"Street Rodded" highboy VW at Columbus

[Beck]

While wallking through the vendors at Columbus I came across a VW. It was in the vendor area outside. It had the fenders removed, tall skinny wide whitewalls, and a dropped beam axle on the front with hairpin radius rods. It was just in bare steel, apparently fresh from the blaster. It wasn't finished. I had no motor, interior or glass. The stearing box wasn't in yet.
It was really slammed in front.
This thing was cute! Like usual my little brain started ticking. I need a new work car! Then I started thinking deaper. The complete front suspension will run about $1600. A good bodied VW (pre super beetle) with a solid floor can't be cheap. Then add some more for the motor rebuild. I'd probable have a minimum of $10k invested. As light as the front of this thing is any buggy spring would be too stiff right? Unless it was a multi lief and just use the main and 1 or 2 more. They had one of the mono lief units on the car there. The plans were to install a Vega stearing box on the display car. The asking price on the display car was $7500.
Does any one else have a sugestion for a cheap neat daily driver. I put on quite a few miles and want something cooler than my Geo.
Speaking of my Geo. When I got home from Columbus it was sitting in the street where I left it with the rear window smashed. I guess the game of street basketball got carried away while I was gone. I went to 3 of the big local salvage yards today. No glass in any of them. It's a 91 Geo Storm wagon. Anyone have a rear hatch? I guess I will be driving my truck to work for a while.
Beck

[Beck]

I was looking at the stock front end under my '48 Ford wondering if I could put it under the front of a VW. I don't know if the stock axle would work without the big drop. I could mount the spring to the split wishbone instead of in front of the axle. The 48 axle looks awful wide too. The axle under the VW I saw at Columbus looked really narrow and had a big drop.
Without the big drop in the axle would the wishbones have to mount higher in the body. The one I saw had wishbones mounted on the side of the frame/floor pan under the body. I don't konw how solid those cars are there. Enough to support the wishbones?
I have seen photos of some of these VWs in the past. This is the first I have seen in person. The one I remember from photos had wire wheels and black primer. This one had solid wheels, similar to original '48 Fords.
Beck

[enjenjo]

The ones I have seen all used a dropped axle. There is someone making a kit now fir VWs, it may have a special axle.

[unklian]

There are lots of examples of these type of modifications
on: //www.volksrods.com

The Ford style front ends are certainly not cheap
if you have to pay for all new parts.And I doubt they
would ride any better than stock.

Some of the guys are moving the stock front suspension forward
with a bolt on extender.Others are shifting the body back on the pan.

Depending on how much work you want to do,
there are still cheap VWs around.

Still a big aftermarket in aircooled resto parts and go fast goodies,
and a lot of the parts are dirt cheap.

[Brootal]

Or just keep it looking like a VW!

I've always been a fan of 'Cal Looker' VWs. Slammed and with skinny Porsche wheels or even the stock steelies and they look great. For modern reliability, the Subaru WRX motors are the way to go. Pretty straight forward swap (apparently).

I don't mind the look of those 'highboy' Beetles, but why try to make something it's not? Absolutely nothing wrong with a Beetle done up the right way.

[GPster]

I have thought, and luckily the raw material avoids me, would be to take the early VW with the twin torsion bars and unbolt them from the pan and re-assemble them so that the trailing arms stuck out in front. Un-fendered that would make the front wheels sit about a foot further ahead. You would swap the spindles side-for-side so that it would still be rear steer and put some sort of rack and pinion in.Make some sort of track nose and make suedo 4 bars from the ends of the torsion bar housings back to in-front of the doors. With a track nose in front you could take another "beetle" nose and turn it around to eliminate the back seat and give you a kind of "duece" trunk lid roll to the body. Luckily VWs with automatic transmissions are not disability friendly and Corvair engines stick out too far past the axel. GPster

[EMSjunkie]

The latest Speedway catalog had  the kit in it.

looks pretty trick.  

Vance

[DRD57]

Here's the link to the stuff Speedway is marketing:
http://www.socalook.com/index.shtml

I saw one done pretty much the way GPster described with the front end turned around to kick the front wheels out about a foot. It looked pretty cool.

Like anything else you can do it quick and relatively easy if you want to spend the money and buy the engineered parts on the aftermarket or you can use good ole hot rod ingenuity and elbow grease to do it economically.

[Beck]

Wow I didn't know there was that much of a following for these. I had seen a few but not all of this. If someone comes across a picture of one with the stock front turned around like you guys were talking about I would like to see it. That sounds a lot cheaper, but I don't know how the suspension geometry would turn out. The front suspension kits get pricy for a local beater. They would be well worth it for a show piece, but that isn't what I have in mind. I can picture me driving one of these things in the sloppy snow. The front low enough to push a bit of slop from the road to the windshield, and rooster tails coming off all 4 tires. FUN? Until the law catches you or you crash because of no forward vision.
Beck

[enjenjo]

Another thought, MAS has a tube axle front end kit for about $500 that looks like it will work too.

[47convert]

Wouldn't you have major caster problems with the front end reversed?

[unklian]

Caster is one of the problems with flipping the front end,
but I'm sure that could be corrected.

[GPster]

Caster is one of the problems with flipping the front end,
but I'm sure that could be corrected.

I wasn't thinking of flipping the front suspension. Just turning the arms front to back. The torsion bars are a laminate assembley and the top rear facing driver's side arm would be the top front facing passenger arm. If you used an early assembley ( before '65 ) they have kingpins for the spindles and you could keep the spindles on the correct side for ackerman.  The newer ones had ball joints and you should be able to swap spindles and arms side-to-side to keep it a rear steer configuration.  I don't know if you could do the end for end swop on those steering boxes to make the pitman arm stick out front so you could keep the box mounted on the torsion bar housing. That is why I suggested a rear steer rack and pinion. I think the caster is built into the floor pan. Most dune buggy people that add caster do it with half round shims between the torsion bar housing tubes and the pan. GPster

[Dirk35]

I dated a girl with a little VW Bug fo ra VERY short time while in college. It was a cool little car one of her ex-boyfriends sold her. He had it fixed up nicely with super dark tinted windows, white with a skinny purple graphic stripe down the side, the little porshe type rims, and lowered. She wasnt anywhere near as much fun to be with as her little car was!

[enjenjo]

She wasnt anywhere near as much fun to be with as her little car was

Somehow that just sounds wrong on several levels