Shaky steering - N00b

First, check your wheels and tires for balance and bent rims.

Are all the front end parts new (get good quality German/Brazi/MX parts over far east if available)l and tight?  Ball joints, tie rod ends, steering damper?  Is steering box in good shape and adjusted?  Wheel bearings greased and tightened correctly.  Wheels true? Did you lower front end with single/dual beam adjusters?  If so you many need single or 2x caster shims.  Alignment checked? Beam greased?

Anti-swaybar primarily just keeps your car flat going around corners.  Every thing clean and no rust thru (of course)? Post pictures of front end to help pin point any obvious issues.

P-dub - Check tightness of steering box. If you can turn the steering wheel quite a bit before the wheels start to turn, then steering box need adjustment (tighten adjustment nut).

if the wobble starts at that low speed, or is worse when you hit a slight bump, it might be a bad 'steering damper'. Steering damper looks like a small shock absorber and is attached between the steering arm and a bracket on the torsion bar housing.

(If you 'click' on this pic it will give you a slightly larger picture.)

Start with the easy (and cheap) stuff first:

1.  Has the car been sitting on the tires in one spot for a long time.  If so, they may be 'flat-spotted' and will probably need to be replaced.

You could also have a 'bad' tire, or bent wheel.

Try switching the front/back wheels around to see if that makes a difference.

2.  Get a proper wheel alignment at a shop that knows pan based VWs.

Ron O. wrote: "Get a proper wheel alignment at a shop that knows pan based VWs."

That's the best advice on here so far for a Noobie.  If you need potential help in finding a good old-style VW place to work on it, let us know your city and state/province and we'll try to recommend someone.  If you already have an alignment/front end shop that can do the work and they need to know the year, tell them if it's a link-pin front end use 1965 specs for a Beetle sedan.  If it's a ball-joint front end, use 1970 specs.  For either year used, add at least 3 degrees (5 is even better) of negative caster to the front beam (shims behind the lower torsion tube as Wolfgang mentioned above).  Should be a piece of cake for any competent alignment shop to check your car out, identify and fix whatever is amiss and make your car safe.

Good luck with your Dad's car.  Having that is pretty cool...

Gordon

The Speedstah Guy from Massachusetts

Gordon- Just a small detail, but I believe it's positive caster you want; the value drops when you lower the car and you have to add it back to make the car safe again.

Pdub- You're getting great advice here; make sure the front suspension is in good shape, wheels aren't bent and balanced.The stock caster figure is (I believe) 2.5-3' and that is safe to about 70mph. For a car to be safe above 70-75mph, caster needs to be increased a degree or 2, and that's what the shims going under the bottom beam do. When these cars are lowered you lose caster and without restoring it to at least stock specs the car will be more work to drive at normal highway speeds and dangerously uncontrollable at anything above 80 mph. Yes, I know this from personal experience; only took the car in question up to 100mph for about 20 seconds and a side wind put the car into the next lane before the steering would react. Never pushed it that hard again. Al 

Find a small independent alignment shop - avoid SEARS, Midas, GoodYear, etc as they are used to modern cars that normally only need toe-in/out adjustments.  Find old guy in a frame shop maybe.  Have the caster shims available - they aren't used on any other vehicle but a VW T1 pan. Don't go in with old worn parts on the car or cracked/missing boots.  I recommend a bag (or 2) of sand in drivers seat and maybe passenger's too (and front to compensate for gas). There are online articles and U-Tube videos on doing your own VW alignment which should get you very close.

I probably need to start prepping my son (24) to take over my build.  Argh, he can't even drive a std trans!

Hang in there, P-dub! There's at least 16 more pages of helpful info (on this topic alone) coming your way! 

The best sort of person to look for to get an alignment would be the grizzled old guy that the local hot rodders use.  You need the sort that spits on the ground when you mention a computer.

Hot rod shops can give you leads for VW shops that have been around for a long time.

Not a peep from P-Dub.

I think we scared him/her away.

I have to agree that when it comes to frontend alignment find a knowledgeable old time hot rodder, especially for a classic or rare car.

I had my '55 at three different 'supposedly' great alignment shops, one in AZ, one in WA and one here in town and not one of them could get the '55 aligned correctly, it'd wander or drift...one shop, the one in AZ even told me the front end needed to be totally rebuilt because 'everything was worn out', now that was a little much for me to swallow since the car had been a frame-off rebuild and all the frontend components were new. I finally found a guy by inquiring around town, with friends and etc., an old time hot rodder, that knew exactly how to dial in the car. He did it correctly the first time and now it tracks like it is on rails. I took my wifes '65 Mustang(before she sold it a couple years ago) there and my '56 F-100 to have him do the alignments on them also...perfect every time. 

good find!

So sad that it's come to this though. Why is it so hard to find professionals in the field who can actually do their jobs?

Maybe because no one has seen one of these front ends since 1980?

Because today's breed of mechanics are all about 'plug and play' what with computers monitoring everything from fuel delivery to tire pressure on newer cars, if something isn't working correctly just plug in your computer run the scan, computer finds the fault then you go into the parts room pull a new module and install it...actually doing mechanical work, searching for a fault etc. seems like a thing of the past...the old timers are getting to be a rare breed, indeed...sad!

One of my friends is the shop manager for a GM dealership and is 'old school' trained, he knows cars inside and out and he bemoans the new breed of young mechanics just out of automotive trade school...if they can not solve the problem with their computer he says they do not have the needed skill set to rationalize and search/trace down the problem for the most part.

"bemoans the new breed of young mechanics"

Best friend is old sprint car driver and now Service Mgr at big GM dealership.  He keeps talking about his Techs - I said what the heck is that?  He said they don't like being called mechanics (grease monkey must be a 4 letter word to them!).  Guess with Tech you can get by with $125/hour (shop book rates dictated).  He always saying his Techs billed 80 hours a week --- because the book says it takes 3 hours to do replace a water pump when a skilled mechanic can do in less than 1.5 hours. Another guy in condo has a '69 427 ci Corvette - GM dealership won't touch it or any car over 15 years old.

Here you can not even find parts for any Corvette older than a '99 at the GM dealership according to guys I know that own older 'Vettes. 

Hardly seems relevant though. If I had a '69 Vette with a 427 I would surely never let any stealership monkeys near it!