@barncobob posted:gotta love the French...have no desire to go there
Ah, but the escargot...
All in the above posts is true, and the big difference in the future of industry of those two countries (Japan and France) was the introduction of W. Edwards Deming, a statistical measuring and product quality expert, to some major Japanese industrial heads by General MacArthur as a way of improving Japanese industrial quality and productivity and thereby reduce costs of production and become competitive in the post-war world economy. The rest is history, but it is a terrific story and well worth reading about (if you’re a production quality geek). Stan’s experience with his Renault shows what happens when you ignore product quality as “too costly” to apply to manufacturing.
My old company bought in to the Deming philosophy hook, line and sinker from the CEO down to the janitors and after several years of concerted efforts had not only the best product quality in our industry, but according to Forbes we had the best product quality (and lowest relative product costs) of any industry by the end of the 1990’s. Deming’s Statistical Product Control methods really work and we proved it in the US Computer biz.
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Many sporty car buffs rightly revere the Datsun 240Z. But it's still worth noting what Mother Nissan was holding back as it began dominating USA race tracks:
Engine bay, 1969 Nissan Skyline GT-R.
Triple carbs...check.
Factory headers...check.
Crossflow head...check.
Dual OHC...check.
Four freakin' valves per cylinder...check.
Rated at 160 HP from two liters displacement, this little beast redlined (according to the tach on the dash) at 7500 RPM.
—I emphasize: this engine was made in 1969, and installed in the equivalent of a K-Car.
Meanwhile, the American-spec 2.4L-6: 151 HP @5600; redline at 6500.
.
@edsnova posted:.
Triple carbs...check.
Factory headers...check.
Crossflow head...check.
Dual OHC...check.
Four freakin' valves per cylinder...check.
Pass the new US smog laws? ... uh, probably no check
A lot of the hottest European and Asian motors had to cool their jets (ahem) when we started sniffing for hydrocarbons.
BMW's hot 1600 TI (twin dual-throat Webers) couldn't make it across the pond (the sneaky, last-minute single-carb 2-liter substitution met with some success, though).
Porsche's European 911S had to be defanged for our shores, too.
My '68 1600 had no smog stuff, but the '71 had a belt-driven pump that blew air into the exhaust manifold to help burn off the bad stuff — at the cost of a few ponies it could ill afford to lose.
January 1, 1969 may not have been the day the music died, but it was starting to get a lot more quiet around here.
.
Fix It Again Tony.....This was my first and last Fiat and anything rolling out of Italy....Bruce
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@aircooled posted:Fix It Again Tony.....This was my first and last Fiat and anything rolling out of Italy....Bruce
@aircooled@air cooled very nice 500. I do miss mine.
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Holyshyt, where to start?? I'll take on the hijack first. My dad spent WWII as a USNavy officer working with the Brits and Eisenhower (?) on the invasion. He sailed across the Atlantic a few times when such travel carried huge risk from U-boats. He was a gunnery officer off shore, pounding the German positions at Normandy. I Never really had a chance to quiz him about all of that, as he did not make it past 50. I never heard him say a thing about Germans, Japanese, or anybody else having to do with the war. That said, I'm sure he had opinions, I just never had a chance to find out what they were.
And so how about those fancy CV drive axels. Pictures of the assembly included. By my careful inspection, they appear to be made just fine, and I hope they mean what they say about exceeding OEM specs. The CV assemblies seem stout, shiny, smooth to flex. I'm hoping that there are truly fine manufacturing entities in China where the folks there actually know what they are doing, and use proper materials. The CVs came unloaded with grease, and I'm here to tell those who already know that pumping those things with grease is a messy affair. I think I loaded them up good. So the status is I now have on the left rear drive side: a new CV drive axel, new bearings/seals inner and outer (the old inner bearing definitely had some rattle and grind to it), and the new disk brake hub. All seems to lash up well, and I am praying that the dimensions all stack up about the same so when I mount the tire, it does not rub the body. The old lash-up had the thinnest possible clearance.
