test in a replacable spot

I've taken the right rear brake plate off my car to use it as a test for the rust treatment.



It had to be disconnected from the emergency brake cable



I painted the plate with several coats and I'll try fitting it tomorrow when it's dry.

a different color rust

I'm going to try a different type of rust treatment this time:



So I took the other rear (rusty) brake drum



and painted it


The important thing here is that even though I was very careful to paint the inside of the lug bolt holes, you can see the lug bolt still threads into the drum. I think that means that I can paint the brake plates without having to worry that it's going to mess up the fit of any of the parts.

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.

keeping on pegging away

The weather this weekend is going to be really horrid and cold, so I took the chance to work on my beetle this evening. While I was cleaning I ran into the box where I keep the paint and surface stuff. I decided to try a couple out.

First of all, I've been working recently to get mores tuff up on the pegboard on the wall. Here's what it looks like today


and one blurry photo of when I put the workbench in almost two years ago



I tried the chrome polish and rust remover


It is applied more or less like car wax. The change wasn't as dramatic as I would have expected, but it definitely made it brighter. This is the front left headlight shroud before using the polish,


and after



The thing I thought about most was rust. The brake backing plate on the front left looks like it has some penetration rust, so I thought I'd buy a couple of new ones. I can't find them anywhere. So I'll want to be preserving the ones I have very carefully. First I took the backing plate off the left front spindle:




Here you can really see the pockets of rust:



I bought some stuff to treat rust that dissolves it into a surface that you can then paint. So I'm trying it out on the right rear brake drum, which has been decomissioned:


Here's the drum after applying the rust remover: It'll be interesting to see what it looks like tomorrow.



Oh, and as soon as I'm done messing about with brake plates, I'll be installing new brake slave cylinders: