Big post alert... So I thought I'd do a separate write up for lowering our van as it's such a large chunk of work which generates a lot of discussion, some positive, some negative... the latter I didn't want on my build thread . I'm going to list the odd bits we learnt and provide some honest feedback on the parts and process. I'd welcome constructive feedback and discussion. It also seems to be an emotive issue for late bayers, compared to early bays or split screens where lowering is more de facto. So, point 1 - I've lowered my van, it was the intention to do this when I bought it 6 years ago and I've taken the time to read everyone's opinions on this before doing it and then I've done it the way I felt was right. Please keep comments constructive! The idea here is to help those along who've also decided to go low I have used : Transporterhaus dropped spindles and trailing arms 1 outer spline adjustment at the rear (for now) Protech adjustable shocks at the front, with the intention of adding a set to the rear once it's settled. I have SSP style Gas Burners with 185/65 Yokohama A Drive tyres as a starting point although both front and rear may change. My before measurements (on these wheels and tyres) were : 68" driver / 68.5" passenger side to the gutter at the front of the van 67" on both sides to the gutter at the rear The intention was to lower the front by 3.5" and the back by 2" bringing the level(ish) at 65" to the gutter all round but with the expectation that the front tyres may get smaller and perhaps increasing the size of the rears to get closer to the original gearing and ending up slightly raked. On first measure after the drop, the rear needs to settle (or us unsagged) as it's only come down 1" to 66", whilst the front seems to be down by an extra 1" than claimed at 64". Perhaps this is due to the length of the heavy duty ball joints Transporterhaus use? I opted for Transporterhaus spindles as they don't increase the offset any further than stock, they retain the stock suspension geometry and are a bit cheaper than T2D. There has been a bit of negative press on the forums, but Alex explained to me he is a one man band and by his own admission could be better with managing the email correspondence. I received my spindles within 2 weeks and we had a bit of back and forth over the emails querying delivery times etc. The one issue I've had is that one trailing arm had a different (smaller) cut out / broach for the torsion leafs and wouldn't fit. I emailed Alex, he replied immediately and said he would send out a replacement. The replacement arrived the following Friday and we were all fitted up ready in Saturday. I'm assuming that Alex doesn't have a stock parts on the shelf and they needed to be prepped. The product is good and all went together ok, which you'd expect for a re-engineered original part. The only product gripe would be the thin coat of Matt black paint. It's not thick enough to take a knock, but too thick when sprayed on the spindle itself - we had to break out the emery cloth to get the wheel bearings on. Had I had a little more time on my hands I would get a coat of paint on them before installing... perhaps some tractor enamel to keep @paradox happy The Protech shocks are great and Colin (BrownBUG on VZi) is really good with his advice. The front shocks are a second hand pair that he was selling on for another customer with only a few miles on them. Looking forward to going back for the rear pair! I ran these on the van for a fortnight before lowering and had fun playing with the damping settings! I ended up at 8/13 on the adjuster in stock configuration. This was a lot firmer than previous and I felt cornering and braking response were both improved without being harsh. Not the cheapest option, but if you compare it to a couple of sets of cheaper KYBs in the lifetime of these dampers then it's more palatable. Other things I learnt that the Internet didn't tell me in advance.... Check your ball joint separator fits before you start. My brother had a Sykes Pickavant one which is too short and the gap between the prongs is too small to get around the neck of the ball joint. We resorted to cutting some of the length off the ball joint thread and opening up the prongs of the tool with an angle grinder, although this risked taking the strength out of the tool. I think my ball joints may have been original to the van too! If any one can recommend one that fits for the benefit of others it would be good! You need a 27mm socket to undo the ball joints, but depending on the size of your wrench + sockets you may need to invest in a 27mm spanner or shorter sockets to get to the joint between the arms. You may need to replace the fixed track rod on the RHS with a second adjustable track rod. If the steering is all stock, the rhs track rod is not adjustable and for flipped spindles you'll need to flip the end tie rod ball joint over so the trailing arm doesn't slope up and hit the bodywork. The M14 bolts on the rear spring plates are real buggers to get off!! This was probably one of the more time consuming parts of the job as we only had 2no. 22mm spanners and couldn't resort to sockets or breakers, etc. with the tools we had or at the time of day. Jacking the van up high for access + some good 22mm sockets would be advisable. Camber nut adjustment on the lower ball joint has to be adjusted so that it is all out otherwise the disc fouls the spindle. We'll measure this when it's settled to make sure the camber is right. To get the top arm off the beam we had to lever it off as it rests on the bump stop mount and stays under tension. Having spent about half an hour on the first one my brother had the bright idea of using an M14 wheel bolt off a beetle in the grub screw hole to provide better leverage. The second one was tugged off in seconds We had to tweak the routing of the front brake lines. The stock mount on the ball joints gets relocated to the top side of the top trailing arm, meaning the original flexy hose starts to snake with too many bends.... then the hard line gave up anyway! So my brother broke out the pipe kit and set it up so the flexy does one sweeping down curve, up to the mount on top of the trailing arm. Then the new hard lines go up and down to the calliper. All checked for fouling with the steering going lock to lock. You will need new anti roll bar clamps, unless they've been replaced recently and are easy to remove. So, the final list of parts I used : Dropped spindles New rear shocks New front shocks New adjustable track rod(s) Split pins for any reused track rods Anti roll bar clamps Wheel bearings + seals New trailing arm seals New front hard lines for the brakes New rear donuts x 4 Grease, anti seize + copper slip. Tea and Jaffa cakes I bought tie rod ball joint boots in preparation, but the retained