And I got 
one of those torque indicators (1/2" drive) and can report that it works pretty well. Have yet to apply it to the castle nut,; that will come to the fore tomorrow. It's good to 250 ft-lbs says here. I measured out 25 ft-lb on the CV bolts (all new), and 40 ft-lbs on the bearing cover bolts.
As to the other side, my plan is to replace that hub/disk with one that matches the new one on the left, featuring the longer spline in the hub. Mostly to be sure that the castle nut there is torqued properly. Will leave the bearings and CVs as are -- I do not (yet) suspect them. OTOH, if after I look more closely at that side, I may change my mind. I certainly know what to do and how to do it now wrt R&R, so maybe won't take me a week to get it done. When buying my necessary parts for the left side, I ordered enough to do both sides.
Careful observers might notice in photo #2 that my car did not come with rubber bump stops at the rear. Which fact I have never noticed before. And I wonder why they are not there. Yet another oversight by the fine QC Dept at JPS? Possibly. Is there any good reason why they would not be supplied? I am now wondering what might have gone on back there when I hit that monster pot hole on the Tour d'Smo. Actually, I went on a cruise in Pittsburgh this past July and hit an even deeper pot hole at speed on that cruise and heard/felt a rather large thump/knock in the body that was heretofore unprecedented. More mysteries. PS: two rubber bump stops are on their way to my garage..
And lastly, for my good buddy and Esteemed President-for-Life of the Peoples' Republic of Stanistan, regarding his advice about who I should do. I only have one me to do, so what you see is what you get.
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Further thought, trying as I might to connect dots and sort through who struck John first and then what happened next, etc, that led to this fine exercise. So consider this: Fact 1, the CV drive axel I removed (I determined that it is indeed an EMPI part) had the spline cuts at the very end of the drive shaft, outside of the circlip, mushroomed out a little such that the CV bearing doo-dad would not just slip off the shaft after the clip was removed. I had to file the nubs down enough to get the bearing cage to come off the shaft. Fact 2: when the suspension flexes, the CV drive axel must stretch to accommodate, and the clever design is such that the shaft assembly indeed can extend in or out through a limited range. If one tries too much travel of the suspension wrt the body the limit of axial motion of the CVs will be reached and the circlips will press hard against the shoulder of the groove they are seated in. There is precious little material left at the end of the shaft outboard of the circlip groove. If the suspension travel is sudden (think pothole) there will be a sizeable impact on that clip and the material that it retains. Some deformation of that material could easily happen, esp'y if repeated enough times and the material is, um, not as fine a piece of steel as it might be. Do the following dots connect?: no bump stops means the suspension is free to move through an arc larger than possible with a bump stops present, and the CV drive axel can not properly accommodate the asked for linear extension. Just wondering how this all might play. If we have an actual extreme event here, the jolt would be transmitted through the entire assembly: bearings, stub axel, spacers and that ever present castle nut. It might even put some kind of undue force on some of the transmission innards. BTW: I know I have a broken gear tooth in my tranny. The broken tooth is on my dining room table.
I am left wondering why you don't have the bump stops.
Mike, best guess: oversight at the assembly by JPS. Or, they fell off?
John cuts them off and uses them for door stops in the leading edge of the door. He’s proud of it.
True story.
@El Frazoo posted:!!
Yeah.
My list of such items grows longer. The one I like (hate) the most is a bump stop of a different kind. The steering gear pitman has design that will provide a mechanical lmit to the amount of turning one can do. Without this adjustable stop, one could turn the front so much the tires hit the trailing arm knuckle. Ask me how I know. i have the JPS hybrid tube chassis and this involves some custom framework at front . This frame work involves the aforementioned mechanical stops. My frame members had the appropriate threaded nut welded in the exact right place to hold a bolt and locknut that would provide that adjustable steering limiter. Only one thing wrong: nobody installed the adjuster bolt. I nearly had a blow out from the tire that rubbed almost through the cords on the inner sidewall before I tumbled to this. John did make good by sending me a new tire. So at JPS anything is possible. I'm more than 10 years out and one could say I'm still sorting ... On the positive side: when the car is running right it is pretty much right good fast fun.
