Chirco is building a Baja Bug! Many of the air - cooled VW parts and procedures used can also be used on Dune Buggies, Sand Rails. These pages feature links to the Chirco online parts catalog.

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PART 13- Rear Suspension and Shocks

We wanted to try and achieve more travel from what is still basically a stock rear suspension. We have also set it up to run dual shocks.

First let me show you what we ended up with. A CV joint will truly only tolerate an 18 degree angle before it will try and come apart. In the first photo, the angle is 12 degrees or stock. This equates to around 5.5" inches of total travel. By opening up the bottom of the pivot bracket and notching the spring plates, we made an 18 degree down angle and 12 degree up angle for 8.5" of total travel. The reason we did not allow the up angle to go higher is we do not want the tire to have a chance to rip off our fenders. Also we put on 8.5" travel Bilstein shocks.
With the torsion bars out, we marked were the spring plates made contact with the torsion stops on the housing. With a grinder we grinded a little off the spring plates until the degree finder said 18 degrees. (Make sure the inner knobby gromment is in place while you do this). In the second photo you can see we only notched out a small portion of the top of the spring plate. Once it looked good with out the torsion bar in, it was all put back together and re-measured.
For shocks, we decided to go with 5100 series Bilsteins that were originally designed for light trucks. There overall length is 22.5" and have the 8.5" of travel we needed. (They look cool to.) At the rear arm we took a shock boss that are 1.5" long and cut one in half and mocked in the bolts to the to back holes of the triple shock mounts. The angle of the shocks have to follow the travel of the rear arm while it is moving through it's travel. We cut a hole in the wheel well large enough for the shocks to go through.   
With the arm in the totally extended position we measured where the upper bar should be. We wanted the shock towards the rear of the car to be fully extended. Then marked where the bar should be. Holes were drilled in the bar and smaller tubes were welded in the holes for the shock bolts to ride in. The holes in the wheel wells will have rubber flaps installed to keep debris from getting in the car. 
We will also weld some tubes that go from the top off the cage down to the new cross bar holding in the shocks to give us a little extra strength.
Well one side is done, all we have to do is get the other side exactly the same and were set. I'm glad we went with a Bilstein shock, they are a really great quality shock and they are very affordable.

If you have any questions or comments about Project Baja please e-mail don@chirco.com we sure would like to hear from you.