ones were ok. I didn't buy bearings for the trailing arms, but these could be done. I had a few of the nuts and bolts in hand ready, but the ones which now need replacing are the M14 on the spring plates, which I didn't have in advance New wheels New tyres If I had factored in a little more time I would have prepped and painted the trailing arms, rear swing plates and covers before installation, albeit you see less of these with the van lower! Also worth mentioning that with so much dismantling it makes sense to renew brake parts at the same time. Mine were only done 2000 miles ago so an inspection and bleeding after replacing the front hard lines was all that was required. If you've never done this before it's a good idea to have someone help who's done it before. My brother has done a couple of his VWs and had a few of the cleverer ideas for sorting the problems. So on the first test drive it was immediately clear that the 185/65 15 tyres on the front weren't going to last long. They rubbed under braking and cornering and with two adults up front it was a no no. A quick phone around bagged some 175/55 15s although in a budget spec to get me on the road. This size seems to crop up on stance threads and one tyre company I phoned even asked if it was for a Smart car. I've adjusted the dampers up to 9/13 and with the shorter tyres this alleviated the rubbing completely but accentuated the nose down stance. It ending up measuring (to the gutter) 62.5" F 65.5"R having settled a little in the test drive. As the finished result is nose down I'm contemplating adjustable plates at the rear to bring the visual balance back and neutralise some of the lost caster angle at the front. First thing is to check the clearance on the drive tho!! Apart from the previous rubbing, everything feels great. With renewed parts and grease the steering is tighter and more responsive, the back feels neutral although I'll have to tailgate a lorry at 60mph and see if there's a handling improvement! The front suspension is still supple but a little more peaky with the additional damping. It still needs tracking properly as the tyre shop I went to didn't have floor plates, just wheel mounted things which wouldn't clear the mildly lowered rear arch! I'll get this done in a few days and report back!!
Good write up - the small wheels is one way to avoid rubbing on the front. The other way when lowering is to stiffen the front suspension with coilovers. You need to have the same force lifting the front of the bus as the tyre is about to rub, as stock would have when its on the bump stops. As the travel available is less, so you need stiffer suspension.
Hi @mikedjames thanks for the feedback. I've read up a bit on coilovers and the classic approach seems to be to ad these to avoid the rub. i think it might be symptomatic of the slightly greater drop with TH spindles possibly combined with cheaper softer shocks. One opinion i rear was that the shock towers are not designed to take a sprung load and should be avoided. The smaller tyres were a must in this instance as the distance between wheel and arch was about 2" which diminished rapidly under braking or cornering! The 175\55 tyres gave 1.1" additional clearance. I'm happy for now with the spring rate but will give it some miles before considering swapping those lovely front dampers Incidentally, my brother was surprised how soft the Bay springs are compared to his Split.
excellent thread, the bus sits very nice imo and looks great with Gasburners (I am biased as we run our westy with them)
Had a few on the way to work on bridge junctions on the A road. I must admit to 2 massive clunks on the lane near home. Really not sure what's hit what! all bolts present and correct. In both cases at slow speed over innocuous little bumps.
Probably the wheels on the seat tubs, the only way you will stop it presuming that you still have your bump stops is to extend them, 25mm should do it.
looks good, nice write up too. thanks for taking the time to do that. interesting about the protech shocks - i'd read about those elsewhere, they sound great - on my list at some point soon i think.
The coilovers do not take 100% of the load so its not as bad as some aftermarket suspension arrangements that put all of the suspension load on the towers. And when you smack a bump hard, the stock shocks will try very hard to rip off the towers too. Or when you bottom out with stock shocks on adjuster lowered beams where its solid metal hitting as the wheel goes to the top....( this was why I went coilover after trying shorter stiffer shocks first) As the bottom of my beam is rotting out and the tops of the towers are still there after about 40k miles I dont think coilovers have been an issue.
So, coilovers have been invested in and fitted. Gaz 160/105B12 + 1.9" x 10" 150lbs springs. Set at about 65mm above the seam at the bottom of the damper and on click 10. Seems very firm on this first drive so I could probably back off the spring a little and maybe adjust the damping down a touch. On the first drive I revisited most of the bad bumps near to home, albeit gingerly, and no bangs. There was a sound of something falling off on the test drive.... that might warrant some investigation The front did un-sag a bit and has come up to 63 1/4" at the front. Going to check whether the Protech shocks will be suitable for the back, of not they'll be up for sale. I think from my experience they would be great on a stock bus and perhaps one with the 2.5" forged dropped spindles.
Its meant to be twice as firm if you halve the travel of the suspension as you need the same force pushing up but only have half the distance to do it with. Compared with stock its hard but that means its working. If you like stock suspension go up to stock. If you want to lower it you will suffer. The spring adjustment only alters preload force not spring rate. Letting it off just means you sit lower but still bounce. I have got used to mine over the years . It is why my bus is called "Bouncy Bus"
Realised shortly after posting that adjusting the spring was a red herring. I adjusted the dampers down a notch and it feels good. I commute with it so I'm testing it on familiar roads and tbh, the front end of my van feels similar to my stock Golf.... albeit a gti Getting into the numbers of the spring rates a bit more would be useful. If anyone knows the stock spring rate we could perhaps arrive at a calculated coilovers spring rate that makes the most of the available travel (not to belittle the research done by the early bayers on this). I quite like the fact that the coilovers and adjustable dampers offer the opportunity to fettle the ride. I'm happy with the lower firmer suspension, just needed to dial out actual problems which the coilovers are solving
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