Looks a good fit and using the tube mounts as per original is a sensible idea.

I have a feeling that once these minor niggles are sorted, this beam is going to take the VW world by storm 

The ball joints are all original VW parts, which is good in one respect as they are easily obtainable if you ever need a replacement, but I am hoping that they are not going to follow the usual aftermarket ball joint trait of being rock solid and non-moveable. (From that read - stiff ball joints can mean that self centering may be compromised until they wear in a little.) The camber adjuster has been replaced by this set of sleeved fittings, and rather than twisting that camber nut with the rusty arrow, it should hopefully be a lot easier to adjust by means of moving the thread on the top joint in and out.




It was important to me to retain the original stub axles and disc carrier too. There was a period a few years back where aftermarket axles seemed to be snapping on a regular basis due to being made of cheese, and I just didn't fancy that. My discs fitted just perfectly. Starting to look a bit more familiar now.




I have been asked if I could provide some technical data on this, and this was the reply from Ed.

Castor angle is fixed at 8 degrees
Camber (Initial setting) is around 1/2 to 1 Degree
Toe is zero - mildly toe out

Torque Settings
Wishbones     = 50nm  =  36 ft lbs
Beam Support = 36nm  =  26 ft lbs
Shocks          = 88nm  =  65 ft lbs
Ball Joints      = 51nm  =  38 ft lbs

The supplied steering rack support bar makes no sense to me at all. There is obviously a right and wrong way to fit this judging by the irregular shape and I am reliably informed that the lower radius is to go over the top of the tunnel. Ed is very pleased with this panel, but I just don`t understand why a frilly decorative laser cut panel that will be completely obscured by the steering rack has any place on this rufty tufty suspension. No, I just don't get this bit at all. Sorry Ed, but I have no idea what you were smoking when you came up with this bit.




Time to lay it all out and see how it is all going to fit in there. The steering rack is taken from an old classic Mini and they are still plentiful to get hold of. My Buggy has always shared some key components from the Mini, from the original headlights to "allegedly" the curved windscreen as well. Looks like it is going to be tight in there.




We seem to have a bit of a problem here. When I first saw the mock up of this, Ed had designed the input shaft of the steering box pointing upwards, knowing that universal joints could be used for the steering. Now I have never been happy with this vertical angle as it means the steering shaft is fast approaching 90 degrees, which is not good. If the angle is too great, the joints will lock up instead of turning and if the angle is too small, the column would pass through the bulkhead much further down. If any of you have driven an old Vauxhall Corsa with big feet, you will know this to be a problem as the low steering joints can physically knock your feet from the pedals if braking and steering at the same time. My initial plan was to simply rotate the box a little on the U-Bolts and find a happy compromise, but as you can see, the large lump of a gearbox on the rear of the rack hits the mounting bar, meaning this rack position is firmly fixed with the shaft near vertical. The initial brief was also to be able to utilize the Master Cylinder Reservoir modification that many of us have now adopted, but there is no way that you can get to the cap to remove it.




The eagle eyed amongst you may have spotted another clearance issue too, as whilst this is all assembled you may notice that I cannot get the bolts into the mounting bar as everything is resting on top of the brake reservoir. That's a fairly easy one to sort out and just means reverting back to a remote location for the reservoir, just as Volkswagen had originally intended.

The brake pipe was pulled over to one side (yes, I will replace it later) the brake reservoir was drained using a syringe and then removed. I have connected two low pressure hoses to the outlets and will have to figure out where to relocate it at a later date. The reason I used this reservoir was due to not having much room on the bulkhead in the first place..



With the reservoir now gone and the rack also removed, its time to trial fit the bar again. You can see how much clearance I now have on the top of the tunnel and how well those bolt holes line up. I bet you can also tell just how bloody annoyed I am starting to get as well.



With a large gap underneath and zero clearance on top, I have questioned in my mind whether Ed's Jig is possibly out of alignment and whether the whole thing should be raised 10mm or so before welding it up. A few more of these need to be fitted to answer that one I guess. Still, these are teething troubles, its what its all about, and I never liked this bit anyway.

Reaching for the angle grinder, I then decided to give Ed a yell first

After a long chat with Ed, I talked through a few ideas to make this bar a little easier to live with. We had to be very careful not to alter the physical position of the steering rack itself as that could affect the steering geometry, and if we get that wrong then a very nasty side effect is something called bump steer. With no diagrams or measurements, Ed very much took on board what I was suggesting and came back with a solution of raising the bar on the brackets with some captive nuts inside. This was conveyed to Dave Fisher to fabricate, and low and behold, a new bracket arrived on my doorstep.




I think you will agree that visually it is far more in keeping with the rest of the suspension, and to me actually looks a bit stronger. But the big question remains, has it solved the problems? With the first bar, the rack struggled to rotate this far due to that bit on the back.




With the horizontal bar being raised by about an inch, the rack now has more space to rotate, giving me more freedom to adapt the steering column.




Thankfully, it also fits perfectly without fouling the master cylinder.



I have just had one of those sleepless nights and woken up in a state of panic with a horrible thought running through my head. I have spent so much time concentrating on getting this rack to fit that I have completely forgotten and missed out a crucial measurement. With that bar now sitting 30mm higher, will the petrol tank still fit over the top. Luckily, the answer is yes (I knew it would, didn't doubt myself for a moment  ) but I may have to be careful when it comes to the outlet pipe. It should drop between the car and the rack, but access to the union is going to be somewhat awkward.




And now, the moment of truth - time to bolt the rack in place.    Hallelujah    It Fits   




It fits, but only just - blimey that is close. The steering rack only just clears the tunnel by a few millimeters, but it does add a bit more weight to my suggestion to Ed that the whole setup could really do with raising upwards ever so slightly.




And what of that essential rack rotation? Do I have to find a solution to the vertical direction that Ed wanted it ?




Plenty of clearance, the rack rotates just fine, and I now have lots of wriggle room to play with in order to find a more realistic column angle.   




All fitted. 




I`m so glad that this part went as well as it did, and I would really only have myself to blame if this bit ended up wrong. Credit to Ed though for translating my babbling into a design that worked. Now to take it all apart again to get the bits powder coated to match the rest of it.

Dave,
As always, you've got there(ish). Another great thread. Perhaps we'll all end up with a similar set up. Unless the forthcoming E10 gets us first 😂

Looks good you need to start looking for a 90 degree'ish bevel steering box to go on the input.

Looks good you need to start looking for a 90 degree'ish bevel steering box to go on the input.

I`m going to try and do this with universal joints so that I can retain some of my existing steering column

Just waiting for some bits to arrive

Dave,
As always, you've got there(ish). Another great thread. Perhaps we'll all end up with a similar set up. Unless the forthcoming E10 gets us first 😂

E10.... September....  Am still being told "submersible" grade flexi line will be fully at home with E10.   Think I need to see this to believe it..

Today I made an annoying discovery, and if this were a "medical" exercise, then this would be described as a "Never" event.     

This is something that just should not have ever happened. Ed's team have designed this brilliantly and send over a box of parts for Dave's team to assemble and they make an exceptionally good job of it. So what is the problem I hear you ask? Well Ed's team are obviously "Old School Classic Cars" and Dave's team are "Old Skool V-Dubs". Still not making any sense? Well take a look at the front tank support that they have recreated. Amazing how something so small can be so badly wrong.






Every single "loose" nut and bolt has been supplied as Metric, that's what we want as Volkswagen nuts and bolts are indeed all metric. However, all of the captive nuts and bolts that are welded in place, including those two support threads are actually imperial. 3/8 UNC to be precise, just as you would find on an old British Classic Car.

Luckily I spotted this before trying to tighten any bolts, as a 3/8 UNC and an M10 x 1.5 look almost identical. In fact a 3/8 will actually fit an M10 hole albeit loosely, but if you put an M10 in a 3/8 hole, after two or three turns the thread will get tight and strip the threads very quickly.

Teething troubles are to be expected,
But VW's are metric - and this needs to be sorted out !   

So far, most of this has been pretty straightforward to fit, but now comes one of the hardest parts - making it all work with the steering wheel. I`m sure that those out there in the know will be screaming at the computer and I'll probably be shot down in flames as I am sure there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. As I haven't a clue, I'm simply going to try it first "My way" and I'm fully prepared for this bit to go badly wrong.

