Parts Smart

 Last Saturday, I got the parts back from the machine shop.  I took in the front torsion arms to have new ball joints pressed in, and the rear trailing arms went in for new bushings for the pivot bolt.

These are both jobs that I simply could not do myself, as they both require the use of a hydraulic press, not to mention the skill and experience to do the job without damaging the parts.  This meant that I had to pay to have them done, and boy, did I ever pay!  I am still smarting from the cost, which came to $675.

Although this included parts and labor, I can't help but feeling that this was just way too much.  I suppose I could have tried to remove the parts myself, and I could have purchased the new parts and brought them in instead of allowing the shop to charge a markup, and I could even have shopped around to find someone--not necessarily a VW shop--who could have done the job for less.

Right, woulda, coulda, shoulda.

At the end of the day, though, it's more about what I didn't want to do than what I did.  After all that sort of effort would have been considerable with no guarantee that it would be substantially cheaper and certainly no assurance that it would have been done right.  I felt like it was the right thing to do to let the shop make a little money on the parts, as the job itself was so unique as to require a special effort.  Long ago this would have been one of the more common jobs in the shop's repertoire but today it is an obscure and even delicate task.  That doesn't make it worth what I paid, necessarily, but it knowing that I had it done right and the with the right parts does at least put some salve on the wound. Above, you can see the old bushing on the left; the new one is on the right.

One other thing that they did was to finally loosen and remove the wheel nut on the right side.  I was never able to remove it because I couldn't generate enough torque without literally flipping the frame over, so I paid them to pull it off.  This revealed the cruddiest, most beat-up drum brake set I've ever seen, and virtually sealed my decision to replace the drums with discs when it comes time to put it back together.

I did some pricing on the internet and found I can put in a whole brand-new kit for about $300.  At the same time, I will probably get new rotors for the front.  The calipers up front seem in good shape, so I will likely be able to get away with just refurbishing them and putting in new pads.


I pulled the backing plate off the right side so now I have a matching pair of trailing arms, ready to be buffed, painted and put back in, hopefully later today!