From: eldred@rrunner.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Eldred)
Newsgroups: rec.autos.vw
Subject: Re: Bus axle beam replacement
Date: 5 Oct 92 21:44:25 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

In article <1apv56INNg8d@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> wpc@po.CWRU.Edu (William P. Claspy) writes:
>
>Hey now, all!
>	Well, the saga of my much maligned '77 bus continues.  This past
>week, the pivot for the steering decided to rip right off of the lower
>axle beam.  (What is that called?  Steering knuckle?  Steering pivot?) Not
>a fun thing to have happen.  I tried to MIG weld the knuckle (I'll call it
>a knuckle) back on, but it was so wasted that there wasn't enough metal
>left to weld.  Didn't hold at all.  So it looks like I'll be replacing
>the axle beam assembly real soon (before selling the bastard!)
>
>	Has anyone out there ever done this?  Anyone have a good source for
>used ones?  I know RBI in Auburn Hills has them, but, as usual, their price
>seems WAY out of hand.  All my tie rods are fine, in fact every thing is
>fine but this steering thing and the left tower between the two beams which
>is rotted out kinda bad.  Spindles are fine, brakes are just rebuilt, steering
>dampner is fine, shocks are new.  So I'm assuming that I just remove 
>everything, unbolt the front end from the frame (I'm assuming it unbolts),
>bolt the new one up, replace all the goodies.  Yes?
>
This happened to my '71.  The bracket for the steering idler arm simply
rusted off--it broke (gracefully, thank heavens) while I was parking the
car and therefore putting a lot of stress on the steering linkages.  The
cause was twofold--first, the bracket design allowed some water to puddle
and cause rust, and second, water somehow got inside the axle tubes (from
a big puddle, presumably), and caused rust from inside.  Possibly the
rust from outside caused holes through which water got inside the tubes,
but I'll never know for certain.

Replacing the assembly was a bit of work but was easier than I expected
it to be.  I got a replacement axle tube assembly from a junkyard, which
had a couple of bad trailing arm bearings in it.  Getting out the old
bearings is easy with a slide hammer, but you destroy the bearing.  Since
I was too cheap to buy new ones from VW, I devised a way to get the good
ones from my old assembly without wrecking them.  I used a washer of the right
diameter (about 2 inches--I started with a larger one and put it to a grinder)
on which I ground 2 flat sides, so that I could insert it through the
bearings (the width between the two flat sides being small enough to do
this) and then rotated the washer 90 deg so that it was flat against the 
back side of the bearing.  Then I used a long pole and pounded against this
washer from the opposite end of the axle, which pushed the undamaged bearing
out.

The ball joints came loose pretty easily (I think I tapped gently on them
with a hammer), but I did have to buy a special tool to separate the ball
joints on the tie rods and the steering linkage.  With the tires off the
ground, the springs are under very little tension so it was possible to
pull out the trailing arms with hand pressure augmented with light tapping.  
If I recall correctly, I used a floor jack to apply slight pressure on
them during installation so that they would rotate far enough to clear
the stops, but I do not recall having any particular problems.  I was able
to leave the brakes attached to the lines (by hanging them with coat hangers)
so I got out of bleeding them.  Everything else was pretty much a matter of
unbolting and bolting things.  Oh yeah, there are some shims to make up the
difference between the width of the axle assembly and the frame which you
need to install/get.  I did the alignment myself by measuring the distance
between the foward and back edges of the rims.  Before driving, I pumped a lot
of grease into the axle in the hope that it would push out any dirt I might
have introduced, and then I regreased it a couple of times within the next
few hundred miles.

I can't help you find a junkyard where you are, but here in So. Cal there
are a number of self server junkyards which are loaded with VW Busses.  I
think I paid something like $50 for the axle tube assembly.

Two more little tidbits.  I contacted VW and they were utterly uninterested
in what had happened and in fact were somewhat rude to me when I told them
that I at least expected them to enter the record of such an obvious safety
defect as total steering failure in some sort of a database so they could
keep track of the problem to see if it were common or not.  I was sufficiently
pissed that I also contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Board and
the Centers for Auto Safety (did I get the names right?) about the failure,
but never heard more about it except acknowledgement letters and the fact
that VW had been notified.

The other tidbit is that I sold my beloved but dying of rust '71 and
got a '80 Vanagon.

	-Dan Eldred		eldred@csi.jpl.nasa.gov