69 bay bus "Weld Busler"

[Yarkle]

So I watched a youtube video on how to reload a grease gun, and got the other side greased up. (see the last post on page 5 if you missed that comedy!)

I even got these fancy covers for the zerks!

so then I had the idea of going down and getting the front drums checked to see if i should reuse them..Now i had just kind of set them on the spindles and loosely put the front wheels to get them greased. So when i went to remove them.... One side came off really easily, the other one i had to fight to get off.

So i was like, well, Ok, not that big of a deal, ill just have to adjust it to remove. and then i discovered this:

EDIT: THanks Lil-Jinx!

its a weird 68 and 69 (up to a certain chassis #) thing. its on page 24 of the brake part of the bentley and i missed it when i was reading it. (I did check it first, i promise!) its right under the picture.

You do have to adjust it though the front of the drum

i will have to eyeball those bleeders, cuz they do look kind of odd

I always thought bleeders were supposed to be on top to get the air bubbles out?
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[vwwestyman]

You just have to flip the Bus upside down to bleed the front brakes.

JK.

I wonder if it would be as simple as undoing those 4 bolts and remounting it.

Was this an effort to make a right side brake setup fit on the left? (Or vice-versa)
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Dave Cook

President, Wild Westerner Club

1978 Champagne Edition Westy, repowered to '97 Jetta TDI
1973 Wild Westerner
My Thing

[Yarkle]

Lil-Jinx..Yep, you hit the nail on the head. I was looking at the picture right above that little blurb about the holes in the drum and thats what got me mixed up., Ill have to double check those bleeders though.

Im glad you figured it out before I tried to disassemble it and then got myself in an even deeper mess.
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[lil-jinx]

I don't think they can be put on upside down and there are adjusters on both cylinders,check your drum you may have to adjust them thru a hole in the drum.Now I have to check the bentley to see if I guessed right,maybe I should have checked first.They look the same as the bentley book,and it says 71 down as holes in drum for adjustment.
I can see how you missed it,I had to go thru the pages a few times before I saw it,guess we need to stop reading and start looking at pictures,lol
Is that the top bleeder I see tucked in front of the knuckle sort of behind the ball joint nut.
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1974 Bay Westfalia. she likes to be called Ethel.
1968 Dune Buggy
1974 parts bus
A smart man learns from his mistakes,a very smart man learns from other's mistakes.

[Yarkle]

Hmmm..Ok, now im still confused. I looked at some pics (generously loaned from and ad by TN Treasure THANKS MAN!) and ive got a few questions on the front brakes ..the bentley is "fuzzy" on how to do it.

There is only ONE bleeder, on the lower cylinder. I guess you just bleed it as normal, but how does air get to the top like on other bleeders? or do i just accept, "it just works that way?"

likewise, there are TWO star adjusters, one on each cylinder

but only one hole in the drum

So do you just adjust one of the cylinders, or do you adjust one and somehow rotate the drum and adjust the other? if you just adjust one cylinder, which one, top or bottom? (im guessing theres some weird synchronicity between them that when you adjust one the other somehow follows suit?)
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[airschooled]

Maaaannnn why didn't you ask me all these '69 questions when I was theerreee duuuuude??

So on a 68-70 Type 2, there is one hole in the drum and one star per wheel cylinder. The wheel has to be off the ground to adjust the brakes anyway, so yes, you will rotate the wheel between adjusting the stars through the outside of the drum. The holes in the backing plate are only to inspect the shoe thickness, and they should each have a rubber plug so less moisture gets inside.

Accept the bleeding style. The flow of fluid during bleeding will take the air bubbles with it, even though the bleeder is lower than some cars.

Let us think about the procedure for front vs. rear drum brakes:

Each front shoe has its own hydraulic cylinder and adjustment. On the rears, the two shoes share a hydraulic cylinder. So in the rear, it is important to do one or two clicks at a time on each star, to avoid adjusting one shoe out more than another. In the front, can we utilize the adjuster independence to just do one at a time? Why or why not?

