Suspension

https://www.coolrydescustoms.c...ndeola-products.html

Are you using just the VW suspension now? Look up Adomwerk Racing on youtube

i also have a super wide and have been thinking about a pair of these.

That looks like  a nice suspension Robert M are you using it? By chance like to

know if its worth the investment

The Mendiola suspension is a very nice suspension, but do you really need it?  Thousands of Vintage Speedster owners are getting by just fine with their VW suspension.  Have you already added an anti-swaybar on the front and rear camber compensator? 

arden posted:

That looks like  a nice suspension Robert M are you using it? By chance like to

know if its worth the investment

I am not. @goofer is using the front setup and so are some others. I have an anti-sway bar in the front and I am using the CB Performance camber compensator in the rear. My car handles like a go kart in the twisties and I push it as at as I can. My brakes would be the weak link in my setup so I have to be careful. The brakes and the fact I'm running on 4 1/2" wide tires also keeps me from taking it too far.

I am too like Troy said the anti sway bar and the camber compensator have always been fine. I still might look into lowering drop plates by Atomwerk Racing.

Can you tell us what shocks the car has? Are you running front and/or rear (anti) sway bars?

PS-  @Former Member-  Do you have a link?

I know the Mendeola front suspension is head and shoulders above the VW trailing arm assembly and a couple(?) of guys here have installed it in their Speedsters. Here as well as on the Samba I've heard nothing but good things about the ride and handling. Whether it's worth it- that's up to you to decide.

I’m have Bilstein shocks

rear- 24-000345

front- 24-006200

I guess the first question I might have is “How do you WANT it to handle?”  Do you have an example?  Just saying “I want it to handle better” doesn’t tell us anything.

What type of car do you want it to handle like?  

Even though you have the ability, with a so-called “Super Wide” Vintage, to run 7”-8” wide rims up front and 8”-10” wide rims at the rear, you are still limited by the swing arm rear suspension no matter what you do.  You can put a Mendeola double wishbone front suspension under the front and the rear wheels are still gonna try to tuck under with very hard cornering and the inevitable oversteer, causing the rear end to come around and meet the front (it ain’t pretty).  A better front suspension won’t help that.

About all you can do to improve a swing arm car’s handling is a front anti-sway bar and a rear camber compensator.  Putting the absolute widest rims you can stuff under the rear would help, too.  10” wide would be nice, 11” even nicer but with larger rear rubber you’ll need a lot more engine horsepower to move them.

If you want a speedster that really handles you’ll have to upgrade the rear to a full IRS, run Porsche 924 torsion bars and 924 dual spring plates per side plus the 924 diagonal arms along with a Kafer Brace to keep everything stiff back there.  Then add a rear 3/4” anti-sway bar with adjustable “dog bone” links to allow you to preload a side (like to compensate for a driver and no passenger).

On the front, a 3/4” anti-sway bar on a stock VW front beam.

Koni or Bilstein adjustable shocks all around set at “medium”.

205/45 or 55 tires on front with 7” rims, minimum.

225 or 245/45 tires on the rear with 8” rims, minimum.

Tire pressure set at 26 front, 28 rear.

Power it all with AT LEAST a 2,110 but preferably a NA Subaru 2.5 liter (a Forester 2.5 at around 160hp would be cool) so you can try to keep up with Cobras.  You’ll pull away from them in the corners, but you’d better have a lot of snot in your engine to keep ahead of them on the straights longer than 100 yards.

If your pan is a pre-1969, the upgrade to IRS should run you $1,500 - $3,000 to have it done right.  All the other stuff (wheels, braces, sway bars, shocks, etc) should run another Grand+, so $3K minimum, $5K maximum for something you’ll hardly ever appreciate on the street.  The oglers at your local “Cars & Coffee” won’t even be able to see that stuff under there and will only be impressed by the fake Fuchs wheels.  Still, if you have canyons to carve and no constabulary watching, it would be one helluva high-speed canyon cruiser.

Some guys swear by removing a leaf from the front, and adding a bigger sway-bar. I'm unconvinced.

Gordon.  Some Vintage Super Widebodys were built with IRS.

Thank you all for these quick and well rounded responses. I guess the first step should be a front anti-sway bar and a rear camber compensator based on the feedback here. My pan is from 70s so hopefully finding those parts are easy. I have other quality mid-engine cars that handles like they're on a rail and I understand that this is never going to be anywhere near those, nevertheless, I feel the car should still take those twisties much better even with a type I engine.

