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Three of four brake drums back on my beetle as of last night.
Top half of the front right brake assembly.
The same photo with some markings on the spindle. The red dots are where the inner seal rides. The three green dots show where the inner bearing sits, and the two green dots farther out are where the outer bearing rides.
Bottom half of the brake assembly.
I'm going to outline the procedure I used to install the right front brake drum. The procedure I've seen is to fill the reservoir with grease before putting it on the spindle, but that means you have to hold the grease in while you install it. I tried it a slightly different way here and it seems to have worked reasonably well.
A view down into the middle of the brake drum. The green dots show the outer race of the inner bearing, which is pressed into the drum. The red dots at the bottom show the outer race of the outer bearing. Between the two bearings, the hollow in the drum forms a grease reservoir, marked by the blue dot.
Here's the rest (the rollers, cage, and inner race) of the inner bearing in place to show where it goes.
The outer roller/inner race assembly just to remind you what they look like.
The drum, with some grease squeezed into the inner part of the reservoir with the cake decorator.
Greased rollers in place.
Just for good measure, I put some extra grease in on top of the roller assembly.
And the inner seal in place. This clamps around the fattest part of the spindle at its base and prevents too much grease from leaking around the base of the spindle and contaminating the brakes.
So this is the part I did differently. With the inner bearing and seal in place, and the reservoir only partially filled with grease, I put the drum in place, without the outer bearing. I'm holding it in place with my non-camera hand, so it's kind of wobbly. But I can use the cake decorator to inject more grease in from the outside end of the hub and fill the reservoir the rest of the way up with grease before putting the outer bearing in.
Filled and read for the outer bearing.
Outer bearing in (forgot to get a photo) and pressure washer in.
This pinch nut holds the whole thing in place.
Grease cap, and the right front is ready to go!