Robbie
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[lil-jinx]

Bus depot shows the same part for both upper and lower wheel cylinders,so there should be a port to install a bleeder in the upper cylinder,unless there is something in way to prevent you from putting one in.
adjust the brake buy turning both adjusters in all the way,put the drum on then turn the adjusters out a little at a time first one then the other count the number of clicks each time,say 5 clicks top then 5 clicks bottom keep doing this till the drum won't turn, then back off the adjuster a click or 2 till the drum turns,then tighten the other adjuster till the drum stops then back it off as you did the first adjuster.
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1974 Bay Westfalia. she likes to be called Ethel.
1968 Dune Buggy
1974 parts bus
A smart man learns from his mistakes,a very smart man learns from other's mistakes.

[Yarkle]

Robbie: Do you know how many times I ask myself that!?!? Its part of that "rocket induced cognitive deficits" I regularly experience.

"Out of sight, out of mind" I didnt have the drums off then so i didnt really think about it.

So Caleb is back from School for a few days, so we started in on trying to get the front end reassembled.

Steering Damper: I did a bit from what Robbie and Lil-jinx each suggested. Put a washer to back up the serrated one, then tried to find a sweet spot where it was the least "skewed?" (i cant think of the word i want to use). SO it looks better, and once the wheels are on the ground, ill tighten it down.

Front wheels/brakes, etc: Now that i have my mind wrapped around how the dual wheel cylinders work, we started in on that.

The PO had redone some stuff, e.g he put new wheel cylinners on, but reused the old shoes, and painted th eoutside of the backign plates, but not the inside.

So it went from this:

to this...Bus hasnt been on the road, this is just rust from sitting

(this is the opposite side from the first picture, I think this is the original grease it had from the gravel pit, the other side at least had new grease)

but the drums looked pretty sketchy so we are just going to replace the shoes and bearings and seals at the same time:

Caleb fiddling with the adjusters to get the old shoes off:

without the leverage from the drum you gotta tap it a bit with the rubber mallet

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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[Yarkle]

So Caleb spent some time cleaning up the surface rust, treating it with ospho, and painting the backing the backing plates, and cleaning off the nasty old grease while i was at work (he went back and fixed the spots he missed after i busted his balls a bit)

He also painted the drums, (the old ones were beyond turning spec..we got the ones from Bus depot, from Brazil i think? that take the datsun grease seal)

took them down to my buddys shop where he used the funky grease installer for the bearings and had him pound in the races cuz hes got the tools

because we were down there anyways, because we found THIS!!!

I dunno if they had been shipped that way when we got them, or if somehow they got damaged in transit, or we managed to bung up the threads. Anyways, we went to put the shocks on and couldnt get the nut started.

so i had to borrow these

and do this:

sometimes i dont realize how bald i am until im at the checkout at the gas station and im looking at myself from the "rearview" security camera and im like"damn that dude is bald!"

As a point of note, you can see one of Calebs favorite childhood toys (mine too) supervising us in the upper left hand corner of that pic, hes "chomper" kind of like a tonka truck dinosaur.

And I got it cleaned up as well as i could:

The nut pretty much hand threaded on at this point, and the shocks went on without any further ado, so i put some more purple grease on the backing plates and we popped on the shoes, then called it a night (actually i think this was a few afternoons)

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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[Pinetops]

I like the attention to detail.

Always a good thing on brakes!
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"A rolling bus gathers no rust."

[Yarkle]

Pinetops: Thanks! Whats discouraging alot of times is so much of the problems weve run into on this bus is either deferred maintenance from PO's, or a half a$$ed attitude towards it.

I realize this is one of the things you get with a 40+ year old vehicle, it just seems strange (to me anyways), to have something apart, and theres say 6 steps to fix it right. Well, lets just do 5 of them cuz its easier but i know im gonna have to take it apart again in the near future.

OTOH, who knows what was going through the POs mind, some stuff may have just been a budget issue or "I just need to get this on the road before work tommorrow."

I do tend to overthink stuff and one of the reasons this bus ISNT on the road si im constantly thinking "well, while i have this off , i should do that"

anyways

Yesterday:

So then i decided we should adjust the brakes, and they all turned pretty hard (new springs and all..plus its got that weird 69 from the front setup--thanks for steering me in the right direction Robbie and Lil-Jinx!).

so i figured, ok, ill pull the drum/hubs, then turn them all the way out, put some antiseize on them, then turn them back in, then adjust them back out.

