The Right Tool

At the end of my last post all that was standing between me an the removal of the axle shaft was a rather large circlip. I had probably wasted about 45 minutes trying to extract it using a cheap set of circlip pliers. I am now the proud owner of  a better pair of circlip pliers - namely the Knipex 44 11 J3 (pictured below).

 It turns out these were the right tool for the job. Extracting the problematic circlip took all of fifteen seconds (and ten of those were spent getting myself into the correct position). Here is the the proof...

Next time I'll be reporting on whether or not the axle shaft could be machined for a reasonable amount of money or whether I needed to splash out for a new one.

Hitting Rewind

After many months of sitting on my thumbs I finally did some more work on the Beetle. At the time of the last posting I had failed to fit the brake drum and had decided to either replace the axle shaft (or have the existing one machined).

So axle shaft removal was the order of the day. My worry was that the wheel bearing I had previously hammered into place would be impossible to remove. I also wanted to avoid damaging the new wheel bearing (see Doing the Unstuck). Therefore the plan was to use the puller on the axle tube to remove the bearing.

The first task was to remove the three bolts that held the axle tube to the spring plate. The top two bolts came off relatively easily. However the lower bolt would not move at all. In the end I had to resort to the hack saw.

Next there are six bolts which hold the suspension tube to the gearbox. All six loosened with ease but three of them were taking their stud with them. Of course "sods law" applied and so the lowest bolt was one of these and the stud fouled the lower chassis leg which meant it could not be removed. The fix for this was to put the jack under the gearbox, remove the two massive bolts that held it in place and carefully raise the gearbox by about 1cm. Once this had been done the lowest stud had just enough room to be removed. I then spend 15 mins removing the three problematic bolts from their studs (this is done by tightening two bolts together on the stud and then using that and a couple of spanners to loosen the offending bolt) before cleaning the studs and screwing them back into the gearbox.

Next, the bearing housing and brake back plate were removed - leaving the outer spacer and bearing visible. The puller was then used (behind the bearing housing) to draw the suspension tube away from the gearbox complete with bearing and both inner and outer spacers. Once it had been drawn a few inches everything was loose enough to remove by hand.

The image above shows the suspension tube in situ after the bearing and spacers had been removed. Here's a shot of the removed suspension tube:

This is how things look after the suspension tube had been removed - only the axle shaft remains:

The final task was to remove the axle shaft which was "only" held in place by a large circlip. It can be seen more clearly in the next picture. It's a bit of a monster and I did not have a pair of pliers that were up to the job. I purchased a cheap 10" circlip plier set (Clarke CHT686) but they were not strong enough and warped under the load (they did bounce back to the correct shape though - so they may well come in handy for other, less strenuous, jobs later). Anyway, here's a picture of my current nemesis...

Back Pedalling

In my last post I said the next task was fitting the brake shoes and drums. This is a simple matter of attaching the handbrake level to the rear shoe and then joining it to the front shoe with a spacer and spring. Here's what you're left with:

This is then attached to the backplate by sliding it onto the brake cylinder (from below), and placing the bottom into the adjusters. The shoes are then secured using the retaining springs. Finally the lower return spring is attached before hooking the handbrake cable to the handbrake level. Once this has been done, your brakes should look like this:

The drum can then be offered up to the shaft and bolted in place (though the bolt cannot be tightened fully until the wheels are fitted and back on terra firma). Looks nice doesn't it:

So that's the drivers side finished. Unfortunately the passenger side didn't go quite so smoothly... The drum only went this far on using my rubber mallet.

At this point I had two choices. The first was to spend the next twenty minutes hammer the drum home with the certain knowledge that future access to the brake shoes etc was going to be very hard/impossible (see my earlier posts). My second option was to remove the offending axle shaft and either have it machined to the correct diameter or to replace it with a new one (which presumably would have the correct diameter). Being naturally cautious I have gone for the second option.

Rear Brakes (Almost) On

It has rained a lot in Scotland this year. In fact I think it has been raining more or less permanently since my last post. I know it is no excuse for not working on a garaged Beetle project... but it is the excuse I have decided to use and I will stick to it. However I am immediately going to contradict my chosen excuse when I point out that today, despite the rain, I headed out to the garage to fit the rear brakes.

