Hello all, its been a while since i have been on here, its been a long winter and the Van has been snuggled up in the garage, Around Came MOT time and the van was in need of new Ball joints all round, so help from wokinggaz was needed and what turned from a basic ball joint replacement turned into a front suspension overhaul for the better. Since I bought my Baywindow it has always felt strange with regard to the steering, it used to Notch very dangerously almost like there was play in the steering, we did many jobs to try and cure this, but never really ventured to far into the mechanics of the beam, We always knew my beam was not the standard, as it was lower than standard and was pretty solid, it had coilovers attached, which was obviously non-standard, it was only within the last year that we discovered it was a Red9Design setup, what i didnt realise was they still sell this kit, EZ rider Coilover kit. Upon taking this apart we began to undestand the physics of this setup, bsically the torsion leaves are removed/disgarded and solid beams with rollers and grub screw slots put in place, then the standard shocks get replaces with coilovers that take the whole weight of the van and do all of the mechanical suspension. When we removed the solid bar we could see why i was getting the notching feeling, where the grub srews locate into position on the solid bars, over time it had worn the counter sunks to double the size, which gave the solid bars in the beams left and right movement, imagine that feeling when going around a corner, I am suprised it never gave way on me in a catostrophic way. After many phone calls to try and find alternative, coilovers and a replacement bar (it was only the bottom bar that was faulty) and many people giving me an honest opinion of how they dont like EZ rider kit, I decided to purchase replacement torsion leaves, standard style gas shocks and the JK weedeater style beam adjusters to give it the more conventional lowering kit, thanks to wokinggaz the beam has been sorted assembeled and I should have all the steering arms etc all back on today. I thought I should write a post on here to get this subject out there on the Web as i stuggled to find much information regarding these kits. I will upload a before and after picture one completed. If someone has the kit and trusts its deisgn , i have a spare bar and some old shabby coilvers avalaible. Thanks for reading Lee
We are not keen on this set up at the garage. What l don't like is that the independence is totally lost by a solid bar. If the left side goes up so too does the right side. Even an 70's Fiat 136 had a better suspension set up than this. And what was wrong with how we did it years ago by removing a few torsion leaves??
Good im glad i got rid then and got Wokin gaz to put the adjusters in, I can now go as high or as low as the wheel arches allow. Birdy hope you are well
A mate of mine has it on his van... I had to nip up the grub screws to get it through the MOT due to what you found Needless to say I was less than impressed when I saw how it worked!!
I have had this set up for maybe 7 years now. It took a while to get used to it but it seems quite normal now. It's not true that if one side goes up the other side does too though. The bars that go through the beam are fixed in the middle but they have swivelling pulley-like fitments on each end which the trailing arms are secured to by means of the grub screws, so the arms are independent. I've seen pics of where the grub screws have been over tightened, damaging the pulleys. Then again if you don't tighten them enough you can rock the wheel in and out. The most alarming sensation is if you don't have the centre screw properly tightened and the whole bar can move sideways like vwcooper has had. I think the issue here is that you are expected to reuse the original grub screws and the centre ones are not quite long enough so the lock nut doesn't have quite enough thread to lock on to. The gas shocks need setting and it took a while to get this right. Mine are at 8 clicks from the fully anti clockwise position.
I have spares if you ever need it, Yes i didnt fully explian the rollers on the ends, but i do wonder what people think of the fact these rollers, which are olding the arms in place are secured by a tiny grub screw 5mm in size, So affectively each 5mm grub screw is holding half a wheel in each. Scares me a little the thought of it, but dont get me wrong it worked in a knackered state for three years and didnt actually fail. Cheers lee
but but the guy has spent 20 years in designing stuff and worked for Lotus and and etc etc etc , if its not TUV tested then don`t fit it ! I have seen pictures where two of these set ups have failed and sheared the end off the bar where the grub screws had been wrinced up murder tight .. king expensive to boot
Never really liked the thought of the whole weight of the bus being taken by the standard shock towers as they were only designed to hold the shock in place not take a ton of weight.
Quote "Never really liked the thought of the whole weight of the bus being taken by the standard shock towers as they were only designed to hold the shock in place not take a ton of weight." Completley agree an never thought of that before.
