Annie Gets Some Sun

Today, we bought tires and rolled her out into the sun for the first time since December of 2003. The tires were bought at Discount Tire a few miles ways. The tires are 195-60-R15 Barum Bravuris mounted on 5-1/2" chrome rims. When we were at the Gulf Coast Holiday a few weeks back, we surveyed tires and the car's look and selected the 195-60. Our rims are chrome 5-1/2" and the 195 gives them a little bit bigger diameter. These tires are directional and have a tread similar to the Goodyear Aquatread. Some may say that they are wrong for my car since they are not period correct while I think they are actually a safer tires. Since the front tires have so little weight, I am concerned with hydroplaning. With this type of tread, the water will displace much more quickly and in turn be a safer tire.


Earlier this week we installed the rear radius arms and completed the rear suspension. Setting the correct angle for the swing arms took some time. Once I leveled the car using the tunnel as my plane, I measure the distance from the ground to the center of the torsion bar and the ground to a point at the end of the radius arm on the same line. Using a little engineering I was able to figure that the relative vertical distance should be about 3-1/8". The following hour was spent with various combination of rotating the torsion bar within the fit in the body and then the radius arm on the torsion bar. Since there are 40 teeth in the fit in the body and 44 in the radius arm, there is quite a bit of flexibility to set the angle.

A couple of lessons learned. Install the swing arm and mount the axle tube to it before you install the brakes. It takes some prying of the radius arm to get the axle tube to fit correctly and the backing plate of the brakes get in the way. You should also attach the e-brake cable to the brake before you mount the brakes on the axle. The cable housing is pretty rigid and you need the flexibility to install the cable.

In all of this, I found that I had the e-brake lever on the wrong side of the brake shoe and that I had left out the spreader bar. I was able to change the lever quickly however I had to order another set of the spreader bars. I'm getting pretty good at installing the brakes.

I finally found a place to turn my rear brake drums. I called Ask Imports, a local VW specialist and legend in Houston, and was referred to Hare Repair near Richmond and Chimney Rock.