Just had a great weekend doing the Brighton Breeze. Bertie performed great with the exception of a high pitched squeal throughout the weekend. We deduced that it was coming from NSF wheel, possibly brake related. So after getting home today, I had a look and found the culprit The spreader spring has broken and was flapping about! First question - Having driven around 150 miles or so is there likely to be any issues or damage caused? Second question - does anyone know where I can get a replacement or does anyone have an unwanted spare knocking about? Thanks for your help.
@Bertie the Bus I think they just stop the pads rattling about & assist in preventing uneven wear & binding. Available from the usual... suspects
Thanks @theBusmonkey . Bloody VWH search engine is carp - nothing sensible came up! I've now ordered a fitting kit from GSF.
If you Google search the part and include the letters vwheritage in the search, it usually takes you straight to the part on their website. You are right,their search engine is crud. Example. VW type 2 brake pads vwheritage.
Yep, that's what I did but my search on VWH prior to posting hadn't produced anything useful! It seems the search has to be quite specific! In this case including "fitting kit".
Wake up VW Heritage and sort out your website! I agree with the above comments. VW Heritage are a mail order company and you would have thought they would have a slick modern easy to use website for their customers. As well as a useless search facility the website is slow and many times I have given up and gone elsewhere. I buy a lot from Megabug these days and they have good used parts on offer, you know the original quality stuff.
Original caliper pistons have a cut-out section where they contact the pads. The cut-out section must be orientated correctly to prevent squeal. To keep the pistons from slowly turning there would have been and still might be anti-squeal plates between piston and pad. The plates have tabs that locate within the cut-out section of the piston to prevent it turning. The plates are often (normally) found with the tabs squashed flat. You cannot turn the pistons in the calipers to the correct position, you must take them out and put them back the right way round. Then pop the plates back in, locating the tabs in the piston cut-outs. Squeal gone. Theoretically speaking anyway.
I found two kinds of springs. One intended to work with the anti squeal plates. These are roughly in the form of a cross like above. And a heavy duty set that fill all the space between the sides of the calipers. I found my new brakes squealed still with the lightweight springs and no anti squeal plates. When I changed to the heavy duty springs the squeal stopped. But I had to file half a millimetre off one spring because the caliper castings were a bit different each side.
