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Step3 - Castor shims and tracking
When you lower the front of a bug with adjusters the steering becomes very light, kind of like power steering, and with this being the case can feel quite unresponsive. To fix this you can get castor shims (you will also need to get longer beam bolts too). They are available from most VDub suppliers, I got mine from Machine 7 (http://www.machine7.co.uk) and are easy to fit.
Now, the easy to fit part is true, but obviously only if you know what you're doing as they don't come with instructions. So, I thought I'd say exactly what you need to do to fit them.
First, jack the car up and put it on axle stands, you can't put the axle stands on the actual axle though, for reasons that will become evident, so I put mine where the framehead meets the floor (there should be some bolts there) and it seemed to be ok. With the car on axle stand you need to loosen off the top two bolts on the front of the beam and completely remove the bottom two bolts. It might be an idea to use some WD40 on the bolts the day before you attempt this.
With the bottom two bolts out you should be able to feel a recess behind the bottom bar of the beam, it will be approximately the same size as the two castor shims put together. This recess is where the castor shims fit. So, pull the beam slightly forward at the bottom and slide the castor shims in behind it, then all you need to do is put your longer bolts into the bottom two holes of the beam and tighten up the top two.
Now, by this time the tracking and the camber settings on the bug are well out, partly due to a bit of guess work when the beam was changed and it not being set up correctly since. With this being the case and me wanting to go to Big Bang in the bug I figured I should get it done. I tried about five places around Coventry and they all either said "Can't do it mate, it's lowered" or "Sorry, we haven't got any data for them" so I gave Bug Shak in Leamington Spa a call and Malc managed to fit me in on the Friday afternoon (the day before leaving for Big Bang). Thankfully it was all sorted pretty quickly and the car was useable for the weekend.
NOTE: If anyone ever tells you they don't have any data for tracking on a bug, just tell them to set it to parallel. Aparently thats the correct setting.
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