My son has a nice mk2 Golf which has sat in his garage for a while and this year he is back working on it with my grandson who is mad on vw's and likes to help and learn. Anyway the latest project is to replace the brakes, maybe a total refurb. The plan seems to be to replace disks, drums, shoes, wheel cylinders, callipers, hoses, fluid, hand brake cables etc. Maybe not a new master cylinder. Do you think while they are at it, to replace everything including the old original master cylinder? Can it be refurbed? How to make a start on the job ? just drain the fluid and remove the old parts? Strip it all out as it were? Will that get rid of the old fluid? Advice would be most welcome.
I'd say start at the front the calipers (easy job), then the back with new cylinders and shoes (do the drums really need changing?). M/C may or may not need changing. Folk used to sell refurb kits, but they seem to have gone out of fashion - you buy the complete unit. Then...flush whatever remnants of fluid out and replace with fresh. A pressure-bleeder's only about 35 quid. Expect the old steel unions to put up a fight, so lengths of new brake pipe may be necessary.
I would be wary of totally emptying the system of fluid if you are not changing the metal brake lines and master cylinder as the seals in the master cylinder could then fail. Assuming the metal pipes are sound, do the rear flexi’s and cylinders first, one side at a time and bleed it as you go. It will have a dual circuit diagonally opposed. If the metal unions are tight and the pipe starts to twist give it some heat with a blow torch to loosen them but beware of dripping fluid that will burn a bit. Bleeding it as you go will flush the system anyway. Doing the rear first flushes the longest lines. If you do each corner in turn, adjust and bleed you will keep a good pedal throughout. If the pedal then goes spongy you will know which corner isn’t right.
Is it a GTI or does it have drums? If it's disks at the back you you are draining the system, don't mount the calipers to bleed them as its next to impossible to get a good pedal.....use a big G lamp to hold the cylinder in and tilt the caliper whilst upright, then bleed. I had to tach the local VW main dealer that trick back in the day.
thinking of bleeding out the old cruddy fluid first and topping up the m/c reservoir as we go, sounds like a vacuum/pressure bleeding kit is the way to do it. Lots on ebay and pretty cheap and the process sounds fun. Anyone used one. so start off the refurb with clean fluid in the system. then raise the rear and put on axle stands and remove the wheels and do each corner one at a time. good point about keeping the drums, they are original but should clean up ok and we could paint the outsides and rub down the friction surfaces. so many stories about repro drums poor quality. make sense so far?
I'd just strip everything off and worry about the fluid later. If you take off the callipers and cylinders, syringe out the reservoir, that's most of the muck gone anyway.
Like on my bus, clean up the rusty edge lips on OG drums may be more circular than new ones.. just measure for wear and keep if in spec.
