Mr. Tom,
The fast way and the easiest, is to simply heat the center of the drum
round the hub, and you can just pull it off when drum expands.
Clean well, and add lots of anti seize to hub center when reinstalling.

Hub does not have to come off when doing rear brakes.
Good Evening,

Fred

E-mail message

Perhaps living in California has spoiled me in this regard, but even in
situations where the drums and hubs have been together for a long, long
time I've managed to remove the drums from the hubs without going to
Herculean effort. Certainly less effort than removing and them
installing a nut to 500Nm, particularly since I don't have the tools to
do this in the first place.
I've always found that judicious use of a 3 lb. sledge around the
circumference of the flat face of the drum will eventually break the
"sticktion" that builds up between the drum and the hub.
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Tom Young � � � � � � � � � � � '81 Vanagon
Lafayette, CA 94549 � � � � '82 Westfalia
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----- Original Message -----
From: "John Connolly" <john@AIRCOOLED.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: Rear Brakes
while I do agree you can do it, it is a lot easier to remove the drum
and hub. Sometimes trying to remove the drum from the hub is a SOB.
Kinda' like changing the generator in a beetle in the engine bay. You
CAN do it but it's easier to just yank the engine first.
John
Aircooled.Net Inc.
The myth that one needs to remove the axle nut to do the rear brakes is
one that's been repeated in just about every manual I've seen. Even the
Bentley, while not explicitly saying so, suggests this it true. Well,
it's not.