On my car removal of the parking brake cable was out of the question during a standard brake job. It was not accessable from inside the vehical and further inspection revealed that you needed to remove the exhaust to disconnect it from underneath.

This made replacing the rear shoes a big hassle since I could not relieve the pressure on the cable to easily reinstall new shoes. I eventually figured out that I could wedge a very large screw driver or somthing of similar utility between the spring cladded cable and the small retaining bracket holding the cable in place. You can see this retaining bracket in the pics showing the new cable installed. When I wedged the screw driver between the cable and retaining bracket it allowed me to draw back the spring with a pair of pliars and slip on the parking brake lever to the new shoe. Very tricky but it worked twice. Otherwise when you try to draw the spring back the whole cable bends/distorts out of the way and you cant do anything.

A couple other notes:

My seals for the inner bearings stuck to the spindle due to rust/buildup. I thought the new ones would be fine but I was wrong. Have some fine grit sandpaper handy to remove all the buildup where the seals mount on the spindle before attemting to install the new drum. I didn’t and it messed up my new seal; basically the spring got squeezed out of the new seal and jammed perfectly into the bearing between the two cages holding in the rollers. Not good! Make sure to pack/grease your new bearings properly.

Another strange note, on my new shoes (WearEver Silver Part# NB559 Autozone) the right/front shoe on the passenger side did not have a hole for the retaining spring/post that holds the shoe to the drum base. I had to drill one!

My brakes seemed to work a little better when I drove (rather fast) in reverse and applyied quick firm brake pressure to stop. I did this a couple of times.

To bleed the brakes I always just open one bleeder at a time and let it run/drip till the air is flushed out. Always start at the farthest wheel from the master cylinder. Close the bleeder valve, pump the brakes and then open them to let them drip again. Do this until the brake pedal feels good. Watch and refill the master cylider as your doing this. DO NOT dry out the master cylinder. This procedure also flushes all the old fluid out of which mine was nasty.

First the allen-headed screw that holds on the cast lock cylinder to the column was loose which caused my steering wheel to move in and out a little bit. After the repair was done i noticed this was gone because I tightened the bolt when replacing the lock/cylinder/switch unit.

Second, my car didn’t have the black plastic lock collar shown in the pictures above. It had a spring held on under pressure by three lock rings/collars (like washers). I used the same method described to remove them but to reinstall I used a 21mm deepwell socket and hammered them back into place. If you have this setup pay attention to the order of assembly; there was a bushing (cylindric collar) between the spring and the cast lock cylinder unit. Also put your hand over the threaded column sectuion to prevent the lock rings from flying off when you try to remove them. If you are careful the rings can be resused without a problem.

Lastly, my ignition switch did not appear damaged when I got it out. But it was malfunctioning as described at the begginning of this post.

P.S. Don’t forget to hook up your wiring harness to the new switch before replacing your turn signal switch.

Thanks for all the great articles and photos , keep up the good work .

Would the Corrado G60 Master Cylinder: 357 611 019 B be a direct replacement for the 20.64 mm master cylinder in my 1982 VW Rabbit pickup ?