THE PROBLEM:

    When front wheel drive VW's are lowered excessively, the angle of the lower control arms and tie rods go from a slight angle down (towards the wheel) to the opposite as seen in this picture.  This is a picture of my '82 Caddy with an approximate 2-1/2" drop.  With the control arms & tie rods pointing up like this, the handling is negatively effected because of changes to the roll center and bump-steer problems (there are others that know far more about this stuff than me, I just know I didn't like how it felt).

THE SOLUTION:

    I designed these balljoint extenders and tapered tie rod mounting sleeves.   I had a local machinist make this stuff for me for $250.

    I had actually drawn these pieces in Microsoft Visio with a taper down to the shaft instead of the steps you see here.  That would be a better design since stress cracks are more likely to develop at sharp angles.  These should be made with 4140 or equivalent steel (I'm told).  I wondered about heat-treating these but deemed it unnecessary and impractical (still seems like a good idea though).

    These have been in my truck for over a year and 18,000+ miles with no problems.  They lower the control arms 2" and fit inside my 15" wheels with some room to spare.

     One of the balljoint extenders broke shortly after writing this. Very luckily for me, it broke while I was barely moving. It broke right at the first step (pictures at bottom).

    I have just acquired a set of Corrado brakes so I will be selling my whole setup.  I will be making another setup to fit the Corrado knuckles and plan on making an extra set of the balljoint extenders to fit these A1 knuckles.  This time I will be machining the pieces and they will be made of 4140 steel with the proper radiuses, and heat treating.  I will be selling these parts with the machined steering knuckles, drilled & vented Jetta rotors, and EBC green pads.  Email me if you're interested.

    I then drilled out the tie rod hole in the steering knuckle from the bottom to match the OD of the tapered sleeves.  I left a .100" shoulder for the tapered sleeves to bottom out on.  The angle of the taper forces it against the shoulder which is supported on the other side by the tie rod nut, positively locating the sleeve.

    The tapered hole was .480" on one side and .550" on the other (these numbers are based on the numbers I have in my drawings for the sleeves I had machined but they should be very close). After drilling, the holes are about .650" up to the shoulder which was the .550" end of the hole.

    You can see the split sleeve installed in the hole here.  I made the sleeves as thin as possible (.050" at the large end of the taper pictured here) to assure that plenty of material would be left on the knuckle. The sleeves are the same length as the original holes so that resting on the shoulders, they stick out of the holes about .100".  I wanted to provide the same area of support for the tie rod ends.  
    Some material had to be removed from the rotor shield to clear the new extenders.

     As you can see, the control arm and tie rod now point down slightly down as they do with the stock setup.
    The handling improved quite a bit more than I thought it would.  It feels more planted and responsive.  It seems like it used to take a second to "set" after turn-in & now it's just there (sorry for my lame description but all of my real roadracing experience is of the two-wheeled variety).  

    
    Below are the drawings I made.  The drawings are a little different than what you see in the picture but the critical measurements are unchanged.  
Broken Extender

      You can see from the weathered area's on each side of the silver parts that there was a crack there for a long time before it finally broke.  Even within the silver area you can see the raised portion that was the only area actually connected when it finally went.

    If you are driving around on extenders with a step machined into them like this, I would remove them and get a proper radius machined in, inspect them for hairline cracks, and get them heat treated.  I got extremely lucky.  With the cornering

speeds I tend to carry, it should have turned out much worse.  It broke while I was literally moving at walking speed, leaving a driveway.  Unbelievably lucky!  All that night during my "Glad To Be Alive" party, I had a recurring vision of me sliding into the oncoming lane with a Ford Explorer grill coming at me (it was the drivers side that broke).

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