First of all, I need to find some universal joints. Ed suggested to use a fancy one he had located in the States, but I am bored of playing the mind games around import duties and shipping costs and decided to locate one in the UK if at all possible. There are loads on the market, some are weldable, some have different types and shapes of shaft, some even have different shaft types at each end, but to narrow down my searches, I have opted to stick to the same shape of shaft that the Steering rack has throughout as it seems to be a fairly common size of a 9/16" spline shaft with 36 teeth milled from a 15mm bar. Looking at the Car Builder Solutions Catalogue (Order one, they are Free, and so much easier to browse when sat on the loo pondering), there was one that jumped out at me - and of course it had to be the most expensive at £43 each.

Unlike the virtually straight Steering Column that most of us are using, the universal joints allow us to alter the angle of the steering column to the rack, but you have to be careful here as if you get the angle too steep, then the joints will lock up instead of turning. The joint I was looking at stated a 45 degree operating angle which just didn't sound right. A quick call to CBS confirmed my suspicions of a misprint in their catalogue, and they informed that the typo should actually show this to be 30 degrees instead. That's quite a difference ! However, with two of those operating at 30 degrees each, that gives me 60 degrees to play with, and as I have a rotating steering rack, I'm sure I now have enough wriggle room to make something work. So I ordered a couple and they have just arrived.




My limited knowledge of universal joints is that they must always be used in pairs to prevent rotational anomalies with one cancelling the other out at all times otherwise as you turn them they go  - FAST - SLOW - FAST - SLOW. So it is really important to align the center "Spiders" as shown below so that the other end goes SLOW - FAST - SLOW - FAST and that way it always gives a smooth operation.




I have been asked why the old steering column is still in place, and the answer is because I have not yet finished with it just yet. I have had this tool in my possession for about 20 years now and always knew it would come in handy one day.





I want to keep the steering wheel orientation in the same place which means the steering column must remain at the same angle it is now. I also now know that I have a maximum of 60 degrees on offer from the universal joints, so if I rotate the steering rack to the 60 degree mark, I can confirm that this is the absolute maximum angle that it can be.





I can make that angle significantly less by now rotating the rack, and whilst anything less is a bonus, I am acutely aware that if the angle becomes too shallow, then the hole in the bulkhead where the column passes through, will also start to get lower.

So it is really important to align the center "Spiders"

This is the important bit Dave....

Time to tackle the steering column then.

One of the other attractions of the 9/16" 36t spline bar was the 15mm diameter shaft that it was machined from. At the end of the original steering column is a clamp to hold the small T-Piece that connects to the steering rubber, (the red ring of death that we all go on about). If that clamp is removed, you will find that the shaft is not only hollow, but that hole is just a shade over 15mm depending on how rusty it is inside, and that gave me an idea of how to put this all together as CBS also sell 15mm bars with splined ends. See where I am going with this?




As luck would have it, placing the universal joints back to back meant that the steering shaft end passed straight through the original bulkhead hole, well close enough for a bit of fettling anyway.




As everything seems to be roughly in the same place, its now time to bite the bullet and get the hacksaw out. I'm not yet sure how long the inner shaft needs to be, but the outer shaft certainly needs some cutting back to make some access for whatever comes next. With the Inner now removed, its Squeeky Bum Time as I chop a few inches from the outer, as this is a point of no return.





Whilst cutting through the outer column I had a horrible flashback to a previous problem that I had long since forgotten about and that was a very unstable and wobbly steering column. It used to move up and down and I cured it many moons ago by using a 2 inch exhaust clamp bolted to the bulkhead. But with the column now much shorter, that method was not going to work, so I have quickly tacked a bar to the top of the column that now gives full support to the outer column at each end. Not pretty, but for the moment its functional.




I'm suspecting that the inner column may present me with a few issues too.   

You will not be turning your steering wheel fast enough for any fast slow phasing vibration you just need to ensure the movement is free and smooth through 360 degrees rotation.

You will not be turning your steering wheel fast enough for any fast slow phasing vibration you just need to ensure the movement is free and smooth through 360 degrees rotation.

True enough . . . 

. . . . but its still good practice to do it properly, especially when its so easy to do