Saturday, June 10, 2006

A Rehung Rear

Okay, I'll admit that it took a little while to recover from the shock of my failed suspension adaptation, but not two months! Sorry for the long absence. Going back to stock appears to be more appropriate for the Karmann Eclectric. Type I trailing arms coupled with Type IV (Porsche 944) torsion bars CV joints, drive and stub axles should do just fine for handling my load, and will also leave open additional possibilities for easier installation of traction control devices, etc...
To add some stopping power, the AC Industries rear disc brake kit was selected. This gave the additional bonus of beefy blank rotors, in which I drilled both the 4x130mm VW lug pattern, and the 5x130mm Porsche pattern, allowing me to switch rims with ease. The AC Industries kit uses commonly-available VW Golf brake parts, and seems quite well engineered. It also appears to have added just a bit of track, as I can now fit the 15" phone dials on the rear without having to modify the shock tower! With 205/50 R16 tires, it appears that I'll be able to fit the 16" rims by only trimming about 1/4" from the top bumpstop, and replacing one bolt on the trailing arm with a countersunk allen-head machine screw. Of course, the proof will be in finding and fitting one of those tires some time in the next few days..

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home