On Apr 16, 1:50 am, "chicoik595" <u33377@uwe> wrote:
> I'm re-building an old VW sandrail and am starting at the front end. It had
> been sitting for many, many years so all the rubber was toast. Things are
> going ok so far but I can't figure out how to pull the front torsion arms as
> they are tensioned by the spring in the beam. The bump stop won't allow the
> torsion arm to go down far enough to release the pressure and let me pull it
> out of the beam. The local VW shop won't give me any advice because they
> want me to just give up and give it to them to do and pay 100/hour for (plus
> parts). Is there a trick to getting these torsion arms out or what? I don't
> want to cut off the bump stops, but I had thought about it. After replacing
> the gaskets I would give the front end a bit more clearance by welding the
> bump stops back on at a lower angle allowing the front end to sit higher, as
> long as it didn't push the tie rods at all against the frame.... Help!

It has been a while but did mine with the beam off the frame so maybe
that's different if your beam is still on.
Obviously first took all the other mess off (sway bars, ball joints,
etc).

There's this Allan bolt on the arm you have to loosen. Mine was
covered in gunk and wasn't even recognizable as a bolt.
After that bolt was loosened, the arms pulled out after some
persuading.

I don't remember there being much of a trick to it but it has been
about two years now..

If you take out the torsion springs, I've read someplace it is a good
idea to keep them in the same order.
I had to swap them into a new beam so tied mine up with zip ties.