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Installing the Whiteline front bushings in the front control arm and the rear trailing arm bushings both required the stock bushings to be pressed out. To assist in installation of these bushings, we leaned on Howard Watanabe at Technosquare. Howard worked tirelessly to get the job done, and took the time to make sure that everything was done correctly without damage to the components.
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| Howard Watanabe of Technosquare presses out the stock bushings in the rear trailing arms. |
To help control our car’s body roll with little reduction in ride quality, Whiteline came to the rescue once again with its adjustable 24mm front and rear sway bars, along with heavy duty link kits and sway bar lateral locks. Made of solid spring steel with built-in three-way adjustability front and rear, these sway bars reduced body roll considerably over the stock units, and allowed us to tailor the car’s balance for the track or for the street without removing the bars. This is especially useful on the front of the car, as replacement of the sway bar involves removing the aluminum lower subframe – no VW project is complete without unnecessary removal of components for access, and this was no exception as the motor's pendulum mount was attached to the subframe. We blame ze Germans.
We used the Whiteline heavy duty link kits (part #’s KLC167 and KLC141) because they use steel ball joint ends for low-friction articulation, and their adjustable length keeps sway bar preload at bay when corner weighting or adjusting our sway bar between different settings. Using the stock links would have likely resulted in preloading the sway bar because the distance between the holes and the control arms is different, depending on which setting you use.
To complete our sway bar install, we used Whiteline’s sway bar lateral links to prevent unwanted movement during heavy cornering loads. This is important not only because it maintains spring rate consistency throughout suspension travel, but also to prevent possible contact between the sway bar and steering, chassis and suspension components. Sway bar contact can cause binding and snap oversteer or terminal understeer due to a basically unlimited spring rate. Bad news if that happens unexpectedly going hot into a corner.
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| The Whiteline rear sway bar setup. The two round clips on the bottom right are Whiteline’s sway bar lateral locks. These help keep the sway bar properly located during heavy cornering loads for consistent response and prevents contact with nearby chassis, steering and suspension components. |
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The Whiteline front sway bar setup. This bar reuses the factory brackets and is located above the stock aluminum crossmember.
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| We wrapped our sway bars in Teflon tape where the bushings mount to reduce the likelihood of squeaks. |
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| The Whiteline sway bar with lateral locks installed. Also note the 12 point internal drive, or “triple square” bolts used here. Vorking undt ze autos from ze Deutschland ist verboten wizout special tools! |
