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Date:         Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:07:44 EST
Reply-To:     BenTbtstr8@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Ben T <BenTbtstr8@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Lowering an 85'
Comments: To: icculus22420@YAHOO.COM
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

In a message dated 3/12/03 6:21:19 AM Pacific Standard Time, icculus22420@YAHOO.COM writes:

<< Good morning, does anyone know how I can lower the bus? I don't want it to the ground or anything, just a little lowrider.... :-) I saw lowering springs in the last VW Trends I got, they lower about an inch....I wanted to go maybe a few more than that.....lemme know what you guys think......... >>

Tracy,

I have H&R springs with stock Boge shocks on my 87 GL. It's about a half inch lower than a Carat. With this set-up and 205/60/15 tires of redrilled Porsche Fuchs, the front tire is just tucked under the upper fender line. The rear is just at the fender line.

At 5'-8" 31" inseam, I am just about able to slide onto the front seat with just a slight tiptoe. Perfect height for me and looks cool.

The ride is fine with two persons on board, but bumpy on rough roads when loaded with more than two people. I blame this partially on tire pressure, and stock shocks. It is still acceptable to me compared to using gas shocks like the inexpensive KYB's. I'm not sure about the re-valved Bilsteins that was discussed here before. The 15" X 8" ET23 wheels clear the rear sliding door w/o any rubbing. I do have some trouble with the front scraping due to the addition of 7 mm needed to clear the poor casting on my SA big brake calipers. I can fix this problem simply by scraping the calipers and removing the spacers.

There was an outfit that showed up in SF a couple of years ago under the invitation of Steve Schwenk. They demonstrated their (Type 1) Bug with the airbag suspension. Looked, worked and rode great. Costs about $1800 by their estimation for a system including compressors and such. They said they would notify us once they had a system worked out for the Vanagon and/or Syncro. That was the last we heard from them IIRC. I tried to call them myself several times. They would not return any calls. The problem they encountered is the space available up front for the airbags. The smallest diameter airbag available rated for the Vanagon's weight is 8" in diameter. Apparently there is only about 6" available up front in the Vanagons. I have seen airshock style bags enclosed in metal tubes (like an old style airshock). I've seen these in Hondas and such. Unfortunately they do not have a high enough weight rating.

Hopefully, someone else will take this one of these days.

BenT <A HREF="http://hometown.aol.com/bentbtstr8/myhomepage/index.html">Vanagon Cafe</A>


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