Thinking about Suspension Issues
A couple weeks ago I noticed my Ghia is sagging a bit in the rear-left side. It's about 3/4'' lower there than the rear-right. The front wheels are similarly off but only by about 1/3'' lower on the left side.
I'm pretty sure it's all about the rear-left sagging more than it should. The solution will be to invest about $60 on a set of two jack stands and a floor jack with wheels. You can read up about it here. No new parts should be needed to fix this and I really should get a real floor jack and jack stands to work on the car whenever the wheels need to be elevated.
I've been using the emergency jack from my Subaru for the time being and a couple of bricks stacked on top of one of my wheel ramps for a make-shift jack stand. It works fine, but things will be much easier and most importantly safer with real jack stands and "trolley jack" as the wheeled jacks are called.
When I get the suspension leveled out properly I'd really like to swap out my rear shocks for a pair of these. They're one-piece coil over shocks and some of the guys at TheSamba.com recommend them. I'm waiting to find out if I can just adjust these shocks in lieu of adjusting my tortion arms to compensate for the lop-sided sag. But, I most likely just need to do that job right and then augment the rear suspension with the coil-overs. Seems like the rear suspension on old VWs can get a bit "swimmy" as that's where so much of the weight is so a little stiffer support there would help the car handle a lot better.
I'm also still trying to troubleshoot the worrysome rattle. I keep closing in on what it could possibly be and I don't believe I've fixed it yet but I did spend some time recently taking apart the outer roller bearing on the rear-right wheel. I also did a brake job on that side while I was at it. I really need to adjust the brakes on the left side now that I've done that. Rather easy procedure once you've got your first time out of the way.
I believe I may need a new inner ball bearing on that wheel, though. The way it all works is you've got a drive axle with a CV joint at either end that delivers power to the wheel. There's a "stub axle" that connects the wheel to the drive axle and that stub axle has two bearings on it: an inner ball bearing and an outer roller bearing. The roller bearing is where just about all the weight is applied and the ball bearing handles side-to-side torque while cornering.
So, that's why I'm thinking the ball bearing is the problem because that rattle happens when cornering. Some have said they thought it was actually my rear-left bearing that was bad because the grinding/rattling gets worse when I'm turning right. Trouble is I'm hearing it distinctly from the rear-right. If it was a grind due to pressure and weight then yes I think it could be the roller bearing on the left side. But, It seems very related to cornering and I bet when that rear-right wheel becomes unweighted the stub axle suddenly has more freedom than it should and rattles the balls in the cage of the ball bearing.
It's either that or things were just getting knocked a little out-of-whack because the rear axle nuts were not tightened on fully! That's a distinct possibility. The axle nuts need to be torqued to at least 217 ft/lbs. I'm pretty sure they were under-torqued because when I removed them with a 2' breaker bar the effort required was considerably less than it should have been. I've read about people needing to use 4' cheater pipes on their breaker bars and then standing and bouncing on the bars to break the axle free. I just applied moderate pressure to about the middle of the breaker bar and they came loose.
To put them back on and ensure they had enough torque I measured out about 14'' on the breaker bar and then stood on that spot with the ball of one foot. I carefully lifted my other foot off the ground and my hands off the car to balance for just a second. That made sure the axle nut was at least 217 ft/lbs. Then I had to torque them on a little tighter still so I could line up the castellations with the cotter pin hole.
So, everything's put back together and I'll just keep driving it, but not too much, and see if I can figure out some more rhyme or reason for this rattle.
I'm pretty sure it's all about the rear-left sagging more than it should. The solution will be to invest about $60 on a set of two jack stands and a floor jack with wheels. You can read up about it here. No new parts should be needed to fix this and I really should get a real floor jack and jack stands to work on the car whenever the wheels need to be elevated.
I've been using the emergency jack from my Subaru for the time being and a couple of bricks stacked on top of one of my wheel ramps for a make-shift jack stand. It works fine, but things will be much easier and most importantly safer with real jack stands and "trolley jack" as the wheeled jacks are called.
When I get the suspension leveled out properly I'd really like to swap out my rear shocks for a pair of these. They're one-piece coil over shocks and some of the guys at TheSamba.com recommend them. I'm waiting to find out if I can just adjust these shocks in lieu of adjusting my tortion arms to compensate for the lop-sided sag. But, I most likely just need to do that job right and then augment the rear suspension with the coil-overs. Seems like the rear suspension on old VWs can get a bit "swimmy" as that's where so much of the weight is so a little stiffer support there would help the car handle a lot better.
I'm also still trying to troubleshoot the worrysome rattle. I keep closing in on what it could possibly be and I don't believe I've fixed it yet but I did spend some time recently taking apart the outer roller bearing on the rear-right wheel. I also did a brake job on that side while I was at it. I really need to adjust the brakes on the left side now that I've done that. Rather easy procedure once you've got your first time out of the way.
I believe I may need a new inner ball bearing on that wheel, though. The way it all works is you've got a drive axle with a CV joint at either end that delivers power to the wheel. There's a "stub axle" that connects the wheel to the drive axle and that stub axle has two bearings on it: an inner ball bearing and an outer roller bearing. The roller bearing is where just about all the weight is applied and the ball bearing handles side-to-side torque while cornering.
So, that's why I'm thinking the ball bearing is the problem because that rattle happens when cornering. Some have said they thought it was actually my rear-left bearing that was bad because the grinding/rattling gets worse when I'm turning right. Trouble is I'm hearing it distinctly from the rear-right. If it was a grind due to pressure and weight then yes I think it could be the roller bearing on the left side. But, It seems very related to cornering and I bet when that rear-right wheel becomes unweighted the stub axle suddenly has more freedom than it should and rattles the balls in the cage of the ball bearing.
It's either that or things were just getting knocked a little out-of-whack because the rear axle nuts were not tightened on fully! That's a distinct possibility. The axle nuts need to be torqued to at least 217 ft/lbs. I'm pretty sure they were under-torqued because when I removed them with a 2' breaker bar the effort required was considerably less than it should have been. I've read about people needing to use 4' cheater pipes on their breaker bars and then standing and bouncing on the bars to break the axle free. I just applied moderate pressure to about the middle of the breaker bar and they came loose.
To put them back on and ensure they had enough torque I measured out about 14'' on the breaker bar and then stood on that spot with the ball of one foot. I carefully lifted my other foot off the ground and my hands off the car to balance for just a second. That made sure the axle nut was at least 217 ft/lbs. Then I had to torque them on a little tighter still so I could line up the castellations with the cotter pin hole.
So, everything's put back together and I'll just keep driving it, but not too much, and see if I can figure out some more rhyme or reason for this rattle.
posted by Chris Druckenmiller at 1:18 PM
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