Jeff, the trick to inspecting your torsion bars would be finding a vehicle
that has them first.
I'm pretty sure all vanagons came with coil springs front and rear.

My van had a problem with upper control arm bushings.  I simply tightened
the control arm bushing bolts and the slop went away.  Hopefully you will be
so lucky...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
> Of Jeffrey R
> Sent: Saturday, March 20, 1999 3:10 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Clunk up front when starting from dead stop
>
>
> When starting from a dead stop there is a clunk which seems to be coming
> from the passenger front wheel/suspension area. A preliminary
> look both on the
> ground and jacked up did not reveal any glaring problems.
>
> I understand the torsion bar could be suspect. Is there a trick to
> investigating this. It appears fine, but I understand a crack can be
> ellusive. (I have a 2-wheel drive 83.5 Westy)
>
> TIA
> Jeff
> 83.5 Westy
> NYC
>