Karl, I believe you are correct about the welding. I remember the
directions that came with the kit (and even the updated downloadable
directions from the website) said that welding the reinforcing plate was
only necessary on vehicles thsat were going to see off road use. I didn't
weld mine at the time and got that torquing of the rear left mount that
folks are talking about. I took the mount appart on Saturday and put a
bead of weld along both sides of that plate. We'll see how that helps.

Sean B.
'90 V'gon, "Happy Bus", pseudo Wolfy
'79 Yamaha 750 Special (new addition)
Torrance, CA
Join the TiiCo registry at
HTTP://www.vgonman.com

Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com> wrote on 06/10/2002
11:26:37 AM:

> Dan,
> The strap VW added between the two cradles was to reduce vibration of
the
> cradles individually, as without they have great vibration to and fro.
This
> was deleted in '83 when the cradles were made without the rubber ends.
The
> Tiico uses one of each. According to Peter (or was it someone else?),
the
> reason for this was to use up VW's supply of the rubber-ended bars. Good
> grief! With both solid cradles the vibration is greatly reduced, or in
some
> cases gone completely. AFAIK the metal thickness hasn't changed in the
> mounting points, the problem likely being that Tiico hasn't insisted
that
> the three-bolt reinforcing plate be welded to the body as VW originally
did.
>
> Karl Mullendore
> Westy Ventures
> 1987 Westfalia Syncro 1.9TD
>