Well....

when i went to remove the passengers side i found the datsun grease seal had broken its spring, and the bearing stayed on the spindle..so after a nice bit of being pissed off, i rummaged around and fortunately had bought 4 grease seals.

so we did as planned, then reinstalled the hubs, and used Colins tutorial (the wiggly screwdriver method), got the bearings seated, braked adjusted, wheels put on.

to be fancy, Caleb tied a string around the speedo cable and we pulled that in and out without any trouble, and installed a new one (the old one was all chewed up, as was the grommet), though the dust cap had to be a little pr!ck going on.

But after a loooong time and lots of bumps...

the money shots:

and

theres still ALOT to be done, but at least the front wheels are back on!

I was going to rush it to get it out of the garage, but most of the work i need to do on MY BUS is rear centered at the moment, and i cant have the hatch open and the garage door open at the same time, and its getting warmer out and it stays lighter later, so I can always work on my bus outside for now and if i feel like volkswerkin in the dark theres still plenty to do on this contraption.
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[Yarkle]

Anyone have a part number or a size for the grommet that the voltage regulator (?) wires go through? I have the grommet for the battery cable, but i cant find one for the lower (and slightly smaller) hole, and its a little bigger than the one on the drivers side for the back up lights.

I thought i had seen Robbie post the dimensions, but i cannot find it after numerous searches.
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[wcfvw69]

[Yarkle]

I do, but the bus is still inop at the moment, so i cant just drive down there and pop them in and out. and i know i saw someone had posted the exact size on here, and i thought i bookmarked it. But ill be damned if i can find it now.

Worse comes to worse ill just guess and buy some that seem close enough and do it via trial and error.
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[airschooled]

Yarkle! We need updates! Family? Bus? Buses? Thing? Life?

Howyadoin'?

Robie
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[Yarkle]

Well, another "where did the summer go?" We just got back from dropping Caleb off at college.

Basically, the day off thief struck again at my work and he worked ALOT this summer, so we only had a few days we got stuff accomplished on his bus. I keep meaning to post the pics of stuff we DID get done, and i did get some stuff on my bus started.

I'll update that in the other thread, but since you are watching this one (if not that one?), ive got to redo the front brakes. On late bays with calipers, do ya'll paint or ospho and paint or primer and paint the caliper part that isnt the actually touching the pad surface so it doesnt rust so much?

(i searched but didnt find an answer, it looks like alot of people do paint the outsides of the rear drums)

Hows Cali treating you?
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[ImAddicted]

Wait, what? Caleb is in college? When did we get that old, dude? Hope all is well with you, summer is here, update this damn thread
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1979 Transporter (sold)
KC1MUR

[Yarkle]

Time goes FAST! Yeah, ive got a bunch of pix i need to upload, right now Weld is in drydock cuz Caleb is doing an internship all summer at Lake Powell, between Utah and arizona? Fighting an invasive mussel species.

Im hoping to have mine at least limpable**** to work by the time he gets home (goes back to school a week later) so it will give him a little more time management skills.

but we got short handed at work again, so working 6 tens doing the mail bag drag cuts into the volkswerkin

Is Ducky on the road again??

****so when i first got the 73 before i started taking stuff apart, the engine ran, but it had barely any brakes, well, seized calipers, but it could start it and drive it around the yard. (Robbie pulls up in Buddy and is like, "dont worry man, just fire it up" I sez "you wish tunafish, im not ramming Buddy, let me get a wheel chock"

Anyways, i am moving it and i get my front wheel right on the pavement, and im almost like f#ck it, if i catch the green light at 236, i can just drive it to work and roll stop it on the grass, worst case ontario ill just downshift if the light on beech road is red until it turns green, then ill gun it to get across.

Well, As this plan is hatching in my head, SuperJenn texts me and I am like "How could she know what i was thinking?"
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Tilda the Mustard Tigress 1973 Squareback (o'''^'''o)

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=771024&highlight=

[TomWesty]

Go Caleb! Death to Zebra Mussels! :snipersmile:
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[vwwestyman]