I purchased an 82 Westy recently and it has what seems like a common
affliction. The springs are sagging and the result is a rough ride that
bottoms out easily. It wasn't this way when it was new, so I am going to
restore the ride of this Westy and thought I would share some of what I
have learned about Vanagon suspensions. I have inspected and measured
springs from many vanagons and I found that at least 3 different lengths
were used in North American models from 80-87. This is not just from
sagging, as the springs have different numbers of coils and the
thickness of the taper varies on the rears. I find the 80-83 to be
shorter and have the most sag. The 84-85 are the longest and stiffest
and the 86+87 tend to be shorter again. I have learned this by removing
and measuring used springs only and I have not looked at factory data to
see if different part numbers are listed. I have not seen any part
numbers on the springs themselves, only dots of colored paint. I have
improved the ride of  80-83 Westys by putting springs from 84-85
passenger models in them. This also worked on an 86 GL that had 250K
miles and a poor ride. The smaller coils on the progressive rears were
completely collapsed and only the stiff coils were still active giving a
very harsh ride. The "new" springs raised the body by more than an inch
and give a better ride. A VW only junk yard near me had dozens of
vanagon rear spring sets last year and I looked at many of them to find
the longest ones I could. The longest ones were always marked as from
84-85 vanagons. Does anyone have any factory data regarding different
springs used in different years and models? An explanation of the
colored dots would be helpful also.

Mark