1980 B1 Passat Project

[Phat Bug]

Very cool!

[gldgti]

well deserved!

[Peter Jones]

Slowly catching up on a few things we've been meaning to get around to.

Organised some sandblasting then followed up with some powder coating.

The Passat needs a new rear beam as the current one is bent and the camber on one side is out of whack.

This beam is out of another Passat we wrecked.

I made up a couple of brackets to hold the flexible hoses from the rear calipers as they're currently unsupported.

Made up a couple of new brake lines too.

Just need to press in some new bushes and it's good to go.

[Jarred]

red, of course!

[huss]

Thats killa Pete, you've inspired me so much throughout my Passat TS rebuild, Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I'd be able to rebuild my braking system with all upgraded parts from 3 different VW's/Audi's, this summer I should be getting all the mechanics done as well. Thanks Pete

[Peter Jones]

Ha ha we found a powder coater near us that specialises in Red.

They do a batch of fire extinguishers in Signal Red every night so getting stuff made red is very easy.

[Jarred]

Hahahaha, that's fantastic.

[Phat Bug]

Nice one

[thestu]

Looking good pete!

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[Peter Jones]

Got around to installing the rear beam on the weekend.

All pretty straight forward although there is some experitsie required to set up the trailing arm bushes correctly.

We pressed new bushes into the trailing arms but I didn't get any photos of the process as it took three of to wrangle the beam into the press and operate it.

The bushes were difficult to source, we found a NOS pair in Italy of all places.

Whole swap out took about 3-4 hours.

Up in the air....



This beam is quite bent and affects handling. Camber on this side is about 2° more than the other.
If you look back some of the first posts in this thread you can see the extent of the damage we had to repair on the bodywork.
The brunt of the impact was taken by the wheel and obviously bent the beam.



New brake lines.



Old beam out.



Air gap where the suspension should be.




Old vs new





In it goes.



The rear beam doesn't pivot on it's bushes, it twists them.
The beam has to be brought up to ride height before the trailing arm bushes are torqued up.



Painted the springs and diagonal member. One day I suppose we'll powder coat these too.

[Peter Jones]

Brakes back on. Need to find some unbent backing plates one day and swap these one over.











You can see the beam clearly when you're following the car in traffic.




Handling seems to be fixed now and both left and right turns can be achieved with similar results

Just a few other little items to get done before DOVW.

You'll have to come along to see what those are.

[Jarred]

Great work as always Pete.

Bit odd about those bushes.

[Peter Jones]

Frank went to DOVW today sporting some new stripes.

[huss]

WOW loving those stripes, where did you get them from? Do they have any in the same style that say TS?

[Peter Jones]

I made those stripes.

They're copied from an NOS set of 1974 "Rally Stripes" Jodie found in the US.

The Rally Stripe set was incomplete and didn't look like it would it would stick too well being 37 years old, so I made a replica set out of vinyl.