Hi Volks,

Thanks to much help from y'all, I finished changing the brake cylinders last
night. Here's a (rather detailed) summary of what I did and some of the problems:

1 - You do not need to remove the axel nut to work on the rear brakes. There
    are (usually) 2 small bolts in between the wheel bolts which hold the drum
    in place. These are easily removed. The problem comes with having to pull
    the drum off. As far as I can see, there are 2 things that hold it in place.
      a. the brake shoes inside out pressing out against it. This is easily
         taken care of by removing a rubber plug in the back of the brake
         assembly (towards the middle) and using a screwdriver to turn the
         toothed brake adjuster. You've turned it enough when you can easily
         rotate the drum a small distance.
      b. the drum is rusted to the axel shaft. The best method for this turned
         out to be a few solid hits with a normal hammer in between the wheel
         bolts, parallel to the axel shaft (and near it if possible). The trick
         to this (I think) is that the drum has a little bit of play along the
         axel shaft and every time before the next whack you pull the drum out
         towards you.
     The hand brake must be off by this point of course. :-)

2 - Although my book said to remove the brake shoes to change the cylinders, I
    did not find this necessary. I loosened the brake adjuster (horizontal bar
    just below the cylinder) enough to maneuver it out. I detached the spring
    that holds in place the little lever that rests against the brake adjuster
    (this must be the "self-adjusting" part of the adjuster). Then I unhooked
    the upper springs of the shoes where they almost meet in the center below
    the cylinder. At this point the shoes can be tapped outwards. I removed
    the bolt in the back that holds the cylinder in place. With a lot of trouble
    I unscrewed the brake fluid line, also in the back. I took out the old
    cylinder by rotating it a bit to get it out of the slots in the brake shoes.
    Then, you just reassemble with the new parts. Et voila!

3 - There were a couple of ways to readjust the brakes after all this.
      a. "Take off the drum, and rotate the adjuster wheel a bit, then put on
         the drum, and step on the pedal to centre the shoes. Remove drum and
         repeat. Once it gets so you can't readily remove the drum you are done."

      b. "There should be a hole in the backing plate just behind it through
         which you can stick a screwdriver and turn the wheel.  to best adjust
         your brakes, pick up the back end of the van so both rear tires are
         free to spin, adjust the shoes out untill you can feel some resisance.
         then go hit the brakes, that centers everything and repeat the process
         until the slight resistance stays the same."

      c. Adjust manually as above at least until the shoes are close to the
         drum. Reassemble everything. Drive slowly backwards and slam on the
         brakes.  Do this several times and see if there is improvement. I don't
         garantee that this works. It's supposed to. I think it worked a bit
         for me. If the adjuster lever is not perfectly aligned, this will not
         work.

4 - DON'T FORGET TO BLEED THE BRAKES. :-)  Thanks to all of you who yelled this
    at me in chorus. I bled both sides last night after finishing the second
    cylinder. Boy, what a difference! :-) I still have to bleed the front brakes
    and the clutch system (gotta look up how to do this..) tonight to really
    finish the job.

5 - If you followed a manual's instructions you also loosened the hand brake
    adjustment towards the beginning. You only tighten it again when all is
    done.

Strange thing I noticed. The brake shoes on the right side were rather unevenly
worn. The top was clean (but not really worn) and the bottom of the shoes was
dusty. On the *right* side, the complete shoes were unworn and dusty! Could
the cylinders have been so bad that the rear brakes were, so to speak, not 
working at all??? And to think that I had new shoes ready to put in because I
thought mine were worn out! Paid swiss prices for them too! ($120 for the pair
or something) Hope they'll take them back.. If I need them later, I'll mail 
order. As it is, even with OEM parts, the repair cost me some $125 as opposed
to the $750 or so estimated by the garage if they did it.

Thanks for everything:
Tim Smith
Joel Walker
Sean Bartnik
Ed Gould
Ron Van Ness
Richard Alexand Palmer
Michael A. Radtk
Dennis Haynes
Clara
Tobin T. Copley
Randy Farchmin
William R. Kennedy
Steve Maher
David Raistrick

Darie
'86 Westfalia