Itinerant Air-Cooled

Bus Depot Brake Rebuild Kits. - Most of the parts don't fit and some are completely missing. Buy the parts you need individually. It will cost a little less than buying the kit and all the right parts afterwards.

Please note: post 1973 bus has 14mm thick brake pads, FLAPs and others will try to sell you 10mm thick pads for the earlier '71-'72 buses. Same thing with rear shoes. Earlier buses have thinner shoes than later. Demand the correct thicknesses.
Colin

Sluggo, do you mean the springs etc? I've tried using em' before, terrible aftermarket crap. Does anyone still make German? I threw away the last new ones I bought for a Beetle because they were so bad.

hambone wrote:Sluggo, do you mean the springs etc? I've tried using em' before, terrible aftermarket crap. Does anyone still make German? I threw away the last new ones I bought for a Beetle because they were so bad.

Yep. It's a little bag with springs, pins, cups, etc... I used the springs and 2 of the pins (for some reason you get 2 short pins and 2 long ones). Everything else was junk. My pins and springs were rusty. But I kept em' just in case. The rest of the stuff in the bag is completely useless. Won't even fit. And you need to buy stars and the part they attach to seperatley. The Stars, Shoes, Drums & Cables I got from them seemed good though

I posted on the samba last year what part # of pins I found to work. Do a search of my posts and I am sure that you can buy a god set of pins w/o having to spend days looking through bins. I know I found them at auto zone. let me know if you still need help on this. I know I have an extra set somewhere with the part # on it.
Best Regards,
John

Amskeptic wrote:Please note: post 1973 bus has 14mm thick brake pads, FLAPs and others will try to sell you 10mm thick pads for the earlier '71-'72 buses. Same thing with rear shoes. Earlier buses have thinner shoes than later. Demand the correct thicknesses.
Colin

68-70 rear shoes are 45mm.
71 up are 55mm.
But 71 shoes are one-year-only.

68-70 211 609 537 C [subbed to E]
71 211 609 537 J
72-mid 73 211 609 533 B up to vin 2x3 2102 496
73-79 211 609 537 N from vin 2x3 2102 497

karl wrote:
71 211 609 537 J
72-mid 73 211 609 533 B up to vin 2x3 2102 496

Karl, is the difference between '71 and the '72-mid'73 just in shoe width?
Colin

Add CIP1.com's brake line kit to the list of awful parts. Every single line in the kit is too long. Some can be compensated by simply looping the line, some others are so long they would run from one side of the Bus to the other. Not worth the time or effort, you could just go to your FLAPS and buy lines that aren't even close to the right length. Here's a pic of the lines they say are for the front, along with the factory originals I'm replacing. Terrible.

Replacement brake lines are only made in certian lengths usually incremented by 10 or 12"....If you want custom lengths buy a double flaring kit and learn to use it.

RSorak 71Westy wrote:buy a double flaring kit and learn to use it.

Exactly! It's easy, it's fun, it's the right thing to do. Get a bender too.
Colin

Meyle Brake Light Switches. Both of mine failed in a few weeks. One actually leaked fluid from the terminals. OG switches from 1976 still work great.

Hiya All,

And adding to Sluggo's comments regarding brake switches (above) I'd like to add that EuroMax brake switches are questionable at best. I have now had two sets of three prong switches leak. Interestingly, they leak THROUGH the switch with the brake fluid exiting from the plastic prong holding disc.

I heard from a friend in Australia that his set of EuroMax switches actually worked "in reverse" of what I've described above. In his case they allowed air into the system. In either situation this is a case of shoddy parts having a direct impact on your safety!

The real problem here is that if you are in the market for brake light switches EuroMax is almost always what you are going to be offered. They are carried and sold by most parts houses. Worse yet, they are stamped with the VW-Audi logo. Beware!

I have just ordered ATE or FTE German switches. Quite hard to find and they cost four times as much as the EuroMax. I'll let you know how it goes with them.

Aftermarket brake adjusting stars...
Adjusted the brakes a few weeks ago, but there is randomly too much pedal during hard braking. I see that a BRAND NEW adjuster has split into the threads from one of the "valleys" of the star. Not sure of country of origin but they were CHEAP.
Of course it's a back brake too. Oh joy.

hambone wrote:Aftermarket brake adjusting stars...
Adjusted the brakes a few weeks ago, but there is randomly too much pedal during hard braking. I see that a BRAND NEW adjuster has split into the threads from one of the "valleys" of the star. Not sure of country of origin but they were CHEAP.
Of course it's a back brake too. Oh joy.

Need more info, Hammie. Where did you get these adjusters? Were they "brass"?

Bookwus wrote:Hiya All,

And adding to Sluggo's comments regarding brake switches (above) I'd like to add that EuroMax brake switches are questionable at best. I have now had two sets of three prong switches leak. Interestingly, they leak THROUGH the switch with the brake fluid exiting from the plastic prong holding disc.

I heard from a friend in Australia that his set of EuroMax switches actually worked "in reverse" of what I've described above. In his case they allowed air into the system. In either situation this is a case of shoddy parts having a direct impact on your safety!

The real problem here is that if you are in the market for brake light switches EuroMax is almost always what you are going to be offered. They are carried and sold by most parts houses. Worse yet, they are stamped with the VW-Audi logo. Beware!

I have just ordered ATE or FTE German switches. Quite hard to find and they cost four times as much as the EuroMax. I'll let you know how it goes with them.

Maybe Colin has a report on how these brake light switches are holding up. The ATE/FTE switches are available from AirHead Parts at 4X the price of the EuroMax ones.

Tim