There is a recent post in here from Rich Drewek and His Karman Ghia Project. He posted photos of the Mendeola Suspension he's installing front and rear.  check it out Kamran.

I was going to use this suspension in my Spyder being built by Vintage Motorcars right now but it will not fit in a Spyder.   Kevin, the owner of Mendeola has installed the frt. suspension in a Speedster........Bruce

I saw that my car was mentioned and have posted a few photos of construction. the car was modified from a 73 VW IRS to Mendiola front and rear, disk brakes and rack and pinion steering.

On the way back from SLO this year a guy driving near Roy and me said he thought Roy had a nicer car, but he couldn't look underneath both cars. Roy does have a very nice speedster.

The car's handling has much more capability than I have nerve. the car is truly an out standing drive now. A side benefit is that the ride is much much better than the old VW set up.

If you are in the San Diego area let me know and you can try the car out on a run to Mt. Palomar !!  I'm always up for that.

The comments and range of upgrades mentioned in the thread are top notch.

All the best

Larry Bull

Kamran posted:

Thank you all for these quick and well rounded responses. I guess the first step should be a front anti-sway bar and a rear camber compensator based on the feedback here. My pan is from 70s so hopefully finding those parts are easy. I have other quality mid-engine cars that handles like they're on a rail and I understand that this is never going to be anywhere near those, nevertheless, I feel the car should still take those twisties much better even with a type I engine.

Just so you know- the pan is 1970's era so your car is irs? If so it will use a rear anti- sway bar (made specifically for irs). If it's been converted to swingaxle then use a camber compensator. These cars will handle quite predictably when set up properly.

arden posted:

I’m have Bilstein shocks

rear- 24-000345

front- 24-006200

After you think you've done everything you can (alignment settings, sway bars, tire pressures, car is fairly level) and if it still feels like it rides a little rough it may be the shock absorbers. For the last number of years (20? 30?) Bilsteins for VW's have been valved for off road, which is totally wrong for the street. Bilsteins, as well as being rebuildable, can also be custom valved (for a small charge) and I've read that when they are right your car will ride like nothing else! For more reading on the subject-

 http://cal-look.no/lounge/inde...p/topic,20260.0.html

Hope this helps. Al

@goofer- What tire width(s) are you running, Larry?

Another trick if you want your car to handle it's best is to run 1/2° NEGATIVE camber on each front wheel- this is an old slalom/autocross trick and works at highway speeds as well. Before offset camber adjusters 

http://vwparts.aircooled.net/E...ber-adjers-extra.htm 

you took the top control arms and bent them in a press (my machinist friend said it took 10? 12? 15? tons to bend mine- I don't remember, it was 30 or more years ago) , but the adjusters I linked to above make it easy.

Another thing to experiment with is more weight over the axle for more front end bite (I know, Stan, you disagree with me on this but try it!). I'll be honest and admit that I don't know if it will be beneficial in a Speedster but I do know guys have done it for autocross/slalom with both buggies and Beetles. With our cars front/rear weight bias it can't hurt. I know of 1 buggy owner drilling holes in the tops of the shock towers and pouring in hot liquid lead (from old wheel weights he'd collected at work) so nobody could see what he'd done. Al

The reason weight on the front tires is desirable is that 75-80% of braking is done by the front wheels.  If there isn't enough weight the tires just lock and skid without gripping.  Softer UHP Summer tires would help here if weather is mild where you are.

The easiest way to add weight to the front end is to place the battery low in front of axle beam where it is usually designed to go (use a hold-down strap - leather look great) or create a shelf for it on the passenger's side of the car in the nose in front of the front tire.  Larger gas tanks are also available but you will most likely lose the space to carry a spare tire (still room for jack and some tools though).  

I'd save the lead for fishing sinkers.  Pushing extra unneeded weight down the road takes more horsepower (and fuel).  That said, I had an early 1966 911S that I restored.  I took the front bumper off and found two huge cast iron weights shaped to fit either side corner to counteract the weight of the 2L 6 cylinder rear engine. Was counter-intuitive to me since on one hand it had 4 1/2 x 15" light forged Fuchs wheels - but then the cast iron anchors!  

Your other alternative is to lighten the rear some.  944 alloy trailing arms (some models only) can be substituted for the steel VW ones.  Useful if you want quality rear disc brakes and the Porsche 5 bolt pattern.

