Aircooled VW South Africa

Thanks for the suggestions and help Calooker and Dawie .

I remember reading somewhere about the welsh plug! It's a very valid point you make. Pierre mentioned to me that, by looking at the spring plates, this bus had had a straight axle conversion to it at some stage. There's the obvious u-shaped cut-out where the straight axle would have routed through the the spring plate. I'm not 100% sure what an "un-molested" spring plate looks like but I'm presuming it's square to the end. Then one could devise a way to seal that welsh plug by sandwiching sealant or a gasket between it and the RGB. Mine, as mentioned, has those cut-outs so I won't be able to get it ti seal all round. Methinks there might be a straight axle conversion on the horizon then . Nah, I like the look of a dropped bus, really I do, but I won't do it to mine. I HAVE to fix this

In fact, here's a (dreadful) pic I took which illustrates the cut-out. I've masked the shape of the spring plate in red as it's quite difficult to decipher from the original.

Is the oil dripping from between the spring plate and RGB, or is it on the brake backing plate?

The bearing cover has a small drain hole to direct oil that leaks past the seal to the back of the backing plate and away from your brakes.

Where the oil is appearing will give you a clue to where the leak is.

Hi Fig!

I noticed that small drain hole you speak of when we had the other hubs apart. Ingenious design! From what I can make out, it's coming from both . We filled the RGB's and they overflowed slightly which in-turn dampened the backing plate too. We gave it a clean but at nearly 1am I think we both had enough. They appear to be quite damp between the backing plate and the RGB as well as damp at that cut-out section on the spring plate. As oil does, it finds the lowest point to well up on and drips from there so that place usually looks worse but isn't necessarily. From this picture, anyone not knowing might suggest it's brake fluid as it's dripping from the brake line. This pic was taken the morning after and it's gotten A LOT more messy since.

I think I know the next suggestion: Clean it all up properly and let it dry. Go for a drive and check immediately what is getting wet first.

- It's just such a pain when this whole gearbox and RGB arrangement hadn't leaked in the first place when it was removed from the previous bus! Nothing's been disturbed! Yes, I know we have to activate patience with these things but it's quite trying given the circumstances.

I know what you mean! I had to remove the engine from my 71 single cab five times this year because of generator issues.

As an aside, because the o-rings in the axle seal kits are getting so thin and small, I recently decided not to use them and used a pair of flywheel o-rings instead, which I had lots of loose ones of in my bucket of unused bits from engine gasket sets. Seems to work perfectly.

Eish, this is very bad luck. Hope you come right. I am just very glad mine is bone dry at the moment. I really hope it doesn’t return.

Much needed update time! Although all's been rather quiet on my side of late, a lot has been going on behind the scenes! I'll let the pictures do the talking (Pictures courtesy of Pierre ).

I must just say a monumental 'thank you' to Pierre and his guys. I dropped the bus off on the 30th December and they haven't missed abeat in getting stuck in. They day of the 30th I was there helping to strip off all the bits and pieces. While I was busy on the one end, the guys had already warmed up their angle-grinder on the other . I'd spoken to Pierre a couple of times since, but when the pics came through to me early this morning, I was shocked to see the progress. These guys are absolutely brilliant!

And now for the pics: (I can only submit 10 pics per response so there'll be a few updates)

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Damn, sorry guys - I have to run to Pierre's now with the trial seats. I'll update the rest of the pics later on.

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