Jetta rear springs

If you’ve ever seen an older style Jetta, one like ours, you may have noticed that the rear end is always riding too low. Ours rides fine with no fuel in the tank and the trunk empty, but if you fill the tank and put two skinny people in the back seat it bottoms out over the smallest of bumps. Today we fixed it. Wanda and I purchased new rear shocks (because they were worn out), rear spring seats, and new rear springs

The rear springs that we purchased were the standard heavy load aftermarket replacement springs for a 1989 Volkswagen Jetta. After installing the new springs and shocks in we noticed no difference in ride height. As you may guess I felt very discouraged, so I dug out my old spring book.

We chose a set of springs with a stiffer spring rate, but could only get springs that had tangential ends on both sides. The Jetta springs have a tangential end and a pig tail end. To solve this I used the old upper rubber spring seats on the bottom of the new spring and the new rubber spring seats on the top of the spring. The  original springs had only a rubber on the top and nothing on the bottom. Everything went together very well, and it rides level even with a full trunk and two people in the back.