On the passenger side the brake cylinder was bolted to the backplate as was the handbrake cable. Then on both sides the brake "star" adjusters were fitted. These where a much tighter fit than I expected - however with a bit of jiggling and tapping they seated correctly and still turned without the need for excessive force. The bolts were then coated with copper ease before being screwed all the way into the "star" adjusters. This is what I was left with:

I spent the rest of my two hour stint cleaning up the old spacers and handbrake arm in preparation for fitting to the new brake shoes. The next job will be to fit the new shoes and the new brake drums! The final job on the rear axle will then be to fit the new rubber gaiters and replace the oil.

Front Wings Off

Theoretically removal of the front wings is very straight forward as they are simply bolted onto the shell (via captive nuts welded to the shell). Before this can be done it is necessary to remove the front bumper, indicators and headlights.

The bumper is attached to the shell with six bolts which were very simple to remove. The indicators have captive bolts which sheared off when I attempted to loosen the nuts. Use of heat was not an option because of the rubber bush and plastic lens. On reflection I should have tried a bolt splitter (or soaked longer with oil). The headlights are attached with a single screw at the bottom of the unit. Once removed the headlight simply unclips from the wing. Here is a picture of one of the headlight units dangling:

The unit is free once the spade connectors and the black socket have been unhooked. Initially I was puzzled by the fact that the black socket is too large to fit through the hole in the wing. However the connectors can be removed from the socket by depressing the small lugs (if that's the correct term) with a small screwdriver. Once this has been done the wires fit through quite easily. It's a good idea to immediately reassemble the socket immediately.

In the run up to this job I had soaked the wing bolts in penetrating oil from inside the boot. This meant that the majority of the bolts undid quite easily. The exception being the bolt at the bottom of the A-post. On both sides the captive nut immediately started to spin. I'll need to think about how best to fix this (the drivers side should be fine as I need to patch the bottom of the A-post anyway). Here is a photograph showing what I was left with (notice that the extent of the historical repair to the shell is quite clear in this photo):

A Gallon of Purest Smetrol

This weekend my plan was to finish the rear axle. However I hadn't got round to buying a suitable sealant for the split gaiters. Therefore I decided to remove the petrol tank because it's clear that the body shell requires some welding and I don't want any explosions spoiling my day. There isn't much to removing the tank as it's held in by only four bolts. After these had been removed all that was needed was a bit of jiggling to lift the tank up. This gave access to the fuel line which was clamped  before cutting. Here's a picture of the tank after extraction.

And this is the gaping hole where it used to sit. Notice that there was a lot of work done in this area before the car was laid up. It's not very neat but unless it turns out to be full of filler it appears solid.

The front apron (if that's the correct name for the panel) is clearly for an older left hand drive car. I know this because the steering box access hole is on the wrong side and the panel also has holes for bumper brackets (whereas the bumper brackets for this model come through the wings instead).

The tank was half full of petrol that dated from about 1985. I released the clamp from the fuel line and nothing happened. After a couple of minutes a small blob of gunk appeared but there was no further movement. Therefore I opted for pouring the petrol out through the filler pipe - here's what I got.

This neither looked nor smelled like petrol. In fact it had a very odd sweet odour which caused me to name it "smetrol" (I was going to call it "shitrol" but that isn't as child friendly). Regardless it would seem that I have  a couple of gallons of premium quality smetrol - I wonder if anyone would buy it from me...

Painting...

It definitely seems premature, but I actually needed to get some painting done on the Beetle today. The old swing axle gaiters were removed in a few minutes thanks to my stanley knife. However the tubes were too rusty to make an oil proof joint with the new gaiters - see below:

Therefore I decided a bit of painting was in order. I decided to try POR-15 as it seemed to get quite a lot of praise in the various forum articles I'd read. I ordered a tester kit from Frost. This kit comes with some marine clean (a degreaser), prep and ready (an etch primer) and a small tin of POR-15. Application is pretty straightforward but a tad fiddly with the components still on the car. The picture below shows the tubes after POR-15 has been applied. It gives a very smooth finish - it feels very like glass. It's best to overcoat when it's tacky. If it becomes completely cured then it needs to be rubbed down before the next coat is applied.

Notice also that the sound deadening has been removed and the original colour of the car can be seen quite clearly. It looks like the right had engine bay panel needs replacing and also both bumper mount panels. Time to learn how to weld...

Anyway, back to the painting. After two coats of POR-15 I risked top coating with Frost chassis black. I'll see tomorrow if applying this directly to the tacky POR-15 was a mistake or not. It certainly seemed to get a good grip and there didn't appear to be any reaction - time will tell. Here's what the axle tubes looked like after their first coat - ooh shiny!