did something right

While waiting for the front left wheel bearings on my beetle to dry, I cleaned the garage. In its 6-months-plus convolescence, things have become stacked around and under it:



Afterwards, much better:




You'll notice here that the right rear tire is on. Whoo!

Seeing as I more or less killed the already weakened battery earlier in the spring, I bought a new one yesterday, and topped off its charge:


in preparation for the big start.

As of this morning, the left front bearings and drum are ready to install:



Yesterday I adjusted the back brake shoes, and then I checked the emergency brake. I'm pleased to report that it's quite a bit tighter than it was before, which means that i did the adjustment roughly correctly and I didn't screw up anything in the emergency brake assembly.

It looks like rain today, so I probably won't be starting the engine until tomorrow. That'll give me the evening to get the car on its wheels and get the battery installed and all.

3 for 4

Three of four brake drums back on my beetle as of last night.

Top half of the front right brake assembly.



The same photo with some markings on the spindle. The red dots are where the inner seal rides. The three green dots show where the inner bearing sits, and the two green dots farther out are where the outer bearing rides.



Bottom half of the brake assembly.



I'm going to outline the procedure I used to install the right front brake drum. The procedure I've seen is to fill the reservoir with grease before putting it on the spindle, but that means you have to hold the grease in while you install it. I tried it a slightly different way here and it seems to have worked reasonably well.

A view down into the middle of the brake drum. The green dots show the outer race of the inner bearing, which is pressed into the drum. The red dots at the bottom show the outer race of the outer bearing. Between the two bearings, the hollow in the drum forms a grease reservoir, marked by the blue dot.



Here's the rest (the rollers, cage, and inner race) of the inner bearing in place to show where it goes.



The outer roller/inner race assembly just to remind you what they look like.



The drum, with some grease squeezed into the inner part of the reservoir with the cake decorator.



Greased rollers in place.



Just for good measure, I put some extra grease in on top of the roller assembly.



And the inner seal in place. This clamps around the fattest part of the spindle at its base and prevents too much grease from leaking around the base of the spindle and contaminating the brakes.



So this is the part I did differently. With the inner bearing and seal in place, and the reservoir only partially filled with grease, I put the drum in place, without the outer bearing. I'm holding it in place with my non-camera hand, so it's kind of wobbly. But I can use the cake decorator to inject more grease in from the outside end of the hub and fill the reservoir the rest of the way up with grease before putting the outer bearing in.



Filled and read for the outer bearing.



Outer bearing in (forgot to get a photo) and pressure washer in.



This pinch nut holds the whole thing in place.



Grease cap, and the right front is ready to go!

close, please

Continuing to close in to having my beetle on its tires.

Last night, I installed both rear brake drums, for real this time. Hopefully that's the last I'll see of the inside of those drums for quite some time.

Just in case I need to check how something was set up, I took some photos of the brake assembly just before putting the drums on. Here's the right rear brake assembly, top and bottom:





And the drum on the left rear, including the axle nut and the cotter pin:


An interesting optical effect is that the rusty fingerprints you see in the photo are all but invisible to the eye.

rollin, rollin, rollin...

When we last left our hero, he was working on the wheel bearings and brakes in his Volkswagenbeetle. The brakes have had a bit of a setback, but the bearings are coming along swimmingly.

Here is how the car sat while I went to Scotland, having just started dis-assembling the left rear wheel bearing assembly:



This time, the parts came out of the bearing assembly much more easily,


and they all got soaked in mineral spirits


over night.

The outer, roller bearing on the left rear of the car is a different type than the ones I've seen before. The rollers, instead of being held by a metal cage, are held in place by a plastic-like retainer. The retainer's job is just to keep the rollers from hitting each other, so it's soft enough that you can bend it a pull the rollers out, as seen here:


I guess maybe this is the original style that came with the car?

One of the things that put the brakes on the list of things to maintain/repair when I got the car is that most of the brake adjusting stars were stuck. As it turns out, 6 of them were fairly cruddy, and the two remaining were rusted solid. Here are all the adjusters that will go back in the car, about ready to get an overnight soaking. There are six orgininals and two new adjusters (the two shiny brass-colored knobs are new ones).

plate ran away with the ring

The first thing I did in this project was to remove the drive shaft from the right rear wheel. For the first time since then, I took the protective bad off and got ready to hook it back up to the stub axle.



