1984 Vanagon gets some upgrades!

so I was feeling really excited and maybe just a tad nervous to uh to get this job going as I knew I'd maybe be a little bit over my head with this my dad was a mechanic for 40 plus years and I did learn a lot from him along the way but perhaps I should have paid just a little more attention um as I'd probably know a little bit more than I do now but anyway that's what the internet's for and I was able to scour YouTube look up all kinds of videos it's such a great community of Vanagon people out there that really helped me along the way to give me confidence to tackle a project like this so here we go break and suspension rebuild on my 1984 Volkswagen Vanagon West Valley foreign [Music] Let's uh get this caliper off there's two bolts in the back here we're gonna loosen those off and that's the first step [Music] so pulling the brakes and steering knuckle off was actually pretty straightforward I took a few photos along the way just in case I needed to reference for when putting everything back together and in hindsight probably would have been a great idea to have just a few more of those also doing one side at a time is an especially good idea for someone with let's say a less than Stellar amount of experience [Music] so now that I've removed the steering knuckle I need to press the new ball joints into a late Vanagon steering knuckle that will accommodate the big brake kit from small car performance [Music] next up I removed the anti-roll bar and drop links along with their very crusty old bushings pretty sure none of this has been replaced since the van was new in 1984. and this all came out fairly easily and it was onto the radius rods so for the radius rods I wanted to try and keep the alignment as close as possible so I measured the distance between the nut and the end of the bar so I can match it up when reinstalling I even counted the threads on the rod as another way to compare the old to the new then I went to work on the nuts holding the radius rod to the lower control arm and with a little penetrating juice these came right off without much work next I loosened the nuts on the end of the rod and popped the old very hardened bushing off the end this was all going very smoothly I was starting to feel just a little bit Pro I figured at this point that the rod would just pretty much fall right off but I really had no clue what was to come so we've got these nuts off the bottom it's loose on this end and she's still pretty solid so I'm going to try and attack her out of the way I'm gonna try and get these guys kinda listen up a little bit if I can get those to turn but I think probably be able to get the whole thing down let's uh let's give that a shot so at this point there was really nothing holding these bolts in place except for 38 years of corrosion shoot a little juice in there and basically just start moving it back and forth just a little bit at a time until the bolts come loose [Music] once I got one moving I moved on to the other two and man these things were in there tight but if I just took my time everything should work out just fine thanks Liz for about an hour I broke off to bolts we don't want to do let's break these Yeah I broke them but at very least after some major blows with the Tonya Harding I was able to knock the radius rod loose which felt amazing [Music] these Rusty bolts to remove however but after several hours and some very Choice language I finally surrendered took the control arms to a shop to have them pressed out okay so the lower control arm is all book five together we're all cleaned up created with some new bushings from powerflex put in there with the provided grease these little beasts got nice new bolts in there and uh all ready for reassembly it felt really good to be starting the reassembly process clean and new or at least newly painted parts were a welcome break from all the grease and dirt I got these installed quickly and torqued to spec I needed to clean up the frame where the new radius rods and bushings attach all was good on the driver's side just needed some wire wheeling and some fresh paint this is your side however was a whole different story the old bushings had long given up and the rod was literally sawing its way through the frame so I really needed to make this whole round again I used a piece of copper plate as a backdrop so that I could weld in some filler material and this worked really great as the weld would not stick to the Copper after some filing and grinding I had a nice round hole that fit the new bushing perfectly [Music] now things are really starting to come together and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel I got the new shrink Springs installed as well as the Bilstein shocks and it was on to mounting the new hubs foreign [Music] with the hubs buttoned up it was time to move on to the brakes first off the new and much larger rotors and then on to trying to figure out how the spacers and carriers fit to the knuckle which ended up being pretty straightforward once I got the carriers in place and bolted in things were starting to look really good [Music] thank you [Music] and everything was aligned perfectly and it was onto the brake pads and finally the calibers [Music] I got them bolted in and all that was left to do was torque everything to spec and run the brake lines [Music] around this way so that it will hook up into there and then my braided brake line goes from here up to the top and we should be good I think I've got this all figured out now thanks so much for your help everybody that weighed in I just got that nicely using the existing bracket that was there and coming up to here to all tie in I don't think there's any crazy bends in there there's no Kinks it's all good you know the only thing I'm a bit worried about is this which seems to be just a little bit loose I can move the the washer in there which I know I'm supposed to be able to do but once I kind of whacked it into place it seems to be maybe a little looser than I would like so I have a feeling I'm going to be uh replacing the nut on here but anyway let me know your thoughts taking the shock off I know this is a little bit of spot which I ground out here a little bit and I'm ready to welder up through so I've done a bit of work on that welded her up and uh yeah looking pretty good it's really no accommodate new Springs there are these pads that were on there before these guys and obviously not much left of that it's pretty pretty nasty I probably could have put it back on but I ordered some new ones which should arrive here on Tuesday and then I can uh put the new pad on top put the springs in put the shocks in and then the suspension system and braking system are done I just bled all the brakes so it looks like I got pedal and uh should be kind of ready to go man it's so good just cruising along at like 55 60 miles an hour and uh the controls on the on the steering is just like fingertip control beautifully straight on the road the alignment made all the difference in the world when I was I first took it for a ride after doing all the suspension and brakes and everything spot's a little bit sloppy and now it just feels tight and like a much more modern car yeah happy cruising I've been experimenting with some different types of content here on the channel from building stuff to adventures and of course my beloved Westie I always love to hear from you guys so please drop me a note in the comments and let me know what you think and if you did enjoy the video a thumbs up is always appreciated and subscribing to the channel is super helpful once again thank you so much for watching we'll see you next time [Applause] thank you [Music]

Channel: Make Adventure

Views: 9,110

Keywords: Volkswagen, Vanagon, Westfalia, wrenching, amateur mechanic, VW, Vanlife, Driving, Camping, Adventure, Camper, poptop

Id: 5olPpscFgTA

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023