About thirty years ago, I raced a VW at two dirt tracks in Southern California. Unfortunately, both Corona Raceway and Ascot Park have both been torn down. There's a housing development where Corona used to be, but Ascot's property is still blank several years later.
That's not what this article is about, though.
When I was racing, one thing I really wanted to try was disk brakes.
You'd have thought I wanted to build an Offenhauser engine to hear
everybody telling me not to! The only disk brakes that were even close
to affordable were from a Karmann Ghia, and they certainly looked heavy.
I stuck it out with drum brakes, but I was sure I could have done better
with better brakes.
Anyway, the VW never really had good brakes. I didn't drive it much, but it seemed like every time I did, the brake pedal was very low and it just was not stopping well. When Kate let the front shoes wear down to the rivets and scored the drums, I figured I'd start looking to see what I could do. Looking through Dune Buggies & Hot VWs magazine, I found an ad for SoCal Imports in Long Beach, maybe 45 minutes away from the house. Everything you need to convert to front disk brakes on a Super Beetle for around $250. I called them to make sure they had inventory, and drove up there to get the kit.
Well, "kit" is a generous word. They certainly had all the parts, but some were from this shelf, some from that shelf, and NO instructions! It consisted of a disk rotor that had threaded holes in it for the lug bolts, bearing races and bearings, the brake calipers, and machined aluminum brackets to hold the calipers. The calipers have two bleeder valves, so you don't have to worry about getting the left and right ones swapped. There's always a bleeder valve on top of the caliper. I've worked on VW brakes for thirty years, though, so I guessed I could figure out how it all went together. I got the stuff home, put the bug on jack stands, took off the front wheels and went to work. Kate took the Jimmy and went shopping.
Pulling the front drums on a VW is a little messy, but that's all. The speedometer is driven from a square hole in the grease cap of the left front wheel. It's held in place with a C-clip that you don't want to lose. The grease cap is a friction fit, which can be removed with a mallet or hammer, as long as you take reasonable care not to dent the cap.
Once you're into the bearing, there's a combination nut and clamp that holds the whole works to the spindle. It takes an allen wrench to loosen the clamp, but when that's done and unscrewed, the brake drum comes right off. The wheel cylinder, brake shoes, and adjusting screws are exposed at this time, and you have to do this much work to replace the brake shoes anyway. I removed the springs holding the brake shoes, the shoes themselves, and the adjusting screws from the back plate. I removed the hard brake line from the wheel cylinder and unbolted the cylinder from the back plate.
The back plate is held to the spindle by four bolts. I looked at the machined aluminum bracket that holds the calipers from the kit, and figured out that it would mount on the two rear bolts that were holding the back plate. I took the four bolts loose and the back plate was history. The caliper bracket went on very easily, just as I had figured. Then I noticed that I had to press the bearing races into the rotor myself.
I'm an amateur mechanic. I've got a pretty decent set of hand tools that I've collected over the years, but I sure don't have a bearing press. I got them in just fine, though, with a piece of 2" pipe and a bench vise. I just positioned the race carefully in the rotor, put the pipe on the race, and squeezed the whole thing together with the vise. Whenever you press bearing races, though, I recommend you be extremely careful that you don't get it cocked in the shaft it has to go through, and if there are any keys, that you make sure they are lined up before you start putting force on things.
Once the races were in place, I packed the bearings with grease and mounted the rotors to the spindles without any fuss. The speedometer cable was a pain, just like always. The calipers bolted to their mounts just like they were intended, and the right side went even easier, since I now had some experience and there's no speedometer cable on that side!
OK, now its time to hook up the hydraulics. Hmmm. It seems that the hard lines that went from the flexible brake lines, mounted to the strut, weren't anywhere near long enough to reach to the caliper, 90 degrees behind where the wheel cylinders had been. And Kate had the other car shopping.
Fortunately, she returned before too much longer had passed, and I went shopping for hard lines. I had measured how long I figured I needed, and I took one of the old ones with me so I'd be sure the fittings mated up properly. Even disk brakes won't stop you if the fluid leaks out.
It was Sunday afternoon, and most of the auto parts
stores had closed. I really didn't want to leave this job undone, and
I eventually found hard lines at a parts house in Anaheim. I got them
home and installed. I bled the brakes and mounted the wheels. This
was the most rewarding job I've ever done on a vehicle. The pieces
went in very easily, and except for the missing hard lines, I didn't need
to find anything special.
Not much. The hard lines were a bit of concern, but I'd have had to remove them from the car to get the right pieces anyway. This turned out to be a lot of fun and VERY rewarding. The bug stops in a straight line, and the pedal is very firm.
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