The Boyd Coddington Beetle Build.

[nacha]

Hi guys ive decided to lightly document the "build" as i work on some of my cars, in this instance the Beetle.

So i bought the car at the end of 2022 for dirt cheep from around 5mins away from my house with the full intention of getting it sold as quickly and for as much profit as possible. This didn't happen because of my uselessness and working on a couple of different things. I haven't got any phots of it stock as this build thread was somwhat of an afterthought however you can imagine a stock silver new shape beetle. 

Well nearly 5 months later ive still got it and because I'm an idiot ive decided to do something with it.
Previously ive had a couple of different vehicles all low power VAG group cars, low power because they are cheep for young drivers like myself to insure and VAG group as that's what my mates have generally had. 
I have primarily gone down the route of lowering my cars.



So the beetle,

The decision to modify it came about through seeing several video's on my social media on very low beetles out in the US, this and the fact that i haven't seen anyone in the uk modifying any to sit very low. There are several about running different suspension setups, however most of the "low" ones are on air ride with very mediocre fitment and mainly still quite high off the ground.

So the plan is find a set of keen set of wheels and make them fit.
    I considered several different options however ended up finding a set of Boyd Coddington wheels that peaked my interest.








The first image is taken directly from the add, so you can see they didn't look to Bad condition wise.
The second image is one i have managed to find of the original paper magazine add for the wheels released in 1997 a whole 6 years before i was born.

They defiantly fulfilled my personal requirement for an interesting wheel in a keen speck 
   
    17" diameter 
    fronts 9.5j et6
    rears  10j  et0
    5x100 and 5x114.3

[nacha]

Next thing to do is to try and fit them to the car to see what other work ill need to do to get them working, and gain some sort of idea of what suspension set up I will need to use to achieve the fitment i would like.






clearly ive got some work to do to get them to fit appropriately

[nacha]

[zeberdee]

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out .

Reckon grizz would also be interested ?

I know someone that had a very low static one a few years back , unfortunately no pics , but your right in saying you don’t see many proper low ones about .

👍

[Davey]

This looks very interesting. Will be watching with anticipation.

[nacha]

so the next step was to figure out a rough idea of how low id have to go to get where I need to be, so the obvious solution of take the springs out, and the bump stops for good measure.

now obviously i wont be driving on the suspension like this, it was already due a fair bit of work regardless of lowering it or not.






so removing the springs defiantly got me part of the way to my desired height however I'm really looking to try and get the car near enough lip to arch, so there is some serious work to do.

Getting the rears low doesn't concern me to much as i already know ill have to make a set of drop plates to relocate the point that the hub bolts on to the rear beam. it also has the added benefit of re-centering the wheel in the arch, this is because the car has a rear beam the wheel will travel both upwards and forward through its travel, using a drop plate the beam will essentially be lower down in its travel causing the wheel to be further back in the arch.

The fronts are a different story though, there is next to no adjustability built into the stock strut and hub combination. (the strut slides into the hub)
For this reason I'm looking for a set of adjustable coilovers with camber adjustable top mounts and preferably fully height adjustable with a screw on lower section to change the overall length of the strut while still having preload on the spring.
To make adjustable top mounts work ill have to slightly modify the strut tower so they are capable of bolting in.

[nacha]

Apr 18, 2023 13:55:57 GMT zeberdee said:

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out .

Reckon grizz would also be interested ?

I know someone that had a very low static one a few years back , unfortunately no pics , but your right in saying you don’t see many proper low ones about .

👍

Yeh i really don't feel like ive seen any mega low ones in the uk at all, and info on any you have seen would be appreciated.

Should hopefully end up being interesting, maybe not good just interesting. 

[nacha]

so the next step is to tackle getting some coilovers on the car,
ive had a couple of different brands of cheep coilovers over the couple of years ive been driving, however as ive always run uprated springs i haven't really seen much benefit to a half decent setup.

However this time ive decided that i wouldn't mind doing a slightly more legitimate job and actually running some preload, maybe even some adjustable dampers.
I really wanted a coilovers that had both preload and height adjustment via a collar that screws on and off the bottom of the strut to extend or shorten its overall height/length.


There are options out there from the likes of HSD and BC racing, and although these would both be great options neither have camber adjustment and both are nearly £1000 new and i cant vaguely afford that.

So after examining photographs of every suspension from every car i could think of i decided that i could probably make some struts from a newer golf work.

so £150 later these are my nearly new mk7 GTD coilovers. with dampening, preload and height adjustment.

[zeberdee]

Apr 18, 2023 14:22:16 GMT nacha said:

Apr 18, 2023 13:55:57 GMT zeberdee said:

Looking forward to seeing how this pans out .

Reckon grizz would also be interested ?

I know someone that had a very low static one a few years back , unfortunately no pics , but your right in saying you don’t see many proper low ones about .

👍

Yeh i really don't feel like ive seen any mega low ones in the uk at all, and info on any you have seen would be appreciated.