M8 1 bolts maybe?
Meanwhile . . .
The new left side rebuild is complete, almost. Everything got lashed up proper and the tore does not rub the body -- whoo-ha!! I lashed up the new torque indicator, got my breaker bar arranged and hopped my 200+ lbs on that handle until the new gizmo beeped, having been set at 220 ft-lbs. The peak indicator registered about 217 ft-lbs. Given the ideal alignment of the cotter pin hole at this setting, I called this good enough. Might be ready to roll. Also, as a matter of maintenance, I will check the torque again after some driving.
Right side: plan as mentioned is to install a new long-spline disk there, requiring removal of what turns out to be a rather very tight castle nut. My pneumatic impact wrench did not budge it. But again my 200+ lbs and the 1/2 breaker bar at about 16" got is loose. Will do an R&R on that disk tomorrow, if I can manage it. The rest of the drive line on that side seems to be just fine. I sense no untoward looseness side to side, fore and aft. So will leave it as is.
Also, for completeness I enclose a close up of the GS-P CV drive axel, so any interested party can see what I ended up with. An obvious feature is the coloration applied to the shaft splines and the CV bearing race that would indicate a hardening operation. Again, these units look real good, and operate really smooth and easy by hand, which was not the case with the one I removed.
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Ed, I do not recall what the threads were there, but certainly they were metric. Local hardware store provided all that was needed.
On VWs, M8 x 1.25 is the norm.
Anything bigger is usually 1.5 pitch: 10mm, 12, 14, even 18 is the same pitch.
@Stan Galat I appreciated your anecdote about make-shift JPS doorstops; I guess nothing surprises about that. But here's the deal: I need some news I can use. Specifically, how about rubber bump stops on our plastic cars? Gotta have them? Nice to have but not needed? Only get in the way so toss them? Good idea?, Bad idea? or ... Meh?
Mostly Meh, maybe.
Some VW years had rear suspension stops that had a stud and were essentially bolted onto the shock tower. Other (later?) years had a similar-looking bumper, but it was somehow glued on to that mounting position. It was pretty good glue, otherwise they could fall off after bottoming out a few times from having three fat friends with you.
If the mounting spot for your bumper has no hole and you wish to use the studded bumper you could just drill a suitable hole where they mount and put them in. You can get great access from below.
If you glue them in I would use something like Locktite Power Grab to really hold them on.
Just remember that with a lowered car, such as you have, adding the rear bumpers will give you about 2" - 3" less downward suspension travel. If that's OK for you, then go for it. Peek up in there and see how much room you have with the car at rest, either on a drive-on lift or with jack stands under the shock mounts, rather than the frame, to get the suspension to settle at "neutral".
Just FYI, I haven't had rear suspension bumpers on Pearl since day one.
Funny I have them and reached them or the bottom on a few occasions
It's hard to know, on these lowered cars, whether when it "bottoms out" you're hitting the suspension stops or bottoming the shock absorbers. If you have "stock" shocks, they're expecting more suspension travel, simply because the original VW design sat 3" or so higher than our cars, so the entire shock absorber is longer. I took a quick look on several parts sites and did not find any rear shocks for "lowered rear suspension" so I can't offer much advice on that. Everyone sells shorter shocks for lowered front ends but not rear. That would make it more likely that you might bottom the shocks by full compression before hitting the suspension bumpers.
Something to think about.
