Greasing your clutch pedal shaft bushings.....

[b-man]

.....without taking anything apart.

I wanted to be able to grease these bushings on a regular basis, since the clutch pedal sees a lot of use on our buses.

I asked my friend Tim (he's an engineer at my workplace) who has a good machining setup in his home garage and plenty of know how to drill some grease passages in the clutch pedal shaft on my '56 panelvan.

The main passage is .140" diameter and is drilled about 3" deep into the shaft. The two smaller passages that feed the two bushings are .112" diameter and intersect the main passage pretty much in the center of each bushing. A 90-degree zerk fitting pointing straight down allows you to get the grease gun in there without interference.

Thanks a bunch for helping me out on this little project Tim, much appreciated!

Bart

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1956 Dove Blue Panel
1966 Velvet Green Single Cab
1957 L41 Black Oval Window Beetle

[62DoKaGuy]

Good idea. Not sure if absolutely necessary, depending on use, climate, terrain, etc., but definitely a good upgrade, if nothing else but for piece of mind and ease of preventetive maintenance.

I recently bought a handbrake pin with grease for the above reasons. This might have to go on the "try it" list. Thanks for the detail on measurements and pictures. Pretty cool to see something different that makes sense!
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,,Wenige Menschen denken, und doch wollen alle entscheiden.'' -der Alte Fritz

[BarryL]

[b-man]

From some of my reading here on the forums I learned that some of the earliest buses had grease fittings on the pedals. I've owned early bugs that had a grease fitting on the pedal assembly, so I wanted to try to add that feature to my bus on the clutch pedal at least since it gets a good workout.

So I checked out the clutch pedal bushings in the frame and it looked like way too much trouble to try to install grease fittings there, no easy access. You'd have to drill big holes in the frame just to get access, a no-go for me. Even if you did put the fittings there you'd have to remove the pedal pan to lube them.

Drilling a hole 3" deep into the end of the clutch pedal shaft isn't an easy task unless you have the right equipment and experience. Lucky for me I was able to get a favor from a friend who is not only a car guy but an experienced machinist with the right cutting tools and equipment in his home shop. He even supplied the grease fitting!

Now to figure out how to replace the pedal bushings. I'm waiting for my Bentley manual to arrive in the mail, hopefully the factory procedure for bushing replacement is outlined in there somewhere.
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1956 Dove Blue Panel
1966 Velvet Green Single Cab
1957 L41 Black Oval Window Beetle

[62DoKaGuy]

[ToolBox]

[b-man]

[campingbox]

I think at some point vw added a grease fitting to the frame at that point and then dropped it again. Might be ‘58-‘60 that got it? I forget exactly. Seems like a good idea.

[velvetgreen]

Pretty sure my April 60 bus has the clutch greasing nipple you are referring to

[SCZ9-1-1]

Scott at PedalWerks had put together a nice bushing replacement kit and I used it to do mine. Worked great.
http://www.pedalwerks.com/

[hazetguy]

reference pics of the factory zerk location (if so fitted)

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thebucket: I invested in hoodride, now DBD won't return my call?
hazetguy: invested?
thebucket: Yeah Haze, its where people put money into a company in hopes of a return on their money

[62DoKaGuy]

[velvetgreen]

as noted my april 60' bus has the factory grease zerk - not sure when it was discontinued