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Type 3 -- Owner's Manual



Chassis and suspension

(Image of TIII without body)

The Type III chassis.

From Neal Reed:

Mecahnical and Chassis Parts:

Depending on year, the rear suspension parts are similar to beetle parts.
Late style rear drums are different as they hace 2 extra holes which are
used to bolt the drum to the inner wheel carrier. Front discs up to '71
are as the equivalent year beetle, and later disks are the same as type
4's, but still very rare on the ground. Front rubber grommets don't exist
either. My advice is to do what i did and ring up local VW dealers and
pleed with them to hunt through their storerooms, i came up trumps with a
full set of torsion seals and a set of NOS ball joints. gearbox's and
engine's can be swapped around with beetles, the engine's will need
modifying for the rear engine mounting bar and the oil filler tube.
Gearbox's are similar, but have a higher final drive which give's the T3's
their better top end cruising ability.
The diagram below shows some of the nitty-gritties of Type III front suspension that Neal talked about. In Type Is, there were two sets of torsion leaves (one in the top tube and one in the bottom tube) that handled the main suspension duties, and an anti-sway bar was clamped underneath (after the late '50s or so). The Type III uses a separate torsion bar for each wheel, and these bars are located in the lower portion of the front beam. The top tube contains an integrated anti-sway bar, not an afterthought as in the Beetle. (I've added aftermarket bolt-on antisway bars to both the front and rear of my '71 squareback to help keep things flatter whilst spinnin' through the turns. Very important for trips to the grocery store, etc.:-) For Cal-look fans, the Type III front end can be lowered with the relatively simple "rotate them bars a few splines" technique so often applied to the rear ends of air-cooled VWs.

The unique Type III front end. (Image of T3 front suspension)



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