Aircooled VW South Africa

hi has any one did a straight axle conversion in a splitwindow bus? do u lower the ride height?

A traditional straight axle conversion will lower the the rear about 3.5" or more, depending on how you adjust the spring plates on the torsion bar.

Clement is busy with a straight axcel conversion as well

The white and green SC that was at the KKKak also has a straight axle conversion that was done by BAB.

The springplates needs to be notched so that the gearbox can fit.The drop you gain is the distance of the shaft on the reduction boxes to the centre of the springplate

There is basically two ways of achieving this.
one is to shorten your spring plates and make an adaptor which bolts to the spring plate and in turn to the swing axle. this is neccesary because the bus rear suspension is about 35mm wider than a bug suspension. the other way which is better IMHO is to use a combination of early and late swing axle components. you need early outer castings which is shorter than later ones then lengten each axle tube by the amount that the short axle is narrower than the wide axle. use these modified tubes with long late axles and notch the spring plates. use the bus nose cone and the rest should bolt up. I would suggest a 1300 SFAB box for best results
Armand

A third way would be Offset Plates.

After installing a Bus nose cone and gear selector, they allow you to bolt a late, long end casting gear box into the Bus. No swapping axles or modifying axle tubes.