The chassis teardown ends!

Armed with a shiny new 26mm socket I set about dismantling the last few parts of the chassis. I am pleased to say everything went smoothly this week and I sustained virtually no cuts or abrasions!

First of all I decided to unbolt the starter motor from the transmission casing:

Then I detached the rear shock absorbers, which is achieved by undoing a few nuts and bolts….

And they are off (but looking incredibly warn and filthy)! .....

Next I detached the clutch cable by removing the wing-nut that I have circle in the image below:

Just behind the transmission (underneath where the rear seat once sat) is a small inspection hatch which is held in place by a single cross headed screw:

This gave me access to the coupler that hooks the shift rod to the transmission. The square headed bolt that I have circled below just needed to be loosened to allow the shift rod to detach:

The axle tubes are held in place by three bolts. Please note that in the picture below only two of the bolts are visible and the third is obscured by the axle tube itself. It is behind there though, I promise!

I used my new 26mm socket combined with the breaker bar to take out the rear transmission nuts. Below you can see the left hand side one coming out and the right hand side one I have circled:

To release the handbrake cables from the rear brake drums I had to remove a cluster of nuts located on top of the handbrake, which I have circled below. In case you are wandering, I am pretty sure these improvised spacers (aka: unaesthetic stack of miss-matched nuts), which effectively increase the tension on the cables, are not standard VW issue:

Once the ends of the cables are loose they can be drawn out of the tubes at the rear of the car:

My next task was to remove the rear wheels and prop the chassis up on axle stands. Using my trusty trolley jack and a small piece of wood, I supported the weight of the transmission before attempting to pull it free:

All that remained was the removal two more smaller nuts that held the end of the transmission casing to the chassis. This is where the left hand side one was hiding:

.....and the right hand side:

After a small tug the transmission was free:

At this point the only other thing I could remove from the chassis was the pedal cluster. So I did. This cover plate is on the opposite side of the central tunnel to the pedals:

With the cover removed you can see the operating lever which the accelerator cable hooks onto. The lever was easily removed by taking off the spit pin (top red arrow in picture below) and the circlip (indicated by the bottom red arrow):

The lever then just pulls loose leaving just the end of the accelerator rod protruding from the tunnel:

Once the accelerator rod was drawn out from the other (driver's) side, the pedals were free to be lifted out. Using a small screwdriver I coaxed loose the 'guide-tube-backing-plate-thingy' and pulled it out of the tunnel:

And so at the end of the day this is what was left of my bride n' joy.......

The chassis teardown begins!

I have just had a very productive bank holiday Monday and managed to strip a lot of components off the chassis. The first job I tackled was the brake lines. You can see below where they attach to the master cylinder:

And here is the junction where they connect at the rear of the car:

After dismantling:

For the first time during this project I was 100% confident that the components that make up the brake system would come apart without any drama. This is because I replaced all of the brake lines and master cylinder with new ones about 8 years ago and liberally applied copper grease to all of the threads at the time. It made everything so much easier and I gave myself a pat on the back for thinking ahead.

Before I could remove the master cylinder I needed to detach the push-rod that connects to the brake pedal. This was simply a case of removing a circlip and sliding out the pin:

 

I was then able to pull out the push rod and remove the master cylinder:

I then turned my attention to front beam which connects to the chassis by 4 bolts which are clearly visible in the image below:

I drenched the bolts in lots of penetrating fluid and then jacked the front up slightly to take the strain off of the bolts as I began to remove them: 

Once they had all been taken out, the front beam (with the wheels still attached) came free easily:

.....then I decided to take the wheels off (I have no idea why I did it this way round, I just did!) and this is what I was left with:

Next weekend I shall hopefully find the time to work on the rear section of the chassis and will be removing the transmission.

Note to self: I will need to purchase a 26mm socket for unscrewing the two huge bolts that secure the transmission onto the frame.