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IDI Engine / Re: Booster full of brake fluid
« Last post by Rabbit79 on February 23, 2024, 02:23:46 pm »So I know this is quite an old post, but it did end up being quite a saga that dragged on for a long time (mostly due to my own laziness I should interject at this point) and I thought I would show some resolution. I got the brake line situation fixed in a rather surprising fashion. I happened to be chatting with the head mechanic at, of all places, the local Ford dealership (he is a friend of mine), and the subject of my brake line came up, and he said we've got some brake line with metric ends, maybe we can make it work. So I took my old brake line to him and we measured it and it turned out be the exact same length, diameter, and have the same fittings on the ends as my VW line did. Perfect match. He loaned me his bending tools and I got that replaced quite easily. I never thought it would turn out that easy.
The booster side of the story turned out a little different. After I got everything put back together things were fine for a while and then all of sudden my vacuum pump started eating diaphragms. I never really did figure out what was causing this and if it was related in any way to the booster, but after a few years of rebuilding pumps every 3 months I got tired of that and put one of the new vane style pumps in. After this things switched to where I was getting vacuum assist only intermittently and then after a while to no vacuum assist at all. Being my somewhat lazy self I decided to just deal with it and went for like 5 years without any assist on the brakes. Here this past summer I finally decided to fix it and after checking around discovered that you can't get a new booster for a pre-80 Rabbit. Apparently they changed the way it hooks to the brake pedal in 1980 and post 80 boosters (which you can still get new by the way) won't work on a 79 or earlier version. I probably could have fabricated something if I'd had to but what I ended up doing was sending it in to Parts Place and they sent it to their rebuilder. Cost was about 275 dollars. Now.... Did getting all that brake fluid in there cause the booster to fail? I can't say on that because I had no contact with the rebuilder, so I don't know what they found when they went in there. I also have to take into account that it was 40 years old by the time it failed, so it could have been just natural wear and tear, but it did happen just not very long after it got filled full of brake fluid. It's unfortunate that I don't have a concrete conclusion on that but that's how it goes sometimes. Anyway, it's been in and working fine for about 6 months now (yes I did actually wait for awhile to make sure everything held up before posting).
Saga complete.
The booster side of the story turned out a little different. After I got everything put back together things were fine for a while and then all of sudden my vacuum pump started eating diaphragms. I never really did figure out what was causing this and if it was related in any way to the booster, but after a few years of rebuilding pumps every 3 months I got tired of that and put one of the new vane style pumps in. After this things switched to where I was getting vacuum assist only intermittently and then after a while to no vacuum assist at all. Being my somewhat lazy self I decided to just deal with it and went for like 5 years without any assist on the brakes. Here this past summer I finally decided to fix it and after checking around discovered that you can't get a new booster for a pre-80 Rabbit. Apparently they changed the way it hooks to the brake pedal in 1980 and post 80 boosters (which you can still get new by the way) won't work on a 79 or earlier version. I probably could have fabricated something if I'd had to but what I ended up doing was sending it in to Parts Place and they sent it to their rebuilder. Cost was about 275 dollars. Now.... Did getting all that brake fluid in there cause the booster to fail? I can't say on that because I had no contact with the rebuilder, so I don't know what they found when they went in there. I also have to take into account that it was 40 years old by the time it failed, so it could have been just natural wear and tear, but it did happen just not very long after it got filled full of brake fluid. It's unfortunate that I don't have a concrete conclusion on that but that's how it goes sometimes. Anyway, it's been in and working fine for about 6 months now (yes I did actually wait for awhile to make sure everything held up before posting).
Saga complete.