Suspension

I was driving with my daughter and felt a nasty wobble of death.  The front end shimmy that plagues the early Super Beetles got to mine.  I had already changed the bushings in the front end so I took a good look at the front suspension.  I pushed down on the front and it didn't come back up into place.  Time for front struts.  I searched on the internet and found out that the early 1973 and later 1973 have different front struts.  There was an upgrade mid year.  Since mine was an early 73, I had the older suspension and not the upgrade.  I ordered struts and took out the strut towers.  My local shop replaced the struts into the towers for a lot less than having them do the whole job.  He charged me $40.00.  Since I have another vehicle I can drive, I wasn't worried about it taking a few days for him to get to them.  When I installed the towers, the car handled great.  No more wobble.  Now for the upgrade build on the front.

The forces of the yaw on the front suspension are transmitted into the body and actually twists the front end of the vehicle when in a turn.  In order to transfer the energy to the other wheel and direct the forces to the inside wheel to increase gripping surface and weight distribution in the front, you need a bar that transfers the force.  This bar is called a strut support bar.  This force transfer assists in cornering.  It makes the inside front wheel have more weight on it and makes for a more stable turn.  This does not take the place of the sway bar.  It makes it work more efficiently.  I priced them on the internet and they were out of the range that I wanted to spend.  Time to go shopping.  I went to the store and got some pipe.  Since I didn't have a tubing bender that will bend small tube, I went with the pipe.  The amount of force generated is not too much for the pipe.  I knew what I wanted the end product to look like, so I just had to make it.  I bent the pipe with a torch and a vice, making sure that the bends were straight.  I bent the first pipe and then placed it on the garage floor and traced it with a marker on the floor.  When that was done, I had fun making the second.  It took a lot of measuring to get the second pipe correct.

Now that I had the shape, I had to make a cardboard template for the tops of the strut towers.  I used 1/8" plate for the tower plates and then welded it in place.  I remembered to put grease on the bolts so that no weld splatter got stuck on the bolts.

Some grinding and some body filler and then paint and it was done.

I didn't take a pic of it painted.