Moving on to the spring plates, these were powder-coated at the place across the street from TRE, it's called Ajax and they did a nice job.
These each have a bit of a cut on them from where they were rubbing on the spring plate covers due to suspension sag. (Caused by the worn-out bushings). I put new bushings in and we simply switched them right/left to put the cut on the bottom instead of the top. They are identical parts L/R and hopefully the bushings will never be that neglected again so it won't rub anyways. The cuts:
These get re-installed on the T-bars with a liberal dose of grease on the splines in consideration of the next guy who has the remove them someday. An incline-o-meter is used to get the correct angle. I am using the factory spec rather than the previous measurement since everything was of course worn and shot. The car will obviously get a proper 4-wheel alignment once put back together.
The Germans were pretty clever in terms of making the T-bars adjustable. You simply turn one end one click (spline) in one direction and the other end one click in the other direction for one (1) increment of adjustment. I remember being a kid with a VW bus and not understanding this, it's amazing what a shop manual can do for you.