Here's the hardware for re-attachment. Since the triple-square bolts are so fiddly, particularly when dirty, I'm going to just put in all new bolts. Of the three pressure plates, one is new because of the grinding I did on the old one to try to get the stripped bolt out.



I stuck the drum on the stub axle to provide a way to keep the axle from turning...



As I torqued the bolts on that hold the drive shaft to the axle.



Next comes the brake plate, which I've painted a groovy flat black, as outlined recently.

I attached the emergency brake cable to the brake plate, and then discovered that with the brake cable attached, it won't fit over the stub axle when it's in place.


After all the trouble with getting the axle bolts out, there was no way I was going to take it back off, so I disconnected the brake cable, installed the plate, then re-atached the cable.



The bearing carrier installed with the outer seal in place. This is a good illustration of the color change in the brake plate. Before cleaing and painting, the plate was about the color of the carrier.



The outer spacer, which has a chamfer on one outer edge; the one that goes against the inner race of the ball bearing.



Brake plate, bearing carrier, drive shaft, and outer spacer installed (its the shiny thing in the middle of the seal). I've also installed the brake hard line that feeds the slave cylinder; the top is visible in the hole in the brake plate with the cylinder mounts.

reassemble

Ready to start re-assembling the bearing/axle assembly on the right rear of the beetle. From left to right, the spacer sleeve that goes between two bearings, the stub axle, the inner spacer, and the tube of grease.



The inner spacer has a chamfer on the inner edge that goes against the end of the stub axle.



Here's the inner spacer on the axle, ready to go into the axle assembly. The seal that I installed yesterday presses against the outer edge of the spacer, keeping the grease from leaking out in that direction.



The stub axle in place. The ball bearing is enough to hold it in position.



The cavity between where ball bearing is (you can sort of see it at the back, infused with red grease) and where the roller bearing will go. The spacer sleeve is around the axle.



The really narrow nozzle was really slow, so I put on a much bigger nozzle.



With the bigger nozzle, the grease squishes in quite readily.






The space is well enough packed that grease squishes out around the rollers in the roller bearing when it's installed.



I might get that wheel on in the next couple of days.

hand operated air cooled seal installer

I spent a while trying to install the inner seal on the right rear of my beetle yesterday, but I couldn't get it to go into its seat. It's easy to get it to go slightly in:


but then when I try to tap around the edge, the opposite part pops out and you're back to square one.

So I got a C-clamp big enough to squeeze the seal against the bearing housing, using two two-by-fours as flat surfaces:


This arrangement pushed the seal into its seat and got it flush with the outer surface


but that's not anywhere nearly all the way in. I need something about the diameter of the seal to push it in deeper.

As it turns out, the bearings are the same diameter. Here's the outer part of a roller bearing that I used to be just as big as the seal but no bigger


So I set up the squeezing mechanism with the bearing pushing on the seal and the clamp providing the squeezing force.



And only the second evening I worked on it, the seal is in!

one brick

At long last, all the bearing parts for the right side of my beetle are clean and ready to install (except the brake plates; I'll need to figure those out next).

The axle bearing chamber in the diagonal arm before cleaning out the old grease.



After cleaning it out



Ball bearing clean and ready to be greased



Cake decorator loaded up with wheel bearing grease to lubricate the bearings.



Which is a great idea...except that this cake decorating bag split open with almost no pressure. Argh!



The ball bearing after I greased it the old-fashioned way.



Driving the ball bearing into place



All the way in:



Don't forget the securing circlip:



Cake decorator grease dispenser take two. Hopefully this one is stronger. I'm using the tip from take one, because I think the long nozzle will be ideal for getting grease into the reservoir in the diagonal arm.

clean before dirty

That rust stuff is great! Here's what the brake drum looks like after having the rust dissolver on it over night:



HOWEVER...I'm going to need to be a little careful when applying it to parts that have a precise fit. Looking at the back side of the brake drum, some of the stuff dripped through the bolt hole:


and now the lug bolt won't go into the hole. Since the brake plates have at least a couple precision fit surfaces, I need to be very careful about putting that stuff on them.

I thoroughly cleaned all the wheel parts for the right side of the car tonight, and they're drying in front of a fan.


