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I haven't had time to work on the beetle lately. We're doing real live spring cleaning and so I'm keeping my nose to the grindstone. Perhaps I can work on it next weekend.
So for the moment, I leave you jith this
I bought these bumpers on ebay a while back. I wanted to keep them in good shape, so I didn't want to stick them on a shelf somewhere to be scratched. So I took them out of their pacakging and they've been on the floor (carpet) of a room in our upstairs. Well, I was cleaning that room and the bumpers were in my way. So I hung them from the basement ceiling above where I have all my car parts and seals.
I ran across this battery in my basement the other day:
Anyone know what this is a battery for? (I know, I'm asking it as a rhetorical question.) Consider it foreshadowing for a blog feature that will be coming soon. Here's a hint: It has noting to do with my car and it has nothing to do with flying or airplanes.
Since this battery and its siblings are over 15 years old now, I've been looking for replacements. There's a Panasonic Lithium camera battery that's pretty close, which will work, but it's a tight fit in the socket that the battery goes in. Just now, it occured to me that the important marking is the one in the middle, "BR=2/3A". I had alwasy thought that "A" stood for "amperes", so the two bottom markings above "matsushita electric" were statements of the battery's voltage and current capacity, but it turns out that BR-2/3A is the battery type. That is, it's two-thirds the length of an A-type battery (used to be available along with AA and AAA).
So by searing Google for "2/3A" and "battery", I think I finally found a source of exact replacement batteries. This web site gets kudos for being cheaper than the other places that came up on google and they have exact battery measurements in mm, which allowed me to match the size. Woot!
More to come.
The first thing I did in this project was to remove the drive shaft from the right rear wheel. For the first time since then, I took the protective bad off and got ready to hook it back up to the stub axle.
Here's the hardware for re-attachment. Since the triple-square bolts are so fiddly, particularly when dirty, I'm going to just put in all new bolts. Of the three pressure plates, one is new because of the grinding I did on the old one to try to get the stripped bolt out.
I stuck the drum on the stub axle to provide a way to keep the axle from turning...
As I torqued the bolts on that hold the drive shaft to the axle.
Next comes the brake plate, which I've painted a groovy flat black, as outlined recently.
I attached the emergency brake cable to the brake plate, and then discovered that with the brake cable attached, it won't fit over the stub axle when it's in place.
After all the trouble with getting the axle bolts out, there was no way I was going to take it back off, so I disconnected the brake cable, installed the plate, then re-atached the cable.
The bearing carrier installed with the outer seal in place. This is a good illustration of the color change in the brake plate. Before cleaing and painting, the plate was about the color of the carrier.
The outer spacer, which has a chamfer on one outer edge; the one that goes against the inner race of the ball bearing.
Brake plate, bearing carrier, drive shaft, and outer spacer installed (its the shiny thing in the middle of the seal). I've also installed the brake hard line that feeds the slave cylinder; the top is visible in the hole in the brake plate with the cylinder mounts.
Ready to start re-assembling the bearing/axle assembly on the right rear of the beetle. From left to right, the spacer sleeve that goes between two bearings, the stub axle, the inner spacer, and the tube of grease.
The inner spacer has a chamfer on the inner edge that goes against the end of the stub axle.
Here's the inner spacer on the axle, ready to go into the axle assembly. The seal that I installed yesterday presses against the outer edge of the spacer, keeping the grease from leaking out in that direction.
The stub axle in place. The ball bearing is enough to hold it in position.
The cavity between where ball bearing is (you can sort of see it at the back, infused with red grease) and where the roller bearing will go. The spacer sleeve is around the axle.
The really narrow nozzle was really slow, so I put on a much bigger nozzle.
With the bigger nozzle, the grease squishes in quite readily.
The space is well enough packed that grease squishes out around the rollers in the roller bearing when it's installed.
I might get that wheel on in the next couple of days.
I've taken the right rear brake plate off my car to use it as a test for the rust treatment.
It had to be disconnected from the emergency brake cable
I painted the plate with several coats and I'll try fitting it tomorrow when it's dry.
I spent a while trying to install the inner seal on the right rear of my beetle yesterday, but I couldn't get it to go into its seat. It's easy to get it to go slightly in:
but then when I try to tap around the edge, the opposite part pops out and you're back to square one.
So I got a C-clamp big enough to squeeze the seal against the bearing housing, using two two-by-fours as flat surfaces:
This arrangement pushed the seal into its seat and got it flush with the outer surface
but that's not anywhere nearly all the way in. I need something about the diameter of the seal to push it in deeper.
As it turns out, the bearings are the same diameter. Here's the outer part of a roller bearing that I used to be just as big as the seal but no bigger
So I set up the squeezing mechanism with the bearing pushing on the seal and the clamp providing the squeezing force.
And only the second evening I worked on it, the seal is in!
I'm going to try a different type of rust treatment this time:
So I took the other rear (rusty) brake drum
and painted it
The important thing here is that even though I was very careful to paint the inside of the lug bolt holes, you can see the lug bolt still threads into the drum. I think that means that I can paint the brake plates without having to worry that it's going to mess up the fit of any of the parts.
At long last, all the bearing parts for the right side of my beetle are clean and ready to install (except the brake plates; I'll need to figure those out next).
The axle bearing chamber in the diagonal arm before cleaning out the old grease.
After cleaning it out
Ball bearing clean and ready to be greased
Cake decorator loaded up with wheel bearing grease to lubricate the bearings.
Which is a great idea...except that this cake decorating bag split open with almost no pressure. Argh!
The ball bearing after I greased it the old-fashioned way.
Driving the ball bearing into place
All the way in:
Don't forget the securing circlip:
Cake decorator grease dispenser take two. Hopefully this one is stronger. I'm using the tip from take one, because I think the long nozzle will be ideal for getting grease into the reservoir in the diagonal arm.
That rust stuff is great! Here's what the brake drum looks like after having the rust dissolver on it over night:
HOWEVER...I'm going to need to be a little careful when applying it to parts that have a precise fit. Looking at the back side of the brake drum, some of the stuff dripped through the bolt hole:
and now the lug bolt won't go into the hole. Since the brake plates have at least a couple precision fit surfaces, I need to be very careful about putting that stuff on them.
I thoroughly cleaned all the wheel parts for the right side of the car tonight, and they're drying in front of a fan.
With a little luck, I'll be able to have the wheels on the right side of the car tomorrow. That will depend on the temperature and whether it's miserable to work in the garage.
Why did I buy a cake decorating kit at the store today?
Tune in tomorrow and find out.
The weather this weekend is going to be really horrid and cold, so I took the chance to work on my beetle this evening. While I was cleaning I ran into the box where I keep the paint and surface stuff. I decided to try a couple out.
First of all, I've been working recently to get mores tuff up on the pegboard on the wall. Here's what it looks like today
and one blurry photo of when I put the workbench in almost two years ago
I tried the chrome polish and rust remover
It is applied more or less like car wax. The change wasn't as dramatic as I would have expected, but it definitely made it brighter. This is the front left headlight shroud before using the polish,
and after
The thing I thought about most was rust. The brake backing plate on the front left looks like it has some penetration rust, so I thought I'd buy a couple of new ones. I can't find them anywhere. So I'll want to be preserving the ones I have very carefully. First I took the backing plate off the left front spindle:
Here you can really see the pockets of rust:
I bought some stuff to treat rust that dissolves it into a surface that you can then paint. So I'm trying it out on the right rear brake drum, which has been decomissioned:
Here's the drum after applying the rust remover: It'll be interesting to see what it looks like tomorrow.
Oh, and as soon as I'm done messing about with brake plates, I'll be installing new brake slave cylinders:
All the brake cylinders are off the beetle now and all four hoses have been replaced by steel braid jacketed lines.
The old master cylinder is on the left. On the right are the four slave cylinders. The front cylinders were pretty ratty and a little rusty.
Here's the right front wheel assembly with the slave cylinder removed:
The new brake hose can be seen in the background.
I'm going to have to stop avoiding working on the bearings soon, so I can get the car on its wheels.
When we last heard from our hero, he was working on wiring and batteries and stuff, and not on the brakes which is why the freaking car is up in the air in the first place. I did get a bunch done this weekend, I just hadn't had time to edit the photos.
So I got two "bubble-flared" brake lines bent and installed in the front and the back, and I Saturday I made a section to bridge them in the middle of the car, right below the driver's door. I got the length matched pretty well:
I'll try give you an idea of where the line runs. Here's the master cylinder as it stands now:
I've indicated the brake line that I installed with a red arrow over on the right. This line goes over to the left side of the car and runs down the place where the heater channel is, right below the driver's door. I've also circled the hole in the body where the stock rear brake line goes into the body and around the pedal cluster.
Now we're looking into the fender well where the wheel normally sits.
You can see the line bend here to follow the body shape. I've highlighted the two flare unions where the patch piece is installed.
Now near the rear of the car
the line comes from the left, goes through the jack point, then bends inwards toward the center of the car and then bends up once it clears the torsion tube (in the brightened area at the right of the photo).
A slightly difference view as last time, this one shows where the brake line curves around the torsion tube.
The arrow points to the brake line "T" where the front-to-back line is split to go to the rear brake slave cylinders.
After getting the brake line run, I padded it against the metal of the car and attached it with cable ties. Here's one of the joins padded with a piece of fuel hose and tied on with a cable tie (my motto: "better living though cable ties").
The brake line dressed where it goes through the jack point:
The back of the front fender well again, with padding so the line doesn't rub on the metal of the body.
Looking from the back of the car to toward the front.
You can see the two unions in the brake line where the bridge section goes. I circled the left front wheel spindle for perspective.
Remember, running a new brake line in a "custom" location was because I mis-diagnosed where the leak in the brake system was, thinking it was in the front-to-rear brake line, when it turns out the leak was in the master cylinder. And one of these days, I need to get back to the wheel bearings so I can drive the car again. Argh.
By the way, do NOT deep-cycle a lead-acid car battery. I think that is an appropriate thing to do with some other rechargable battery technologies, but not lead-acid batteries. According the deep cycle battery faq on solar-electric.com,
Lead-Acid batteries do NOT have a memory, and the rumor that they should be fully discharged to avoid this "memory" is totally false and will lead to early battery failure.
So at the moment I'm trying to resurrect that battery, by running it part way down and then recharging it slowly.
I learned to touch type in junior high school, which puts that event around twenty years ago. More than half my life ago, for those who are keeping score. Those patterns are very deeply ingrained.
So it's been interesting to try learning a new keyboard that is different the qwerty keyboard layout. I got a frogpad this last weekend for my birthday.
It's a one-handed keyboard, that unlike the matias half-keyboard, is specificalyl optimized for one-handed typed. The matias is laid out like the left half of a qwerty keyboard; you hold the space bar down to get the other half. The 15 keys on the frogpad are the 15 most used letters in english. So that means I'm having to learn key combinations that contradict the 20 year old paths in my brain.
(By the way, the frogpad is recognised by Linux.)
The frogpad has an on-line tutorial tailored to its layout, which isn't free. It's sold by subscription for a certain period of time; I bought a 3-month subscription to the tutoriall. I should have well mastered it by then. I'm not totally thrilled by the idea of a company selling me hardware and then selling me the software I need to use it properly; on the other hand. it does really help you learn to type with it. The typing excersizes are partially randomly generated, so you're not just typing the same static examples all the time.
The tutorial saves your progress and gives you access to the next examples in turn:
I'm doing pretty well. The "T" key is in the home row, and that's one that I kept trying to put where it is on the qwerty keyboard. However, I spent some time typing words with Ts in them, so I'm finally starting to improve. The tutorial holds the results (speed and errors) of all the exercises you've done, so you can see if you're improving.
I've only been at it since the weekend, but I'm almost to 25 words per minute using the unshifted keys.
I have the battery out of my beetle to replace the battery cables, and while I'm at it, I'm going to recharge it, and clean out the bottom of the battery tray.
According to the hydrometer, two of the cels won't seem to I decided today to run the battery down to dead and recharge it; I seem to think that's good for lead-acid batteries, as long as you don't leave them discharged for too long*. I hooked up one of the sport headlights to the battery via some of the old brake cable hardware:
Tomorrow I'll recharge it and see if that makes a difference to those two cells.
*DO NOT DO THIS. This is very bad for lead-acid batteries!
My beetle has been up on jack stands for four months. It's a good time to do a little battery maintainence, and I took some quick time yesterday and this evening to finish replacing the battery cables.
This is something that I've wanted to do since I bought the car. The stock cable that goes from the positive battery terminal to the starter input is black. That's not so bad, but at some point, someone replaced the cable from the negative battery terminal to the car's body with a red battery cable. So in other words, looking under the seat when I got the car, there was a black cable on the positive terminal and a red cable on the negative terminal, which is the opposite of most cars and any wire color convention that I've ever heard of. Not too long after I got the car, I replaced the red wire to the body with a ground strap, which got rid of the color problem but it didn't fit the terminal very well.
The other problem is the wierd right angle of the positive battery terminal makes it really hard to put a shield over the positive terminal. This is very important because the springs of the back seat can short against the positive terminal and start a fire if the terminal isn't covered.
I bought a platinum platinum positive battery terminal last week. This terminal has two pressure screw attachment points that accept a 4 gauge wire, or an 8 gauge wire with the reducing collar. The collar and one of the set screws can be seen in the second photo:
I've installed the new red cable to the starter and attached it to the terminal. The other attachment on the terminal goes to the electrical system in the rest of the car. I've also installed a black ground cable here whose end actually fits the battery terminal.
