How can I improve handing on my 69 Karmann Ghia?

1. Does the car have more front grip with a full tank of fuel?
2. Is the new anti roll bar larger in diameter than the original (this would be good).
3. Has the caster and camber been set to optimal handling characteristics, or set to be within normal factory specs ? Increased (?negative? the upper ball joint leaned more to the rear)caster causes steering induced weight shift to improve handling.Increased camber (tires slightly leaned in at the top 1-1/2 degrees or so) improves the mechanical grip of the front tires.

1. If the tires are incredibly "hard" as in the actual rubber compound, grip will be less. Wider tires will improve grip. Air pressure too high will hurt grip. Are the rear tires wider than the front? Not a good thing.

It has been my experience that sometimes the rear has too much grip, causing an understeer condition(trying to go straight in a curve). Adding a bit of well mounted weight to the front, and possibly stiffer shocks on the rear can help. A few percentage points to much rear weight bias can be a problem - even the lack of a spare tire is a big change. On a 2000 pound car 20 pounds is 1 percent.In a perfect world, 50 percent front weight, and 50 percent left weight would be great- with the driver in the car and normal fuel levels.Lighier is better, but not at the cost of having the car to be unbalanced and ill handling .

My s> I am looking for any suggestions on how I can improve the handling on

I thought you guys spelled tires as "tyres"?

yep ! (should do) maybe it depends what *color* they are . LOL

anyway - back to the point. lower profile tyres will give less sidewall roll at the front. in a modern car this would give better grip, but in a ghia - only trial an error will tell.

oh - perhaps you should slow down on those twisty's ! wouldn't want to indtroduce those expensive front wings to the dry stone wall now ;)

Rich (UK)

AFAIK Some of the KG cousins, Porsche 911s, used lead in the bumpers to help handling. I think my '71 Porsche 911E had that heavy bumper.

So add some sand bags to the trunk to try that idea out. Say good bye to some mpgs or I should say kmpl maybe or what is that term used in the UK? :-)

MPG is still good (just about) in th UK :)

we havent lost all of our past yet

First get your car aligned to a good alignment shop. Alignment is very important to how the car handles. Front toe-in and camber settings make a huge difference in how the car corners. Get it adjusted to stock settings, and if you don't like the way it handles, then experiment with different toe-in settings and negative camber in the front. Try decreasing the toe-in or maybe a little toe-out. See what you like. In twisting roads, a bit toe out and negative camber will greatly improve handling, but this may affect braking efficiency on wet roads.

A heavy duty antiroll bar in the front is a great improvement in the handling, because it greatly reduces body roll, and thus the rear outer swing axle wont jack-up while cornering. But if you add a heavier antiroll bar in the front, you must also stiffen the rear suspension, with a camber compensator and firmer (firmer on expansion, not on compression) socks, otherwise you will have increased understeer. In the front you need the softer oil socks you can find. No gas charged shocks. I am against very low profile tires, because you can damage them or the rims very easily.

Bill Spiliotopoulos, '67 Bug.

I live in the Yorkshire Dales in the UK (for those of you not familiar with the UK, you may have seen "All Creatures Great and Small" on the TV?) anyway there are a lot of narrow twisty county lanes bordered with dry stone walls and hills. Needless to say you need good handing.

I have fitted a new front beam with new ball joints, steering box, tie rod ends, KYB GR2 shocks all around and anti-roll bar. The tires (165/15 can't see any ratio markings but they bulge quite a bit at the sides) have plenty of tread (I don't know how old they are but there are no obvious signs of aging). I have just bought a set of GT 5.5J wheels on ebay for £10.00 to try - not tested yet.

When cornering, I don't get as much roll as I did before fitting the new shocks and anti-roll bar but just don't feel I am getting much road holding at the front. It always feels that if I was just going a little faster it would just go straight on and I'm not going very fast. The beetles I had in the past seemed much better.

There must be and feels like a lot of sideways movement in the tires compared to a modern car with lower profile tires?

Do I need more weight in the front?

Has anyone found any 16" 5.5j wheels that would fit - if so would that help?

Would 155/55/15s on the front help (I guess these will make the speedo read fast but that isn't too much of an issue). I wouldn't want to reduce to diameter on the back as it would reduce the gearing.

Would new tires be stickier or would some tire conditioner help?

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Thanks

Will

Some more thoughts.

