by Xelmon Sat Sep 12, 2015 1:02 pm
Hoooyyy I've seen a conversion or two. I would honestly advise against conversion job, unless you are dead-set on it and willing to do a lot of testing and fabrication.
Still, newer solutions include torsion spring, MacPhearson, and double wish-bone.
I can't imagine how would effectively do torsion springs. At that point you would either go with MP or double wish-bone suspensions. Difference between them is MP deletes the upper wish-bone, which makes it lighter and less complex, at the cost of long-term durability.
Your No 1 hurdle is building strut towers, as there is only thin sheet metal in the wheel well. This would mean that you would have to build a box-beam tower and suspension attachment points, which is lots of cutting, welding, and fabrication.
Your No 2 hurdle that you'd have to figure out before that is geometry of your suspension. Do it incorrectly and due to caster your wheels chamber could be positive, which is pretty bad as that reduces your tire-patch. Your van also squats a lot more with independent front suspension, so you'd also have to account for that too.
Your No 3 hurdle is the spindle, which you would have to adapt from somewhere, by my guess a K5 or as such. However off hand I really don't know how difficult that would be.
All of this that I described is basically advanced fabbing and entry / mid-level automotive engineering so that you would end up with a stable vehicle.
