A little bit lower…

I think a Karmann Ghia looks best when the front of the car is lower just a little. Looking at other KGs, lowering the front end about an inch improves the appearance of the car. To my eye this compensates for the reality that the front wheels are cut higher than the rear wheel wells by about an inch. I considered various options for lowering the front end and decided on using an adjustable beam. I thought about installing drop spindles but that meant lowering the front end by at least two inches…more than I wanted and would likely result in the tires rubbing on the wheel wells. The other advantage of the adjustable beam is the car can be lowered further or returned to stock height without issue.

I purchased the adjustable beam from MOFOCO since they offered a beam that starts at the stock height. I worked with Broad Street Automotive/Westy Werks to do the installation. We quickly recognized that other than welding in the adjusters, MOFOCO does not rebuild other parts of the beam. Before installing the new beam I had new ball joints and torsion bar seals installed. I also got a new sway bar installation kit to ensure bushings were fresh. The tie rod ends and steering dampener all looked relatively new so there were no changes there. Pulling the original beam gave me a chance to take a closer look at the front end of the floor pan and found it rust free with no signs of accident related damage.

Here are the before and after photographs as I iterated to the height I wanted. If you look at the relation between the front finder and the tire you can see the differences. I found the first setting a bit too much. With the final setting the relation between the wheel well and tires appear more balanced front to back.