Maybe you were driving newer beetles with the mac-Pherson struts and rear IRS suspension, which have much better handling, closer to a modern car. With the swing axle beetles / ghias, if you want to corner fast, you have to do a controlled oversteer before the car understeers (by downshifting/coasting in the entrance of a turn, and then applying power to the wheels and counter-steer when the rear brakes loose). Beware though, this kind of driving might get you a ticket, or an accident.

I once bought the KYB GR-2 shocks, and they sucked. I didn't used them for more than a month because of the very harsh ride (on a '67 beetle). One of the best shocks I have used, were the KONI red adjustable shocks, adjusted firmer in the back and softer in the front. The Cofap shocks (the yellow ones) were also very good for the front, but a bit soft for the rear.

Bill Spiliotopoulos, '67 bug.

Use the cheap Cofab (Mex/Brazil?) oil shocks out front, the car is way to light for anything else.

J.

I second Bill's sentiment here. I've had modern sports cars that came stock with low profile tires and alloy wheels. I hit a moderate pothole (maybe 12 to 18 inches wide and 4 to 6 inches deep) just a little to fast and the next thing I know I'm replacing a $175 alloy wheel. Low profiles are good for a real race car on a real racetrack (which don't normally have potholes) but they simply transfer too much energy to the wheel and suspension in real day to day driving. The suspension on your Ghia was designed assuming some compliance in the tires and if you eliminate this you are more likely to damage suspension components (and wheels) and will experience a rougher ride. You might try a *slightly* lower than stock profile tire but I think you would regret going to something like a 50 series or lower. The other thing I didn't like about low profile tires is that they are much more sensitive to temperature and normal leak down. They have such a small volume of air in them and they leak down at about the same absolute rate (in terms of cc's of air lost per day) that the result is they lose a greater percentage of their air volume over a given period of time compared to "normal" profile tires. This means you have to really keep on top of your tire pressure, much more so than on a standard profile tire.

As Bill suggests, to get a good place to start get the alignment set up to factory spec and replace the routine maintenance wear items in the suspension (shock absorbers, steering damper, tie rod ends (if loose), king pins/ball joints etc.). Once you have done all this you will have good base for experimentation if required.

Some vintage VW types will actually tell you that you should be using polyester bias ply tires (which is what would probably have come on your car from the factory) instead of steel belted radials. I have never done any sort of controlled side by side comparison so I really can't speak directly to this idea.

Alignment, shocks, stabilizer bars, weight balance, good rubber, driving techniques will all help.

One option is to purchase smaller diameter wheels and then you can keep a decent size tire sidewall height.

I used to run 13" wheels & tires (205/60-13) on my '76 Beetle and then on my '66 Beetle. Never bent a wheel here in pothole ridden Chicago. Made it "seem" faster too, but we don't have a lot of curvey roads here! lol I forgot the brand of tire but they were very highly rated and weren't that expensive. BTW I had changed the '66 over to 12volts and the drums to 4 bolts so I could use these wheels.

Actually, here is a VERY simple thing you can try.... I FINALLY discovered why my old Beetle used to understeer, and since then handling has been much better. I was putting the "standard" (max) air pressure for the tires on both front and rear. (28 - 32 psi) For a bug that is fine for the back but the front should have about 1/2 that. (15 - 19 psi) Of course, this is not with low profile tires... ;)

I run radial tires these days, but when I first switched to them I had to adjust my driving style. With the bias ply tires I knew I could drift through corners if I was going a specific speed and goosed the gas a little, but the first time I did that in my '65 with radials I lifted off the inside tires a bit and had to counter steer to bring it down (it was on a ramp between two expressways going about 65 MPH). Radials grip better than bias ply.

KWW

I should have mentioned this. Actually Kirk, you re-discovered VW's original factory recommended tire inflation pressures. I don't know if your pressures correspond exactly to the original VW recommendations but if recollection serves they are close. VW's recommended *front* tire pressures (from the VW owner's manual) were considerably lower than the max pressure the tires are rated for and less that what most people are used to running in modern tires on modern cars. Check the VW owner's manual for your model year over at The Samba.

Yes, you are right.... but I always thought that "the tire manufacturers should know what pressure their tires should take.... duh....oh well... I was young at the time... getting older, wiser, and hopefully not grouchier..." KWW

the tire manufacturers do know what their tires can take...that's why they list the max pressure and max weight on the side... the optimum pressure is based on many factors, which is why the vehicle manufacturer sets the recommended pressure...