Should hopefully end up being interesting, maybe not good just interesting. 

No real info i can give .

He’s pretty talented when it comes to fabrication & doesn’t really tell anyone how he’s achieved the final outcome .

I know he went down the same route as your planning on the rear & it would have been mix & match coilover parts . Plus lots of little custom touches .

[pedalcarjoe]

Apr 18, 2023 13:44:50 GMT nacha said:

Next thing to do is to try and fit them to the car to see what other work ill need to do to get them working, and gain some sort of idea of what suspension set up I will need to use to achieve the fitment i would like.






clearly ive got some work to do to get them to fit appropriately

I shall watch and read this one with interest even though the low / "hit it with a stick" has never done anything for me

but that is just me

being honest I'm more Baja style

BTW
I do like your choice of wheels

[nacha]

so installing the coilovers, i wanted to retain the pilowball top mounts for some camber adjustability, as previously stated there isnt any built into this style strut and hub combination from factory.

So i had to drill the existing strut tower to take the 3 bolt style mount on the adjustable ones.

to do this i took the top mount off and marked the strut top directly off the top mount, i did one side first then carefully measured to imitate the exact same on the other side.





The struts on a mk7 golf still use the same 50mm outer diameter on the lower part of the strut that slides into the hub, this means that there is no modification required to fit them into mk4 golf/beetle hubs.





and yes those breaks are getting changed 

[mylittletony]

Am I missing something as to why you've not used mk4 golf coilovers?

My experience of lowering that platform (a mk1 Octavia) was pretty painful - you need to change the ARB for a TT one to clear the driveshafts. I didn't and I had to raise it to not-low so it was drivable

Looking forward to seeing how you get on with it though, the plan sounds pretty ace

[nacha]

Apr 19, 2023 8:44:49 GMT mylittletony said:

Am I missing something as to why you've not used mk4 golf coilovers?

My experience of lowering that platform (a mk1 Octavia) was pretty painful - you need to change the ARB for a TT one to clear the driveshafts. I didn't and I had to raise it to not-low so it was drivable

Looking forward to seeing how you get on with it though, the plan sounds pretty ace

so a couple of reasons

    length of strut,  the car wasn't as low as i would have liked even with the standard strut fully compressed. i was looking for a strut that was as short as possible

    I wanted preload and height adjustment not just preload like you get on most cheep coilovers and some more expensive ones like KW V1s 

    I know ill need some camber adjustment, a standard strut used the standard top mount which doesn't have any adjustment. i did look briefly for just some different top mounts however quickly realized that they were most of what i spent on this whole coilover setup. These came with camber top mounts.
   
    Cost, i found these for only £150 for the whole set nearly new, with damping adjustment as well as the height and preload adjustment that i was looking for. 


    

[joem83]

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

Wonder if you could use heat to stretch the arches with them being plastic?

[nacha]

Apr 19, 2023 10:15:29 GMT joem83 said:

Looking forward to seeing this progress.

Wonder if you could use heat to stretch the arches with them being plastic?

its defiantly something I'm having to consider, ill try and get the wheels to fit as well as possible first then use that as a last ditch effort.

[nacha]

So now I've got the front coilovers on I need to get it back on the ground to see how it looks.



so this isnt ideal, obviously I'm back on stock wheels for now just because i need to figure out my tire sizes and fork out a few hundred quid for tires on the Boyd's.
Its really not as low as i was hoping, this is a problem I think i would still have run into on coilovers intended for the MK4 platform though.

After some good digging I've realized that a major part of the problem is the fact that i require the pilowball top mounts for camber, this is a problem because they have the added affect of raising the overall length of the strut roughly 45mm.

Sounds like its time for some slightly more serious fab work then to get these wheels working, and possibly some dent pulling on those sill covers.

[Dr.AK]

I like where this is going. Those Boyd wheels are RAD!

[nacha]

Apr 19, 2023 11:27:56 GMT Dr.AK said:

I like where this is going. Those Boyd wheels are RAD!

thanks mate, they should look mint when they are polished and so on

[joem83]

You can get camber adjustable topmounts for the mk4 platform. Bit of luck and they might fit on the mk7 struts

www.speedingparts.co.uk/p/chassis/car-suspension/camber-plates/vag-camber-plates/camber-plates-vw-golf-iv-3d.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqb6vhfi1_gIVEYBQBh3uAwkSEAQYAiABEgKw5fD_BwE

[nacha]

Apr 19, 2023 12:25:38 GMT joem83 said:

You can get camber adjustable topmounts for the mk4 platform. Bit of luck and they might fit on the mk7 struts

www.speedingparts.co.uk/p/chassis/car-suspension/camber-plates/vag-camber-plates/camber-plates-vw-golf-iv-3d.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqb6vhfi1_gIVEYBQBh3uAwkSEAQYAiABEgKw5fD_BwE

so my reasoning for not doing this is i think i can gain considerably more adjustment using the mk7 strut tops.