[T3] ball joints

[Bobsnotch at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/9/2012 4:12:20 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
cscsheridan at gmail.com writes:

Hi Bob!  Yes thanks I have a Bentley and will check the section you mention
tonight  when I have time - In fact I need to read the pertinent chapters. I
woke up  in the night remembering there are torsion arm bushings for
instance. Don't  know if they ever go bad, but this stuff keeps me awake.
What if I do all  this and the torsion bushings are toast?


 
Yeah, it's always good to brush up on what you're fixing to repair. It'll  
give you an idea of how things look too.
 
As for the torsion arm bushings, what causes wear to them mostly is a lack  
of grease. Keith and a couple of purists will tell you that lowering does 
damage  too (it probably does some), but lack of grease just kills them. 
There was a guy  on the Samba who machined his own brass bushings, as he 
couldn't find any  replacements. I think ISP west has some in stock, but you need a 
reamer (a big  one) after you install them. I think Max had someone local 
to him rebuild a beam  for him, but they had to hand ream the bushings as 
well. Brent ran into a bent  trailing arm on a beam (he picked up a used beam 
from a pick n pull I think, and  some trailing arms from Jim), and I've got a 
beam that came out of my wife's  Fastback 20 years ago that has a bad right 
lower outer bushing (just can't throw  it away). I've also got a spare beam 
in the shed in case I need it for 1 of the  4 type 3s I have here. I know 
there's a few others here on the site that have a  spare beam or 2 (I think 
Brian has 3 or 4 of them). But yes, this is a real  problem / issue, but 
others have over come it / them. Most of the time, you can  get an entire beam 
for the cost of the bushings, and it takes about 2 or 3 hours  to swap it out 
(the entire thing).  

Bob 65 Notch  S with sunroof and IRS (Krusty)
64 T-34 Ghia  (Wolfie)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.vwtype3.org/private.cgi/type3-vwtype3.org/attachments/20120309/24699d36/attachment.htm>