Date:         Tue, 30 Jan 2001 14:36:40 +1200
Reply-To:     Andrew Grebneff <andrew.grebneff@STONEBOW.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Andrew Grebneff <andrew.grebneff@STONEBOW.OTAGO.AC.NZ>
Subject:      Front spindle/suspension changes... in what years? Power
              steering...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I will be wanting to adapt different brakes to my 84 Caravelle, possibly
necessitating fitting of South African front hubs, and need to know:

What year were the spindles changed? Did they change at the same time in
all markets?

My 80-84 Bentley manual shows pressed welded lower control arms with
bolted-on strut bar. Apparently the later Bentley states that the control
arms from 1984 were changed to cast steel and simultaneously changed FROM a
balljointed strut bar location TO bolted.

So the early & late Bentleys appear to disagree with one another. One says
pre85: pressed arm with bolted-on strut bar. The other says pre85: pressed
arm with balljointed strut bar, cast arm with bolt-on strut bar.

Does anyone know whether in fact there was an intermediate pressed arm with
bolt-on strut bar, as shown in my Bentley?

Also it has been brought to my attention that power-steer versions have
shorter tierods than nonpowered ones, so you need to take this into
consideration when changing your steering setup. Due to the short tierods,
power-steer vehicles should therefore have longer control arms on the
knuckles (the tierods are balljointed on the ends of the control arms).
Comments?