[qwain]

My wife owns a 2001 Beetle, 1.8 Turbo engine.

Last month she was rear ended at a stoplight; we took the car to a body shop and the suspensions, the tires and the rear axle needed to be replaced.

When I got the car back, the car is evidently leaning foward, it looks also a bit ridiculous. Please see attached picture, it is self explanatory.

I measured the gap between the tire and the fender, in the front is less than 3 inches, in the back more than 5.

I called the body shop, they told me they had to change springs and the new springs will settle down and shorten after some time.

I believe the spring might lose some lenght, but 2 inches seems a lot to me.

Do you think the body shop is right or they are just fooling with me? Maybe they installed wrong spings?

I checked the tires, they are the same size for font and back.

Thanks

 

[SMG]

Haha nope aftermarket springs (around here anyway) ride crazy high so this is just a result of only replacing the two rear coil springs. What I'd recommend is calling around to junkyards for used Golf, Jetta or New Beetle rear springs and have those swapped in. It's a very easy job, it would only take a few minutes on a hoist.

Flip the new springs as Golf / Jetta springs on Craigslist or something.

 

[eister]

LOL..looks old skool 70's muscle car

 

[janitz]

Your old springs were in bad shape, your new are new.

I did my front and rear suspension a year and a half ago and my front has just over 3 inches of clearance from the tire to the fender, and my rear has 4 inches. Both front and back rode quite a bit higher when new and it looked somewhat like your vehicle except that my front was also higher up.

 

[ziptron]

The biggest issue with the front end is the wear on the upper strut bushing.
As the rubber crushes down over time the front end "sinks" as the strut rises up in bearing.
Throw that in with the springs getting lower and the front drops even more.
If they did nothing in the front, all new stuff in the rear would produce the results you show.
You are correct, the rear won’t drop 2", you need to do the Front end to get it back relatively straight.