Aircooled VW South Africa

I am currently busy with the final touches on Shelly; a 1974 Beetle that is a birthday gift for a customer's wife.

I order to improve the braking performance, I decided to install disc brakes up front.

I had the king and link pins fitted by Werner Alker (Thanks Werner for the personal tour of the museum)

We needed to retain the standard Rostyle rims, and seeing as safety is a main priority, I needed a properly engineered wide five disc brake kit.

Enter CB Performance with their wide five disc brake kit for king and link pin suspension. Bloody expensive to import.

What I thought would be simple bolt on conversion, has turned into a major exercise.

The reason for this is that the disc brake kit is supplied with all the hoses, bearings and seals calipers and brake pads. The problem is that the inner wheel bearing for the hub, as supplied by them is for a 25mm dia stub axle.

All the local beetles that I have dealt with use a 30mm dia stub axle.

Turning down the stub axle was not even an option, so a replacement bearing solution had to be found.
The main consideration was, that the integrity of the whole assembly cannot be jeopardised.

Working through the bearing catalogues, we could not find a suitable tapered roller bearing with a 50mm outer race that accepts a 30mm shaft.

So, its off to the local expert machine shop.

We did find a suitable bearing, but with a 52mm cage, 30mm shaft opening and the same width as the original. Fortunately, we have sufficient material on the hub to allow us to open the bore to accept the new bearing.
We also managed to find suitable replacement oil seal to go with the modified bearing.

Now, just to ease my curiosity. Does anybody know of a drum braked beetle with king and link pin suspension that has a 25mm stub axle?

I just dealt with a very similar issue using a locally made hub (for the bigger bearings) on a later spindle (smaller).
I only had two bearing options and neither would work.
I ended up shrink fitting bushes onto the spindles so I could use larger ID bearings which would fit the hub without modification.


As for your problem, you might be able to use a setup similar to mine to allow different bearing options. But as far as a thinner stub axle goes, its not something you are going to find. The K&L (early) stub axle is different to the balljoint (later) stub axle and I suspect you ordered the kit for the balljoint car. SA used the early setup right up to the end of production.

Other than that, you might need to consider a custom hub.
Maybe you can source different spindles and have the old ones machined out and the new welded in - but thats also asking for problems.

I am considering a CB disk conversion kit, but they are getting lots of flak for issues like you mention in your post. I will be interested to know if you would recommend them knowing what you know now.

Actually the early king and link pin SA Models had the thin axles I think it was up to the 1200 models, my baja used to have a thin axle on one side and a thick on the other had to get the early 25mm id bearing from bearing man. The thicker axles were fitted to later models, I eventually swapped my thick and thin axle for a set of fully rebuilt thick axles years ago

After Edmond made his post, I had to check my facts. I was sure I had a picture somewhere of the spindle sizes.
Well, it turns out that early spindles have smaller inner bearings but larger outer bearings than the late spindles.
See below for sizes.

Piet,
The short answer is YES.

I feel that the kit is well engineered and I am comfortable with the whole installation.

The bearing solution did require some engineering expertise, but the end result is as sound as ever.

For information, we used a Timken 32006 bearing with a 45x55x7 seal.



The hub fits beautifully, but care needs to be taken with the positioning of the banjo fitting for the brake line.



I prefer this to using the reverse wide five adapters for the locally produced disc brake kit.

I ran into another snag.

This conversion uses studs, so I need a chrome lug nut with a collar for a suitable contact area on the wheel rim.

After chasing the required wheel nuts for a day, I was told that here in lovely Sefrika, only the straight nuts are available. As the wheel nuts are a safety critical item, I am not prepared to use these nuts.

I then took the original wheel bolts to my local engineering shop and asked them to machine off the threaded part and then drill and tap the nut portion for M12x1,5.

This will give me the required radiused contact area and fit onto the studs of the disc brake kit.

BTW, I can source the correct radiused nuts from Canada, so until they get here, I am using the "home made" nuts.

Call around, and you will find a Automotive nut and bolt seller, these guys have all these nuts and bolts.

When I did my 5 narrow to 5 wide disks, i had the same problem, as the regular suppliers do not carry them.

Herman

Try Goldwagen and ask for "Microbus nuts" they have the same pitch but cant remember if they are m12 or m14 .. worth a try

I had the machine shop modify the standard wheel bolts by machining off the threaded portion and then drill and tap the head for m12x1.5 pitch.
It works perfectly.

Tony Z wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:49 pm After Edmond made his post, I had to check my facts. I was sure I had a picture somewhere of the spindle sizes.
Well, it turns out that early spindles have smaller inner bearings but larger outer bearings than the late spindles.
See below for sizes.

@Tony Z can you please repost this pic of the difference in spindles

Front stub axle dia. from thin to thick changed in 62/63 beetles locally. If your beam has a steering damper then it should have the thicker dia. stub axles.

I do have a Drawing my friend made for a Hub to be machined to fit original bearing. Just a bitch to upload anything on this site will gladly e-mail it to anybody