rear torchen bars knowing when to replace?

[Chris4747]

ok guys im changing my swing arms and have an issue. spring plates are suposed to have pressure on them from the torchen bars correct? but how much pressure and how do i know when and if the torchen bars need to be replaced .im not even sure what year of car the ascembaly came out off

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Chris, are you talking about the preload on the bars themselves as measured on the spring plates prior to cranking time onto the torsion tube's stops?

What kind of car is it, bug, bus, type III, rail, buggy or what.

For example, my Haynes manual for a bug gives the preload for swing axle cars without equalizer spring (what ever that is) as an angle of 17°, 30 minutes +/- 50° while with an equalizer spring the angle should be 20° +/- 50 minutes.

viewtopic.php?t=110857&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 (just incase, don't notch the spring plate on a swing axle. Also, I would be careful in not going past, or too much past the stock settings for a swing axle as you can damage internals of the transaxle and also get the car unstable)

I hope this helps.

Lee

[Chris4747]

im building a sand rail ,i just put some pics onthe galery thread .i dont want to do any tweaking on it unless i have to im just curiouse as to the travel up-down of the spring plates and whether the rear torchen should ever have to be changed or adjusted

[Ol'fogasaurus]

On IRS cars you can obtain a fair amount of ground clearance by adding more preload and doing it some other ways but you can over do it too. Swing axle cars are a lot of fun, we have two of them in our group, they are great cruisers and climbers, not as good as jumpers due to the lak of travel on landing. Good shocks can turn an OK rig into a very nice rig to drive off-road.

We had two others in the group, one we sold and the other one, when the guy was done with it and offered it to me, I declined the offer after seeing what he did with it. When buying used ya just gotta look out for that kind of abuse on what you are looking at.

Good to have another rail on STF.

Lee

[Chris4747]

thanks i just got my beefed up swing arms put on i couldnt buy new 500.00 swing arms .i was gona fab up a jig and make some new arms myself but decided to just add to the stock arms and see how they hold

[Dale M.]

For example, my Haynes manual for a bug gives the preload for swing axle cars without equalizer spring (what ever that is) as an angle of 17°, 30 minutes +/- 50° while with an equalizer spring the angle should be 20° +/- 50 minutes.



Lee

Believe 67-68 has what is known as a Z-BAR and was sort of combination between a overload spring and camber compensator..... That may be what the reference to equalizer spring is....

Dale

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Thanks Dale, I forgot about the Z-bars.

Lee