Power Assisted Brakes and Clutch

[Nasir Lotia]

Can I have Power Assisted Brakes and Clutch, now with my age its difficult to drive my VW Beetle 1969 Sedan and my 1971 VW Thing with mechanical ones.

[Marc]

Vacuum power brakes would be challenging, mostly because of the lack of room for a servo can - you'd most likely end up having to butcher the trunk floor (and probably change gas tanks) to fabricate a structure where you could mount suspended pedals and a high-mount master cylinder.
I can imagine using a Hydro-boost setup with assist coming from a "power-steering" pump (GM used these in diesel-engined 2-ton trucks) but that wouldn't exactly be simple either.
A smaller-bore master cylinder would give you easier pedal effort (at the expense of greater travel) but I don't know of any dual-circuit master cylinder that'd fill that bill. Going to larger wheel cylinders would have the same effect; that's simple in the rear, just fit your front wheel cylinders back there - but there's no such option for the front, you'd have to graft on Super Beetle front brakes or disc brakes. Those both use the 4x130 lugbolt pattern, so there'd be more involved if you wanted to retain the stock 5x205 on the Thing. For the `69 Beetle, you could use Karmann-Ghia spindles and `66-early`71 Type III front calipers (all bolt on) and again use front wheel cylinders in back; even better, replace the entire rear brake assemblies with `66-up Type III (also a direct bolt-on).

Clutch pedal effort can be eased by using a shorter lever ("hook") on the pedal cluster and/or a longer release arm on the cross-shaft of the transmission. Your hook is probably 113 721 305C, the mid`64-`71 part (113 721 305B) is shorter.
Which release lever you could use depends upon the diameter of your cross-shaft, that changed in mid`72. If you've got the large one, the stock lever from a `75-up Bug is the longest. Bruce2 has a collection of different levers available and can probably fix you up with whatever you need.
Bear in mind that if you go to the extreme (short hook/long lever) it's theoretically possible that there might not be quite enough release bearing travel to assure full disengagement with a brand-new clutch. Not usually a problem but since you've got that Type 127 engine in the Thing and we don't know what clutch it could be an issue for you.

[Nasir Lotia]

Thanks Marc this great info and help.

[Steve C]

Hi

I've seen a few Beetle brake conversion using dual remote boosters. They commonly use a VH44 booster, do a search on these to see what they look like, you will need two of them, one for each circuit.

I don't advocate using a booster to make your brakes more efficient because a booster won't improve bad brakes, but in your case where you feel that you need help a boosted system it would be ideal.

Maybe you could look into a hydraulic clutch set-up and boost that as well.

Steve

[Nasir Lotia]

Thanks Steve

[Marc]

Another country heard from...
That's pretty much an OZ-centric solution, nobody in North America runs that stuff but maybe it can be found in Egypt. Interesting idea, provided you can find a source for the parts without paying an arm & a leg for shipping and customs duty.

[Steve C]

Another country heard from...
That's pretty much an OZ-centric solution, nobody in North America runs that stuff but maybe it can be found in Egypt. Interesting idea, provided you can find a source for the parts without paying an arm & a leg for shipping and customs duty.

Hi

They were used on Leyland Minis (not the new pseudo one), surely you have them in the states or they could be sourced from the UK.

Steve

[Jadewombat]

It can be done, I went with disk brakes on my '66 bus and vacuum assist and hydraulic clutch at the same time. I used a kit to swap the disks to the spindles, then fabricated my own square bracket to fit the master cylinder and booster from a '75 bus in the beam where the stock master cylinder was and hooked up to the stock pedal.

When I swapped all of this I went to a hydraulic clutch setup, so I just used the clutch cable tube as the vacuum line. The pedal effect was night and day, and I used to have a '70 bus with disks swapped but without power assist and you can definitely feel it. The hydraulic clutch I used was a CNC slave cylinder and a replacement clutch master cylinder from an '82 Datsun truck (not recommended, getting the lines to work together was a pain in the butt). I had to weld in a bracket for the clutch master cylinder and make an S-bend in the pushrod (heating and torching it) from the pedal to the clutch master cylinder.

Getting all of this in a bug or thing wouldn't be impossible, the bus was a pretty tight space. I would second what Marc suggested, try getting a floor mounted pedal cluster to simplify the install with a longer pedal ratio. The longer ratio will make it a lot easier to push on. Some ideas:

http://shoptalkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=131162

They make a floor mounted setup as well.

[Steve Arndt]

Mike Ghia was able to fit the Porsche 944 booster and master cylinder into his bug.