306/xsara Estate Rear Beam

[Sobaru' 0]

I would very much appreciate if you could help me with a few answers......so I have a 1.6 gti whit drum brakes and I want to upgrade to disc setup,(because I’ll be using 307 brakes on the front) but where I live it's impossible to find a 1.9 GTI rear beam, so I tougth I would change the trailing arms from the 1.6 whit trailing arms from a 306 HDI estate beam from 2002 and use the TB and ARB by cutting them to length and respline them. What do you guys think, will the TA from the 306 fit the 1.6 beam? How is the toe and the camber on the estate beam compared to the hatch beam? And please tell me what other things should I be aware of before buying and attempting this conversion.

 

Oliver

[j_turnell 136 3 Cars]

This should give you around 1.20 camber and somewhere around 30mins of toe in, which is all beneficial tbh. The T.Arms will fit fine with your exisiting 1.6 beam tube, however there isnt enough metal on the torsion bars to machine them down so they wont be of any use. Not sure what width arb the HDi runs, possibly 24mm, which can be cut down and resplined, but it may well be smaller in diameter.

 

You can use a 24mm arb off a 106 gti which is almost a direct replacement, a search on the topic will explain whats needed.

[petert 585]

I'm not sure about the Estate but the HDi sedan has a 21mm ARB. You can shorten it but you may as well just keep the ARB arms (same size spline as GTi6) and get a bigger ARB made. Swapping the trailing arms is very straight forward and as said, you get beneficial changes in geometry as well as disc brakes!

Edited May 26, 2011 by petert