard for that. I live in Gardnerville Nevada and have always wanted a baja. It was an autostick so it is irs. I have and off road front front end that I will base my suspension off of. I am planning on stiffer torsion bars, adjustable spring plates and as much travel as I can get with the good stock cv's I currently have. It will be caged in the future. One of my other issues that I have is the motor. I am going to build up a 1776 with ported heads and some kadron carbs the I already have. I am really thinking the I will want better more reliable power down later. I have looked at doing a subaru or a type 4. The guys on the other page said there is a guy on here named skidmark that lives in Gardnerville too?

[Leatherneck]

Skid lives in Minden NV. Have any pics would like to see more of what you have. As far as power goes run what you have, save up or dig deep for the power plant though they are cheaper then they used to be but in the long run cheaper then VW horsepower. We are here to help and spend your money so let’s go.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

What kind of off-roading are you planning on and how hard do you plan on riding. Makes a big difference. Leather's idea of pix is a good one.

Lee

[cncwhiz]

I will add pictures this weekend. Told myself I had to clean up the garage before I can work on it. This is my first baja. I have been into vw's for my whole life. My mom still has my dad's oval he bought new. I built my first street bug in 1977.

[cncwhiz]

What kind of off-roading are you planning on and how hard do you plan on riding. Makes a big difference. Leather's idea of pix is a good one.

Lee

No road queen here. Not a pre-runner but a solid trail rig I can explore ghost town and other stuff in the desert. 75% Dirt roads.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

What kind of off-roading are you planning on and how hard do you plan on riding. Makes a big difference. Leather's idea of pix is a good one.

Lee

No road queen here. Not a pre-runner but a solid trail rig I can explore ghost town and other stuff in the desert. 75% Dirt roads.

You are going to have fun with this type of build.

Changing/increasing the preload on IRS can do a lot as log as the preloading isn't too much... not sure about going to a different pair of torsion bars would help or not. Truss/kaffer bars for sure and putting limiters on the front BJ beam plus bracing the shock towers and getting different shocks all the way around should help. Welding the seams on the trans mount arms and the trailing arms is almost a must.

Increasing rear wheel travel is another whole subject in itself.

I also recommend a body lift but from what I had been told the commercial ones are more for show than for strength. A good cage is also a must.

If you can find a pair of Bus BJ spindles you can add some lift to the front end as well as fix the problem of the lower BJ pulling out of the arms. I did post something about this a while back. Adjusters might be of some help also.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=136514&hilit=off+r ... joint+beam

This is the BJ beam build I was talking about but Photobucket has blurred the pix since I didn't buy into their site. I still have the pix stashed away so I think I will repost them with a new build string if people don't mind. I said I would continue on with the build as the other beam was so badly rusted out that I would have to re-do it.

I have a stripped bare and ready to build beam sitting on my fold up welding table and since it will have to be done sooner or later so maybe now is the sooner than later. I have some time since I can't do a whole lot of bending over for a while (new med and some possible painful results to it). I also have a change or two to add to the mix.

Lee

[cncwhiz]

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Here are the pictures of what I have. I want to start on the rear suspension first. My neighbor has a little girl who runs around and I want to keep wheels on one end of the car for safety. I know that I need bracing and welding up where it is spot welded from what has been suggested here as well as the baja bible. I either want to buy one of those weld on kits for the swing arms or buy the stock x 1 arms. Do I need bigger torsion bars? As I said in my post before, I will run the stock cv's until they die as that they are new. How much travel and how do I get it with stock cv's?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

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This is hard because of the neighbor child and that welding is going to be required so you have to protect others so you should work inside. With already having an IRS rear suspension I would start strengthening the pan there. Yes, the spot welded trans mount (AKA "Pickle Forks") seams needed to be properly welded then supported with what are called Truss Bars or Kaffer Bars.

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Normally the commercial kits hook the trans mount ends of the forks to the shock eyes via. connecting to a spreader bar. The picture show one of the commercial units (roughly $150 give or take) but I don't particularly like the connection at the shock eye as there might be too much loading in that delicate area (in my case the after market shocks I have spacer/adapters that would require bolts over 6" long which could put a lot of torque into the shock mount eye). There is another commercial version called a "stiffy" https://www.coolrydescustoms.com/the-st ... ystem.html that has an extra bar that connects to the trailing arm pivot which should make it a bit stronger.

In my opinion, if you are going to use a bug body to make a Baja then the connection for the truss bar should go into the body and hook to the rear hoop's diagonal bars that connect to the floor of the body. If you are going to get a glass body then if the body and your rear hoop of you cage has down bars that you can hook the truss bars to that would be better. The whole thing is to stop the trans mounts from doing the "dance of death" when undersigned for loading gets driven into the when goofing around and having fun off-road.

