All right. quick video today. I'm gonna talk to you about the shackles. uh with shackles.

Well this is a BW bus and this is what an IRS conversion looks like from the bottom. So uh buses did not come with this IRS suspension. they had a another one that was like a swing axle thing with like reduction boxes for the to increase the height on stuff right. But a lot of people like me what we're doing is we're running these buses lowered and in order to gain uh to be able to lower them, it's just much easier to change all this system from an IRS suspension.

It's like a 70s Beetle suspension right? It's kind of a straightforward thing, but also it requires a bit of uh some custom parts because now we're converting. Oh, we're also converting the Uh four volts that came pattern that came with the high-res VW Beetle to. now that right. So there's got some custom parts in here and one of those custom parts that is required to to do that is Uh plates that come here and then these shackles that arm right Here that arm is stock Volkswagen Beetle arm right? But these shackles right here custom made to adapt those IRS trailing arms into uh this bus right here right? So I'm going to convert a few of these buses into lower them.

put it like you know, upgrade the suspension and make them electrical sort of stuff. So I think I'm on a very interesting position to be able to show you three different of of these shackles made by different people. This one right here was made by a vintage B-Dubs and I bought this a few years back, installed it in that bus there but then it would always was always giving me problems. What ended up happening was this was kind of a bit too too thin the metal in here and it only has one one uh position where you can uh attach it right? Oh this is hinge so what you do is you put it in here and then it hinges and it's supposed to wrap around that torsion housing and with one bolt in here.

But what was happening is that these were bending. see how thin they are. They're like 3 16 of an inch and there's no supports. uh and so no matter how much I tighten that Bolt the single bolt these would end up moving.

it would throw my Camber uh or yeah I think it was the camber on the back end of the bus all over the place and it was riding like crap and so I struggled, struggle and struggle until finally I just replaced it with Wagon Sweat. This is the current one and this was much beefier. You see there's uh, about a quarter inch steel and they have these bolts and it's got two bolts and these are gusseted here so that it can. it doesn't Flex as much and so as as a result of that you're able to really crank on those things in there and really clamp it and it won't move.

So it hasn't moved since then now. apparently. um, vintage. B-Dubs Is iterating their design because this is no longer what they ship and in fact I don't even know what they ship now because this is like I don't know.

Four years ago, four years old or something and then I would say two years ago I ordered another kit and that came with this new design. So for some reason they just said screw that hinge. let's just make a two-piece thing And there it is. See that now it's two pieces and now they're gusseted.

Well, they're not gusseted, they're just bent well. I Guess yeah, it's the same thing. so they are because and now you're able to. This is much smaller.

So I think what it when you put it in there, there's a gap between those and you're able to clamp it with much bigger force and you should be able to, then, um, achieve enough pressure to for it to stay like that. Um, so they've changed it a little bit now. everything's about it seems like quarter inch other than these ones. uh, which seems like 3 16 inch? Yeah, this design seems much better I haven't tried it I tried this one.

that one didn't work and then these are ones I'm going to put on my new suspension. so I thought everyone can compare these because you don't have them. But since I have all three of these systems in here I Thought: I'll make a video and I'll show them to you guys side by side. Uh I don't know if I don't know if this is regular paint of or if made actually sends these to be powder coated but this has a nice sheen on it where this one is just flat black.

Um, not really that important unless you're building like a show car or something like that. So there you go. So anyways, just a quick video suspension. Talk suspension Uh IRS suspension for the back of this Volkswagens Buses.