Gordon, txs for the insight. I'm Still in a quandary about what to do. I have ordered some OEM-ish bumpers and will see how much free travel I have left with them applied, this being a concern I thought about, understanding the lower posture of the car vs std VW. These OEM things do seem kinda tall and so are going to use up some of the suspension travel. Maybe I can put them on and cut them down a little? Upon reflection, I'm pretty sure I must have hit some kind of hard stop this summer when on that cruise in PA. was it the diagonal arm hitting the metal plate on the shock tower? was it the shock bottoming out? Can't say for sure, but it was a definite hard knock.
fwiw it's pretty easy to unbolt the shock, compress it, and see what you got. Dollars to donuts the shock bottoms out right about where the bumper would hit.
Ed, I'll look in to this and report back. I like the idea of a soft landing when the suspension gets whacked a good one. As I posit above, if my rear suspension can travel all the way up to the bump plate without a bumper in place, that would be a really hard knock and maybe too long of a stretch for the CV drive axel assembly. Those CV bearings can accommodate a certain amount of axial movement (stretching, if you will) but there would be a limit. Did I reach and try to exceed that limit? Maybe.
I've no idea if this is the case with rear shocks, but front shocks have internal rubber bumpers to slow them down when near their shortest point.
I know this because my old shocks were regular length, and my old car was pretty low in the front. The front shocks were bottoming out. I cut the steel dust covers off, cut half the bumpers off, then welded the steel covers back on and spritzed with paint. The shocks were KYB GR2 that a bunch of folks use. This worked nicely for me.
The bumpers integral to the shock in the front might be required due to the ball joint front end NOT having bump stops.
Somebody would have to dissect the rear shocks to find out.
You may or may not be able to tell by compressing your rear shocks by hand, but certainly could stick a small inspection camera in there to find out without surgery.
@DannyP posted:I've no idea if this is the case with rear shocks, but front shocks have internal rubber bumpers to slow them down when near their shortest point.
I know this because my old shocks were regular length, and my old car was pretty low in the front. The front shocks were bottoming out. I cut the steel dust covers off, cut half the bumpers off, then welded the steel covers back on and spritzed with paint. The shocks were KYB GR2 that a bunch of folks use. This worked nicely for me.
The bumpers integral to the shock in the front might be required due to the ball joint front end NOT having bump stops.
Somebody would have to dissect the rear shocks to find out.
You may or may not be able to tell by compressing your rear shocks by hand, but certainly could stick a small inspection camera in there to find out without surgery.
I’ve cut the covers off some rear KYB Gas-a-just shocks 30 years ago. There were no built in snubbers. Back in my low dollar drag racing days, this was a common mod. We would then use a sway bar link bushing, slit it to slip over the shaft, put a hose clamp on and then move the snubber up or down to tune to the track.
@El Frazoo posted:Meanwhile . . .
The new left side rebuild is complete, almost. Everything got lashed up proper and the tore does not rub the body -- whoo-ha!! I lashed up the new torque indicator, got my breaker bar arranged and hopped my 200+ lbs on that handle until the new gizmo beeped, having been set at 220 ft-lbs. The peak indicator registered about 217 ft-lbs. Given the ideal alignment of the cotter pin hole at this setting, I called this good enough. Might be ready to roll. Also, as a matter of maintenance, I will check the torque again after some driving.
Right side: plan as mentioned is to install a new long-spline disk there, requiring removal of what turns out to be a rather very tight castle nut. My pneumatic impact wrench did not budge it. But again my 200+ lbs and the 1/2 breaker bar at about 16" got is loose. Will do an R&R on that disk tomorrow, if I can manage it. The rest of the drive line on that side seems to be just fine. I sense no untoward looseness side to side, fore and aft. So will leave it as is.
I think you're risking the same result using the stock torque figure putting it all back together. As a number of us have already mentioned, Kelly, upping the torque to 250- 300 ft. lbs has no ill effects (other than 1 having to bounce a little further out on the breaker bar to loosen the castle nut for maintenance) and will ensure nothing comes loose. 217 ft. lbs works for a stock car driven as intended by VW but the engineers never envisioned what we would be doing with their creations all these years later.
