Widened front beam on a flared body

Met some guys at a car show last weekend. They are a reputable local vendor who designs and fabricates custom dune buggies. Among other things, they make custom width front beams, with splined through-rods and coil-over front shocks. I liked their engineering, so I challenged them on a lowered speedster suspension application.

My motivation is to eliminate front wheel spacers on my flared JPS and thereby improve the

Hey David -

I can't even PRETEND to know anything about suspension, but I'd like to see your Speedy if you did do such a conversion. That would be an awesome upgrade!!

I would take a ride in a car with the swap completed and see if it was worth all your trouble
(read:cash). I had a drive in a pan based, porsche powered, vw front ended, kit car (sterling
if I remember correctly) at high speeds and cornering and I was floored by the handling.
The balance and weight distribution had been well thought thru. I think you could get more bang for your handling $$$$ using other methods. Just my opinion. If you are really interested did you look at roberts (the person shipping a car to singapore) posts/pictures about front end.-please excuse me, you asked for insight, this was an opinion

I don't think you're going to need coil-overs, even with the added weight of a heavier beam (IMHO).
If it's VW-style, chances are that the extra weight is only going to be in the 15-20-lbs. range anyway, unless there's a radical addition of cross-ventilated, dual-rotor discs or heavier arms and spindles. I don't know if you'll accomplish anything you couldn't with KYB or similar gas shocks as far as the suspension goes.
What are you looking to do with the back axles? Are the centers of the front tires going to line up with the centers of the rear tires? What will the footprint of the car be? What kind of offsets are you looking at?

OK, I went to the vendors store yesterday and had an extensive discussion. Their "resident suspension genius" thought I might be better served by a "split front axle", rather than a "through rod conversion". He suggested I take two standard beams, split in half (well, not in half, more like 55% and 45%) and reweld the two longer sections into one widened beam, about 5 inches wider than a standard beam. Then install (4) avus type adjusters - two in each beam. Split all the torsion bars in half and install half in each side using the standard grub screws. My current standard beam with its adjusters would be consumed - and I'm half way home.

Track - front track remains as is, just dump the front wheel spacers. They are working up a cost estimate for me.

Sounds workable, but I'd be leary of cutting the tube in the center. Mine came off the ends with no ill effects. Photos available of the whole process if you want 'em. They're in the paininthebug folder. Takes a while for the folder to open, but they're all there.

How wide are your wheel spacers?

Front wheel spacers are 2 1/8 on each side. That is all added to the original scrub radius - which should be on the order of 1 inch or less. I am probably going to widen the beam by 4 1/2 inches total - if this becomes a go.