Lifting a Kombi
When you have a kombi and you wish to pretend it is a 4wd the first thing you need to do is get it up off the ground and get some real rubber under it. The above picture was taken of a kombi I once owned. It has some 33 x 125.5 x 15 BFG Mud terrains tyres on the rear and 235 x 75 x 15 all terrains on the front. These tyres fitted with no rubbing at all.
The rear was simply cut out to allow clearance and teh torsion bars were turned to lift it. This is the easiest way to get her up in the air. Then bigger tyre do the rest. To get the gearing back down you then use a 1600 kombi gearbox to get it near standar. The standard 2L kombi engine happily turns the wheels.
The front … well there is more options there. From what I can tell there is 3 ways to lift the front. 1st way is to simply add adjusters or coil overs . This will let you get a 215×75 x 15 tyre under it and clear. With a 33″ on the rear though it will not be high enough. It is ,however the easiest way and quick and cheap.
The 2nd way is to use plates to drop the front beam. This is done by welding some 10mm plate to the front beam and basically relocating the bolt holes to be above th ecurrent one by whatever distance you want. Then bolt it up. The brake will need to be modified as the control arm from the pedal to the booster needs to get a dog lefg in it to sit below the cross member on anything over 2″ lift. Th esteerning also needs to change.
The last way , and way in which the above kombi was lifted is by boxing out the chassis and relocating the beam same as with the plates but in a more covert way. I recommend 3mm plate for this as the factory is 2.1 this ensures it is strong enough.
Although I didn’t lift this kombi I did have to re-drill and sleeve the mounts as they were crooked and caused the kombi to crab and scrub tyres. After doing my research I have decided that this is the most effective way of lifting the front end without loosing ride quality any suspension travel. and the easiest way to keep it looking legal.
The basic theory behind it is by increasing the distance between the body and the front beam you give the front on the vehicle a good lift. This allows you to run larger tyres which means you can increase the distance from the beam to the ground. By lifting the front this way you maintain your front trailing arms factory angles. This means that the shock transfer will remain standard and you will maintain your factory ride.
