The chassis that we bought came with swing axel, which we were ok with, but having thought it all through, we have decided to convert to Independent Rear Suspension (IRS). The main reason being, without knowing the final weight over the rear wheels (i.e. batteries, AC motor, DCDC unit, etc.) we could end up with really bad camber on the wheels.
So, we have managed to track down a pair of rear trailing arms from a 1970’s 1302/03 Beetle on eBay (left photo below).
After a lot of effort, we managed to take the old drums off (middle photo), which had become ceased to the pads. We ended up cutting through the drum and stub axel and with a lot of ‘persuasion’ managed to dis-assemble the brakes, as shown in the photo below.
These were sent off to the local powder coater to sandblast and powder coat, with the finished result looking amazing (right hand photo)
The next job is to re-assemble the new stub axel, wheel bearings, and brake drums.