to put it dead bluntly, because it's friday night and i want to watch the telly with mrs councillor (ho hum) imagine looking at your bus side-on. you have two arms, one above the other, they pivot at one end where they go into the beam, and at the other end where they are attached to the spindle by a balljoint. this is literally a ball and socket joint, which is designed to operate within a set of angles which it would normally encounter going up bumps and down pot-holes with the suspension set as it left the factory, back in the day when these things were just designed and then driven as they left hannover. and then a bit of extra, to allow for extra big bumps and extra deep pot-holes. and then a bit more what with them being german and all that.
the angle these arms start at in relation to the horizontal is governed by a pair of bolts, screws, call them what you want, in the middle of each tube. by cutting either side of this and rotating the centre section, you change the angle of the arms, and either raise or lower it depending which way you turn it.
had the p.o. had adjusters welded in you wouldn't be in this 'mess' but that's by the by.
because it's been turned and welded you have no adjustment. slight problem.
because your centre section has been turned so far, yes it's made for a low ride, but you're taking the balljoints out of the parameters for which they've been designed, and this
will lead to increased wear, a lot of clunking and in the worst case failure, but this is a pretty rare occurrence (i.e. i've never heard of it happening (in the real world not what some bloke at some club reckoned on the internet once))
dropped spindles are a different thing altogether... again being quick all a welded bus spindle is is the bit where the wheel bolts on being chopped off, moved up a couple of inches and welded back on again... the bus is now 2 inches lower still but it doesn't change the angle your trailing arms or indeed your balljoints are operating at.
get it ?
if you had adjusters you could theoretically
raise it a couple of inches to lessen the extreme trailing arm angle and the stresses on your balljoints, then add the dropped spindles to bring it back down to the same height, but you can't do that because you don't have that adjustability.
i can't advise you further i'm afraid... i'm being whistled :roll: plus i'm a thinker and a typer rather than a do-er so it seems... i've been working on my interpretation of a slammed bus for 3 years now... never gonna finish it, but i hope the above is of some use to you.
a ridiculous amount of crap is spouted about low buses on the internet; bear that in mind and you'll be alright
freddie said:
T2d cut and turned my beam
