So, this expression “Garage Art” came from my buddy Scott while my bug was totally incapacitated during the spring of 2023. It spent months on jack stands in the shop as we slowly got the master cylinder, and brake fluid reservoir changed out. Scott told me at one point, to just think of the bug as “Garage Art” since it wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. That expression stuck.
That 2023 job had a few “tune ups” later as the brake sensors seemed to leak. Fortunately, all of those issues were resolved. Now I will say this, if you ever decide to replace your master cylinder, it isn’t rocket science BUT you will make it much easier on yourself if you just pull your gas tank. I didn’t – but I should have. The frustration of not having the necessary space to work in was not worth the little bit of labor that it would have taken to pull the tank out of the car.
Anyway, we are back in “garage art” territory again this year. Scott and I changed the transaxle fluid yesterday. That wasn’t an overly hard job, and it took about two hours. Probably 30 minutes of that was just letting the old fluid drain, and maybe 30 minutes to pump new fluid in. The rest was set up time and removing the fill and drain plugs.
We started by jacking the car up so that we had room to work under the transmission. As you can see the back of the car is on ramps and then we put the scissor jacks under the front to level the car. If it’s not level, all of the old fluid won’t drain out. In addition, you won’t be able to get the correct amount of fluid back in the transaxle.
Scott put his force on removing the drain plug as I pushed in on the end of the ratchet to keep the 19mm hex attachment inside the plug. The torque setting is 14-foot pounds, but I have to say, it seemed like they were on a lot tighter than that. Surprisingly, a lot of fluid came out of the fill hole. That slowed things down a bit because we weren’t really expecting that much seepage. I had to clean the floor pan off after it stopped draining.
In retrospect, once we knew we were able to loosen the fill plug, we just should have drained the fluid from the main drain plug. Once that drained for a minute, we could have removed the fill plug all the way. That would have simplified matters greatly. However, neither one of us thought that much fluid would come out of the fill hole.
Then it was on to catch the fluid in my oil pan under the main drain plug. Then as Scott removed that plug, he noticed another drain plug further back. Once the front plug slowed to a drip, I moved the oil pan back under the second plug and removed it. Of course, quite a bit more fluid came out.
After all of that it was on to pumping the new fluid back into the fill hole. I held the pump tube in the fill hole as Scott pumped. It is a slow process, but not horrible. Once that was completed, we returned the Sea Blue Bug to ground level and removed the rear passenger side wheel and looked for the brake fluid leak.
Taking the rear wheel off is a pain in the A**. The nut that holds the brake drum on is huge and torqued to 220-foot pounds. I held down on the brake pedal as Scott bounced on the cheater bar to break that nut free. Then off came the drum.
Inside the brake drum was a real mess. So much fluid and mess that it was hard to know if this was a wheel cylinder issue or a transaxle seal issue. However, I did find a nice size drip under the wheel cylinder. That combined with a drop of fluid in my master cylinder reservoir has me 85% certain that this is the brake cylinder leaking. So, I have ordered a new cylinder.
I told Scott as we finished for the day that I would like to go for one year without having to do a repair. He laughed and said, “You know you have a car that is almost 60 years old, right?”. I replied, “Yes, but it lives in a palace!” To be frank, this car has it made, it lives in a climate-controlled shop, and is babied.
Well, now it’s just the waiting game. Once the brake cylinder comes in, I will install it, and Sea Blue will be back on the road UNLESS this turns out to be the transaxle seal, so PLEASE cross your fingers!
