To narrow my beam or not to narrow my beam....that is the question

I've stripped the front suspension down to the bare beam. Since the spindles have to come off to install Airkewld's drop spindles and BAD brakes I thought it would be a good idea to install new ball joints and tie rods. With everything off I'm wondering if it would also be a good idea to go the whole nine yards and also install a narrowed beam. I measured the clearance and it looks like a 4" narrowed beam will just fit.
There is a good chance my 15x6 wheels and 185/65-15 tires will clear the fenders (not 100% certain), but I'm thinking down the road that I may want to go with a wider front wheel and tire(205/45-17 on a 17x7 wheel, for instance), if I can get the same sized wheels and tires to clear everything in the rear and I'm fairly certain a 17x7 wheel/tire package will not fit on a stock width beam.
So, do I stay with the stock width beam, or spend the extra coin on a narrowed beam? Going with a narrowed beam isn't cheap. Along with the price of a new beam there is the added costs of narrowed spring plates and narrowed sway bar. It starts to add up very quickly ($570, before shipping and taxes), but I only want to do this job once.
Ron

Buy weld in adjusters (both beams) and shorten your existing beam at the same time. Cut the springs shorter and grind new set screw dimples in the leaves. You will need to relocate the steering box
Easy and cheap if you can do the work

Be sure to drive out the inner trailing arm bushing while you have it cut apart, to make it easy if you are planning new/urethane bushings

Ron, I would have to advise against.
I have a six-inch narrowed beam, and between rearranging all the steering components, brakes and six-inch wheels, I now have a non-dampened steering setup with tremendous bump-steer, a repositioned rack and lots more welds up front than I bargained for.
While it works for me, the car has had some braking issues and still tends to understeer in hard corners. The work was done with the help of a qualified professional dragster builder and race car driver, and was not intended for the way I drive the car.
Stupid question: did you already get an opinion from IM?

Ron,

I'd be a bit concerned how this would affect handling.

In his article on suspension and handling over on Aircooled.net, Greg Ward touched on the subject:

"I didn

Good point about the handling. I want this car to handle well and be able to keep up with my two Miata buddies. I imagine most VW owners who install a narrowed beam aren't interested in how the car handles the corners.
Cory, I haven't asked Henry, but I will.
Ron

not so sure on the comments on twichiness

mine has narrowed front (3.2") and rear (2.8")

it's rock solid on the highway, over speed bumps, in parking lots, etc.

do it right, get it aligned properly and it'll be fine.

after all - these are the cars we shorten by several inches.

that being said - i don't race mine (and don't have sway bars), so please take my comments with a grain of salt.

The track provides the resistance to sideways weight transfer and body lean...increased track = increased resistance to sideways weight transfer and body lean. (taken from the .net)

So if you reduce the track on one axle without changing it on the other, all other things being equal, I would think that that axle would have a tendancy to drfit a bit more that the other. would that make sense?

I know Henry at IM told me once that the way they compensate for the increased weight of a 911 lump out back in their cars was to increase the size of the rear wheels which effectively increases the track I would think. Helps keep the back tucked in.

Would shortening the beam not decrease the track and would this not result in more understeer if the front tended to drift more from less resistance to sideways weight transfer? I'm not sure how this would affect it but am curious to know.

I wonder if a decrease in track width could be balanced out by installing wider wheels and tires?
For example: if my new brakes and drop spindles increase my track by 1/2" per side and I installed a 2" per side narrowed beam, my track would be narrowed by 1 1/2" per side. If I went from a 6" wide wheel to a 7" wide wheel my track would be increased by 1/2" per side (same offset). In the end, my net loss would be 1" per side and I'd be able to mount a wider tire, but I have no idea how a 1" loss per side would affect the car's handling.
I'd love to run a 205/45-17 tire on a 17x7 wheel. There are a lot of high performance tires in that size. Mind you, that would still leave the problem of mounting a 17x7 wheel and 205/45-17 tire on the rear.
In the end I'll probably install the new ball joints, tie rods and BAD brake kit on the stock beam and hope the wheels/tires clear the body. If I'm not happy with the results a narrowed beam will be my next winter project.
Ron

Ron, I have one mroe piece of info for you, then I'm out of knowledge on possible outcomes. There's another dimension to consider; the inside of the tire where it needs clearance against the gussets in the footwell.
My wheels have a three-inch offset on both sides of the wheel for a total of six inches of tire. The insides have to be manually stoppered at the steering box to prevent rubbing on those gussets. The wider the tire, the greater potential for rubbing, and the larger the turn radius will be as a result.

All the above is good stuff. Probably for most street driven speedies, even hard drivers (we all like to think we are hard drivers - right?), a track width loss of an inch or so would never even be noticeable.

Go to "Shop Talk Forums" and scroll down to "Suspension and Handling". Many of those guys actually race their cars and IMHO their technical analysis is based on hard earned practice.