You might want to read the article in the link below.  Very solid info backed up with factual results for both swing arm and IRS cars.  (And since you have a 1970s pan, chances are you have the mounts still there for the IRS diagonal arm mounts, making the conversion easier).  

http://www.aircooled.net/vw-ha...g-suspension-tuning/

What (I'll bet) they found, Greg, was that being more balanced, they could push the car harder more of the time, which resulted in faster lap times. The extra weight probably didn't affect fuel consumption (or power) enough to even notice, just like you won't notice putting an extra 20 or so pounds in the front of a Speedster, as it's only a little more than 1% weight addition (although it does affect the front/rear weight distribution twice that, which is where a lot of the benefit comes from). And I know adding weight while using light weight wheels seems counter intuitive, but with the car being sprung and suspension/wheels/tires being unsprung weight there are big gains with less unsprung weight (think of it percentage wise).

You are right- the best place to shave weight off of a Speedster is the rear of the car. I have looked into using the alloy 944 trailing arms and was told that even though they are aluminum they're not much (if any) lighter than type 1 parts, they are wider (an inch?) and because of their construction don't lend themselves to narrowing like the type 1 arms. Adapting the 944 brakes isn't difficult but I'm told that the stuff is overkill as it's designed for a 1,000 pound heavier car. The rear of a Speedster doesn't need heavy vented disc brakes (and the big boat anchor calipers to make them work) except in the most demanding (I'm thinking road race) environments. You'd be doing it just to brag the car has Porsche parts, not because they're the best stuff for the job.  Al

PS- Greg Ward's piece is an excellent article, Gordon!

Al,

I’m not saying the car won’t ride and handle better with weight up front – I’m saying that the idea of hauling around lead ingots is kind of antithetical to the whole idea of a lightweight giant killer (not to mention very strange coming from you). It’s a bandaid at best— fixing the issue seems like a better course of action.

I’d pull a leaf or two out of each torsion tube in the beam before I did that.

 @Stan Galat-I won't argue with what you're saying, but adding a little front weight is an easy way to determine if you can further fine tune a car's handling. 20, 30, or even 40 pounds is not significant weight in an 1800 or 2,000 pound car and what you're really doing is moving the weight bias forward. As someone who has removed 35 or 40 lbs from the rear of his vehicle I can tell you that simply adding a little to the front is 1 heck of a lot easier and way less time consuming. And if this leads someone on to further refine their car all the better!

   I stole this from Bruce Anderson's High Performance 911 book (I think that's what it's called)- 

I do the bag of rocks on either side of the battery with a half tank of gas. Drive around add and remove some of natures weights until you're happy with the results. Weigh the bag of rocks on the bath scale. Add that weight in steel to the beam or under the battery . Not overly high tech but it works ~

I’m with Stan, and from my old Autocross days, forget adding weight to the front.  Seriously?  That was only done by guys who didn’t unnahstan suspension geometry (usually Porsche purists with jobs as “Financial Advisors” or Lawyers or something).  

If it oversteers, stiffen the rear anti-sway bar or lightly pre-load the camber compensator. 

If it understeers (plows), stiffen the front anti-sway bar or off-load the camber compensator.

Adding weight just slows you down, but the Stuttgart Purists never caught on to that back in the ‘60’s.

Same formula for IRS rear, but to stiffen the rear on IRS you increase the diameter of the anti-sway bar (because, by design, you cannot preload it, other than compensating for no passenger).  To decrease it, use a smaller diameter bar.  You can only pre-load a rear sway bar for side-to-side cornering or compensate for passenger/no-passenger.

There's a guy named FJ Camper who runs the Ghia forum on the VW Shop Talk Furums. He road-races an IRS Ghia pretty regularly and I think used to race a swing axle Bug. A few years back he posted a pretty epic thread detailing all the steps he took to make the respective cars handle. I've posted the link here previously; can't find it now but it's worth searching for.

You mean this-

https://www.shoptalkforums.com...hp?f=51&t=127619

Gordon wrote: …."forget adding weight to the front"  Don't blow off my method based on hearsay. We're not driving autocross tracks ...we are driving cars that are too light in the front ( think full vs 1/4 tank of gas) try adding various front weight  you'll be pleasantly surprised with the improved overall driving.

Porsche added weight to the front of the early 911 to aid the tail wagging the dog.....

The 912 did not have the same problem with the lighter engine. Later the factory lengthened the wheelbase in the rear by the torsion bar by a couple inches, effectively moving the weight forward.

I say that adding a little weight to the front to balance an overly light car is not necessarily a bad thing. At least on a trial basis to sort it out. You might add tools, a spare, and maybe a gallon or two of gas. That way the weight is useful rather than just ballast. I added a 5 pound halon firebottle(actual weight 7 pounds) in the RF of my old Spyder to mostly offset the 10 pound corner balance difference I had.