From what you said above, it sounds like the right side castle nut is/was a little tighter than the left and it's fine- what does that tell you? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this 1 out (or do I need to call you Kerry again to really get your attention?). 
Castle nuts . . . I mentioned that I was going to replace the right side disk rotor/hub with a new long spline version, like the one I put on the left. And so that happened today. In order to get the cotter pin hole to line up I had to jounce and jiggle on that breaker bar to something like 230 ft-lbs. But I goterdun. I'm not sure that I would be able to turn that nut on the left side enough more to get it to the next hole and slot alignment. I could try. How many degrees or turn equals one full slot alignment? that would be the $64 question. Also, please consider this about the left side troubles. I had a short spline hub and spacer, The spacer I took out on the left was clearly deformed a little and a little is all it took to loosen the tension. Why that spacer deformed, what sort of load was put on it that made it do that, I can't rightly figure. That spacer element is no longer part of the lash-up on that side -- or the other side either, for that matter. All of the materials in the compression chain there now are fine and upstanding steel parts designed to do the job as speced. On th right side, the spacer looked very good and as I mentioned it took about 230 ft lbs to loosen that bad boy up to remove the old disk. So here is the deal I'm willing to make: I will take the buggy out as-is and thrash it around a bit, and then come back and pounce on that left castle nut until I can run it down to the next slot/hole alignment -- IF I can.
. And then report back.
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Hey, you stubborn old rocket scientist:
How many people told you AT LEAST 250-300 or more? The Formula Vee guys usually do 320, with a whopping 58-60 hp.
Tighten it more, or do it again in a year or two. 230? That's just about stock, which is 217. Wow, a whole 13 ft. lbs. more than stock. Oh boy, that's really too tight...
There must have been ten guys on here telling you MORE than the factory setting is the ticket. We must all be stupid.
One thing that was said in Kelly's last post that makes 100% sense is: take it out as is and recheck. In our shakedown we torque on assembly but do not install the cotter pin. We retorque after about 100 miles and then pin it.
**IMPORTANT NOTE** Not sure of it was said above but one good thing remember is that all of these torque specs were set in the 50s/60s/70s and based on the parts that were used at that time. MANY of those things have changed over the years and while they are still probably a good ballpark, they are not gospel. I'll use today's pitman arms as an example. Pitman arm pinch bolt factory spec is 51 ft/lbs, however today's castings are made with more gap at the pinch so 51 ft/lbs doesn't begin to tighten it enough to not slip.
Good to know.
Kelly FYI on one of my cars—can't remember if it was the Spyder or Bridget—I had the same dilemma as you: Torquemeister @220 ft-lbs got it right into a slot for the pin. I scratched my chin a bit, pondered and decided, No, one more groove would be more groovy.
And getting there was no trouble at all. I don't know what the spec ended up being but it was not too hard to turn.
I say again,
Spot.
Torque.
Copy that. More is more . . . So far, no need for a cheater bar, but maybe that's going to change.
Again, get a Torquemeister so you don't have to guess how much the nuts are torqued.
Mike, I have a torque indicator (see pic above) that goes to 250 ft-lbs, and is used to quote the numbers above. So the deal is: I have the nuts down to about 220 ft-lbs as they are now. After I drive the car around a little, I will double up and push for the next open hole in the shaft for the pin. That might exceed 250 indicated, but so what?
@El Frazoo posted:Mike, I have a torque indicator (see pic above) that goes to 250 ft-lbs, and is used to quote the numbers above. So the deal is: I have the nuts down to about 220 ft-lbs as they are now. After I drive the car around a little, I will double up and push for the next open hole in the shaft for the pin. That might exceed 250 indicated, but so what?
Please report back, Kelly, as to whether you're under/over 250- I'm betting under...