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There's been a big pile of brake parts building up on my basement floor. While some of them have been there for over a year, most of them showed up after my plea for caliper cores for rebuilding. Most of the pile was calipers, but there were also a half dozen tandem MCs and a few rear wheel cylinders. My thanks to those who contributed calipers to my pile. This week I decided to clean up the pile and restock my shelves. Last weekend I dismantled and cleaned about 8 calipers. Those were in addition to about 6 more which I had dismantled earlier. From those parts, I put together 6 early style calipers and 2 late calipers. Today I disassembled, honed, and cleaned 5 MCs and 2 rear cylinders. There's one more MC and one more rear cyl that I still need to work on. Tomorrow I'll try to rebuild as many of those as I can and put them all back on my shelves. I'm currently out of caliper kits, so I can't do any more of those just now, but I should be able to get some more soon. After that, I should be fully set to rebuild, replace, or exchange just about any brake part that anyone sends me. Among the calipers people sent me, there were quite a few that had the compensating pins broken out of them. VW never says what the pins were for, but it appears to me that they are supposed to keep the pads from being forced back into the caliper when the stub axle flexes in hard cornering. If that mechanism wasn't there, the next time you went to brake the pedal might go all the way to the floor. I've always insisted on only using calipers with the pins and piston mechanisms intact, but I have to admit that this might only be important on front axle beams from '66 to mid-'68, when the stub axle was stiffened. While it seems prudent to stick with the way VW engineered these, I also have to admit that I know of NO other make or manufacturer who ever did this. Porsche never did it, and VW didn't do it in the Type 1 Ghia. I can't remember whether VW did it in the Type 4 calipers. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? Right now, I'm sitting on maybe 10 calipers with the pins broken out of them. Unless I hear good reasons why these might be less satisfactory, I'm tempted to rebuild them and offer them at a discount, for cars after '68 only. What do you folks think? -- ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~