Clearly.

Anything heavy I need to carry, I'll try to push in the nose. I just stop short of throwing lead shot in the front.

Spendy, but worth it, according to the vintage racers. 

I don't know if anyone noticed, but the suspension settings chart I posted above needed correcting. Now it should make sense-

Alan Merklin posted:

I do the bag of rocks on either side of the battery with a half tank of gas. Drive around add and remove some of natures weights until you're happy with the results. Weigh the bag of rocks on the bath scale. Add that weight in steel to the beam or under the battery . Not overly high tech but it works ~

How much weight do you typically add Alan?

This is a good conversation. If you really want your car to handle it has to be an irs. There is no weight difference between the Porsche aluminum trailing arms and the vw arms. The stock vw irs is too wide to fit under a speedster body with any reasonable wheels and tires. It is easy to narrow the rear arms 1.125” and use a type 3 automatic axle. I can fit 205/50r15 with plenty of clearance. This is one of the most popular tire sizes and you can find anything from a good street tire to full on race slicks. The ultimate limitation of your car will be the tires. 

For the front, you should never remove torsion leafs. The front spring rate is already way too low. Both front and rear stock wheel spring rates are 100#. I use 222# spring rate bars in the rear and could probably go stiffer.   There is no substitute for the Bilstein shocks if you want to turn corners. 

I recently converted my front end to coilovers. If you have Bilstein shocks they will convert them for $10 each. Dirt cheap. Then you can get any spring rate you want. I’m starting at 175# but may go up. There is a small amount of clearancing required on the upper trailing arms. 

At the end of the day you have to have all of your alignment settings right and good tires to go fast.  Luckily the suspension is very adjustable if you know how to manipulate it. 

My alignment is set as follows:

front:

-2.0 degrees camber each side

5 degree caster

0 toe in

rear:

-1.2 degrees caster

0 toe in

ALB posted:

Alan Merklin posted:

I do the bag of rocks on either side of the battery with a half tank of gas. Drive around add and remove some of natures weights until you're happy with the results. Weigh the bag of rocks on the bath scale. Add that weight in steel to the beam or under the battery . Not overly high tech but it works ~

How much weight do you typically add Alan?

Usually dials in at around 10 - 12 lbs.

 @  curtissb    Zero toe in ?  Experience dictates if should be 1/8" toe... at least that is what the old school ppl do.

If you’re on the street, that’s fine, but it will give you oversteer on extreme cornering on the track.  To minimize the oversteer ( hard to do on a swing axle car, for sure ) you can run the front at zero toe in or even slight toe out.  This all depends on what the rest of the suspension is doing (especially front stiffness), so it’s a try and see effort.

Again, might not be for you if the car is on the street, but we all do strange stuff to gain seconds on the autocross track.

curtissb posted:

This is a good conversation. If you really want your car to handle it has to be an irs. There is no weight difference between the Porsche aluminum trailing arms and the vw arms. The stock vw irs is too wide to fit under a speedster body with any reasonable wheels and tires. It is easy to narrow the rear arms 1.125” and use a type 3 automatic axle. I can fit 205/50r15 with plenty of clearance. This is one of the most popular tire sizes and you can find anything from a good street tire to full on race slicks. The ultimate limitation of your car will be the tires. 

 

I took a pair of 6" Fuchs and had them widened 1" to the inside (a la '67 911R) and on my older Intermeccanica with irs and stock type 1 drums 195/60's  just fit. I will probably narrow the trailing arms this fall so I can fit the type 3 rear brakes (they add 5/8" track to each side) I have ready to go.

ALB posted:

Alan Merklin posted:

I do the bag of rocks on either side of the battery with a half tank of gas. Drive around add and remove some of natures weights until you're happy with the results. Weigh the bag of rocks on the bath scale. Add that weight in steel to the beam or under the battery . Not overly high tech but it works ~

How much weight do you typically add Alan?

So you can drill holes in it? 

I run 1/16" toe-in front AND rear. Swingaxle Spyder. Less toe change in rear than a swing Speedster due to longer trailing arm.

Steady tracking up to 125mph actual, GPS verified.

I run 1.5 degrees negative camber in the front, and about 3 to 3.5 negative camber in the rear. Caster is not adjustable per se, beam is welded to frame. But I do get a little extra caster with the aftermarket camber adjusters set at moderate camber.

Some guys, depending on the car and autocross course, run toe-out in front to aid turn-in.