Only a few days to go till our first ever trip camping in the van and a week before we take her to the V Festival and disaster has struck during the brake change.Disaster 1) My mates changing the rear drums and shoes on the drive for me and he thinks he’s somehow broken the clip on the back plate that the springs clip on just below cylinder. BUT he hasn’t, it turns out some W***** who had done some work on it before I owned it, had obviously broken the clip off the back plate then welded it to the cylinder. Now we have a clip welded to an old rear cylinder and a hole in the back plate. Nice!
Disaster 2) Whilst looking at the disaster and wondering if we will ever get the van on the road I notice a round lump of rust, metal and mud, just sitting on top of the trailing arm in the middle of the spring. On further inspection it turns out this lump of metal is the spring locater, which has snapped off the rear trailing arm – god only knows how long its been like this!!!!!!
I see Brickwerks sell a Trailing Arm repair section that welds onto the existing trailing arm, for £16 which was some relief, and rear back plates cost about £60 each from JK. How much work will it be to change both these bits and realistically do I have much chance of getting these 2 disasters sorted before next Friday and is this gonna cost me 2 arms and 2 legs to get it fixed?!?
How unsafe would it be safe to chisel off the clip from the cylinder and weld it to the new cylinder... Im thinking no way, and for the sake of £60 get a new plate!!
Someone give me some good news, or some drugs please!!!
T4 Karmann Colorado
Or maybe not.