I think Mango's on to something. Why not narrow the rear end as well to accommodate those wider wheels you were hoping for. By narrowing both the same amount the track ratio would be equal, the planets would align and life would be beautiful, once again. :)

Not to really muddy the waters, but I did that also. I used to have IRS, and went to shortened swing axles. After cutting away the IRS pieces, I wound up using a combination of torsion pieces from both swing and IRS assemblies and cutting the tube length down another three inches per side in order to line up the blades that capture the axle ends.
The IRS torsion rods are still there, as are the IRS end-caps and cover plates, but the spring assemblies have been changed using swing pieces to make them line up at the end of the significantly shorter axles. The torsion tube got cut bilaterally.
The offset of the back wheels are four inches inside and three inches outside, just to get the tires to clear the fenderwell lips by a quarter-inch each with seven-inch tires. All of that was math done to allow for disc brakes and the shorter tubes, and that led to a whole new dimension of pain later on.
It's all sorted out now, but the results are just as Terry proposes; the car is uniformly narrower front and rear, but it still understeers. If I had to describe the feeling, it's like trying to steer on ice sometimes. The outside edges of the tires are in exactly the same spot they were in with the old, stock-length axles and four-bolt drum brakes.
If you learn to feel your car through a turn, you'll figure out how and when it'll grab. It will probably take a year or two to get used to it, but with the light front end, the strength of a decent engine and the likely understeer characteristics, it will absolutely mean you have to pay attention if you're driving fast on curves.
The best advice I can consistently give to people trying to drive the Hoopty for the first time is to only give the car one input at a time in a curve, and stay on the throttle after an early, diving apex.
I don't think you'll gain much from the wider tires that you don't already have now from a decently sorted car.
And absolutely -- pay attention to what the race-experienced drivers say! They HAVE to know more than I do in terms of what is and is not sound advice. I know a lot about only ONE car.

Here's the rear under construction:

In addition to achieving/maintaining the appropriate track between the front and rear of the car. How much consideration or adjustment do people have with regard to the individual corner weighting of the car.

I know when I first set my ride height the weighting was all over the place(you can only be so accurate with a tape measure). While the handling was ok once I had the car balanced it made a huge difference in the corners.

Peter, are you running coilovers? I know it's easy to corner weight my Miata (individual adjustable coilovers), but I didn't think it was possible to corner weight a speedster with a VW pan. If there is a way I'd like to know how to do it.
Ron

Ron, I'm not running coilovers. I'm running 914 front suspension and 69 or so bug IRS in the rear(both systems are torsion bars). I didn

Ron, change to coil overs.

with adjustable spring plates and beam - i was able to corner weight - (sort of)

Locally the ministry of transportation offers a service where a guy comes to you with 4 scales (1 for under each wheel).

when you adjust one wheel, the weight shifts - you can actually see it happen.

i don't have the ability to adjust side/side in the front (without my air - just on torsions) - but the rear does a LOT. It took a lot of fiddling.

Coil overs are definitely the way to go, but getting front ones that don't have uber stiff spring rates and that are small enough in diameter to run with a beam (and aren't those crazy expensive ones from UK) can be tricky.

I would if it was an easy swap, but I don't think it is. Besides, I've got Koni Reds on the way.
Ron

Mango-man,
Look, I love your car, you obviously know your shit when it comes to building one. But you gotta help me out and reveal your name, buddy!
With a name like Mango-Smoothie I keep picturing you wearing lingerie while working on your car, and that's reserved only for Angela. ;)
I'm surprised Vince hasn't posted a pic yet...

;)

Terry - we actually know each other and have done business together. ;-)

I can assure you i only wear a spandex mono-tard (ironically in mango green) while working on my car. i tried lingerie, but it doesn't wash well and dry cleaning gets expensive.

Damnit! Now your playing tricks with me and my rapidly reducing brain cells!
Paul, right? PC Paul from BC!
I'm betting Mango-Smoothie is your porn star name.
Love your ride, man. Almost as much as Scott Sloan's outlaw.
I might have to make a trip up there to see it in person.

Back to narrowed beams and handling...
Ron, have you thought about getting in touch with Bruce Gordon?
He's all over high-performance in a speedster, handling-wise.

BTW, Mango...thanks for the mono-tard visual. So "Richard Simmons". ;)

I've decided to stay with the stock beam for now. I took the steering box off today for servicing. Since the beam is now bare I'm thinking about taking it off the car and painting it.
Ron

Ron, I corner weighed my Spyder. I really wish I had separate adjusters for L and R on the front beam, at least on one torsion tube.

The rear is easy, I have coilovers. But if you have the adjustable spring plates, you can fine tune the rear. This in turn affects the front, so the answer is you can kind of balance the car. I got mine within 10 pounds in front and a few pounds in the rear. I compensated in the front by adding 10 pounds of firebottle on the light corner!

You can definitely feel the difference, especially when you push the car hard in the corners. It rides better and handles the same left and right, which is really what you're after.

Scales are a must, and I brought them to Carlisle last year. I may do so again, at least everybody knows the REAL weight of their cars.

I am considering adjustable spring plates to go with my dropped spindles.
Ron

I heard that they added 1/2 inch or so to the track, each side.

nope