With a little luck, I'll be able to have the wheels on the right side of the car tomorrow. That will depend on the temperature and whether it's miserable to work in the garage.

Why did I buy a cake decorating kit at the store today?


Tune in tomorrow and find out.

pieces, parts

All the brake cylinders are off the beetle now and all four hoses have been replaced by steel braid jacketed lines.


The old master cylinder is on the left. On the right are the four slave cylinders. The front cylinders were pretty ratty and a little rusty.

Here's the right front wheel assembly with the slave cylinder removed:


The new brake hose can be seen in the background.

I'm going to have to stop avoiding working on the bearings soon, so I can get the car on its wheels.

but what about the brakes?

When we last heard from our hero, he was working on wiring and batteries and stuff, and not on the brakes which is why the freaking car is up in the air in the first place. I did get a bunch done this weekend, I just hadn't had time to edit the photos.

So I got two "bubble-flared" brake lines bent and installed in the front and the back, and I Saturday I made a section to bridge them in the middle of the car, right below the driver's door. I got the length matched pretty well:



I'll try give you an idea of where the line runs. Here's the master cylinder as it stands now:


I've indicated the brake line that I installed with a red arrow over on the right. This line goes over to the left side of the car and runs down the place where the heater channel is, right below the driver's door. I've also circled the hole in the body where the stock rear brake line goes into the body and around the pedal cluster.

Now we're looking into the fender well where the wheel normally sits.


You can see the line bend here to follow the body shape. I've highlighted the two flare unions where the patch piece is installed.

Now near the rear of the car


the line comes from the left, goes through the jack point, then bends inwards toward the center of the car and then bends up once it clears the torsion tube (in the brightened area at the right of the photo).

A slightly difference view as last time, this one shows where the brake line curves around the torsion tube.


The arrow points to the brake line "T" where the front-to-back line is split to go to the rear brake slave cylinders.

After getting the brake line run, I padded it against the metal of the car and attached it with cable ties. Here's one of the joins padded with a piece of fuel hose and tied on with a cable tie (my motto: "better living though cable ties").



The brake line dressed where it goes through the jack point:



The back of the front fender well again, with padding so the line doesn't rub on the metal of the body.



Looking from the back of the car to toward the front.


You can see the two unions in the brake line where the bridge section goes. I circled the left front wheel spindle for perspective.

Remember, running a new brake line in a "custom" location was because I mis-diagnosed where the leak in the brake system was, thinking it was in the front-to-rear brake line, when it turns out the leak was in the master cylinder. And one of these days, I need to get back to the wheel bearings so I can drive the car again. Argh.

moving toward stopping

Catching up with what I've done to my car:

Behind the pedal cluster before removing the old brake cylinder. The accelerator is at the top of the photo; the threaded rod goes into the back of the master cylinder.



Before I discovered the leak in the master cylinder, I thought the main front-to-back brake line was the leak, so I ended up cutting it to remove it. So now I need to manufacture a new brake line to replace it. The ends of the original line are bubbled flared, I can't buy a tool to bubble flare brake line, but I discovered that the other auto parts store in town sells brake line sections with bubble flared ends:





Here's one of the bubble flared lines that I've bent and is ready to install:



So, the current state is that the new master cylinder is in and I'm starting to put the brake system back together again. Hopefully more progress on Saturday.

that's not supposed to squish

I spent the afternoon and evening working on replacing the beetle's master brake cylinder and preparing a new rear brake circuit. I'm way too tired for a full entry, but here's the revelation of the day:

I found the leak in my brake system. It was leaking out the back of the master brake cylinder:


Note: both brake circuits have been drained and open to the air. The rubber boot on the back of the old master cylinder was completely full of brake fluid. It's not supposed to be; it's a dust cover.

a little education

One of the very valuable things I learning in my first skim through the Bob Hoover sermon book is what the flare on the ends of the brake lines is called. I mentioned recently that the brake lines that I bought at the parts store were double-flared, but they were different than the lines in my beetle.

Well, hoover's sermons told me what I didn't know, which is what the VW's lines are called--they're called "bubble flared" lines. After I knew the name for them, I found this great page on "Tom's VW" with photos and explanations.

So now I know what to ask for at the parts store, which should get me the rest of the way. Off to shop.