With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

give me a brake

2007 October 27 00:57

Well, my beetle is under the knife again. I didn't have the luxury of waiting this time.

I new that it was leaking brake fluid slowly; I figured that one of the hoses or the fittings or something was leaking. I did run the rear brake circuit out of fluid one time, but I thought I'd been keeping up with it since then. But the other day I discovered the rear brake fluid circuit empty, refilled it, and noticed that it was very low again. So this time I filled it and went back and checked frequently--I discovered it was losing it while the car was sitting, and losing it fast. This is right after filling up:

and this is a couple of hours later; the car hasn't moved or been touched:

So it's definitely leaking out somewhere. But not under that car that I can see. Well, anyway, I need to get in there and replace some of the brake components; I'll just work on the leak at the same time. In the process of getting the car jacked up to get the wheels off the ground, I discovered this:

This was just after having the rear end up in the air. Apparently the reason that the leaking brake fluid doesn't run out on the floor is that it's accumulating inside the car. When I had the car nose-down, some of it leaked out the drain hole in the frame head.

But the car is successfully up in the air, and I have completed my very first hub/brake dis-assembly:

I'm very pleased with what I found inside the brake drum. The brake shoes are worn and are probably due to be replaces, but they're not over-worn, so I don't have to worry about the conditions of any of the other components. The drum itself is in very good condition. The surface does have a little bit of surface rust and the braking surface is fairly smooth and doesn't look worn down. I would say this is the strongest evidence yet that the car really only does have 80-some thousand miles on it.

It turns out that the adjusting stars aren't rusted solid like I thought, they're just gunky and thus couldn't be adjusted properly, because some yahoo left off the rubber covers on the inspection holes. So the adjusting stars won't have to be replaced; I can just clean and lubricate the ones that are in there.