I run a stock rear torsion bar but have reset the preloading from anywhere from the stock 19/20° to 30° but that is way too stiff. I think 26° is about the limit when using stock bars. When you are buying stiffer bars then ask the opinion of the Mfg. on this.

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There is another potential problem and that is with the outboard ends or the torsion tube nd that is this support hook that is known to break when it is beat up too much. Adding a thicker strap of some sort to this area to help reinforce it is a good idea.

The stock CVs should be OK assuming they are OK in themselves. You will need to add stops if you get too happy with rear travel.

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You can add some lower travel (hang) by notching the bottom of the trailing arms about a quarter of an inch or farther but you need to be careful on this as the quarter of an inch works well with stock travel CV joints.

Some of the basic things I can think of to start with.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

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I did some more playing around with the one picture as I thought you might still have the stock trans mount on the trans mounts... which it kind of looks like that is what is there. That is another change that I suspect any hard use playing around off-road might need.

If the other pans, the swing axle ones. are in better shape there are trailing arms pivot kits you can buy and install. Again, check with the state you live in to see what, if any, the titling problem may or may not be. Don't want you to throw a lot of time and money into something you can't use as you would want to.

Also, like I have done, there is the potential of adding a bus trans for strength and gearing which raises the nose cone of the trans up about 3" which means either you get a 10° mount kit or move the shifter above the tunnel which I have done on my black buggy build. This does require a change in CVs and the half-shafts (the center drive axles). This will drive you crazy with what and where you can go but it also drives other changes likewise.

Here, we are good at emptying your wallet and back account for the whole dream of what can be done.

Lee

[cncwhiz]

Thanks for the reply! I have seen in the baja book that they welded metal plate braces from the torsion housing to the body. When you are talking about the suspension angles, if I level the tunnel will the protractor measure the angle correctly?

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[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks for the reply! I have seen in the baja book that they welded metal plate braces from the torsion housing to the body. When you are talking about the suspension angles, if I level the tunnel will the protractor measure the angle correctly?

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I'm pretty sure the answer will be yes.

If you are talking about "BAJA BUGS & BUGGIES the revised edition" by Jeff Hibbard the support pieces is shown and talked about on pages 75 and 76. It is a pretty good book to have and pay attention to. I used it for reference plus I picked up a lot of info from people and especially people on this site.

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The tunnel has two parts, the tunnel itself and the structural piece that has formed ribs. Both of them are structural for different reasons but I think a good portion of the strength is found more in the bottom piece though. There is something I added to this build and that is a 1' square tube bent to fit inside of the body mount. There is also a 3" body lift on the other side which it clamps the pan floor to. If I did it again I would make that a 1X2 rectangular tube as the 1" square tube, by itself, will take a set if you sit on the pan w/o the two tubes bolted together. The 1X2 would/could also act as something that would protect the pan if you bottomed out going over something.

I'll see if I can find the piece of setting the preload that I posted years ago. Not sure if the pix I posted are still readable.

Lee

[cncwhiz]

Well, after going over what I want to suspension wise, I have decided to rip out the interior of the car and start with the cage. I am.going to go with a class 11 cage and adapt when needed. If I run longer shocks I should be able to control travel with stops and bumps. Has anybody had any issues with latest rage cages?

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[Ol'fogasaurus]

Well, after going over what I want to suspension wise, I have decided to rip out the interior of the car and start with the cage. I am.going to go with a class 11 cage and adapt when needed. If I run longer shocks I should be able to control travel with stops and bumps. Has anybody had any issues with latest rage cages?

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An opinion:

Looking at the Latest Rage roll cages I think I would go with the 800230 style of roll cage would be the better/safer choice (albeit $$$. (https://www.latestrage.net/roll-bars-10 ... -cage-1005). The two center down bars in the rear might be a good place to attach the truss/kaffer bar to assuming they align up closely. There is a preferred angle (I don't know just what it is) to the kaffer bars but the angle being too narrow or too wide of an angle I think negates some of their efficiency. On the ones I am building I eyeballed a location which ended up being very close to the commercial ones available angle.

I haven't seen this cage installed on a Baja so I am not sure about shock mounts for longer travel gas shocks.

The 4-point cage is marginally OK in my opinion assuming you don't get too wild when on the back roads.

Lee

[mikeadams]

That front end in the pictures is an old school Wright place unit. They were the best of the best back in the day.