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Brake pushrod length?

I have read extensive discussions about how critical the brake pushrod length is on the VW braking system and I'm baffled as to the complexity of the responses/posts on the subject. If the pedal assembly is mounted in a comfortable operating position, and you adjust the pushrod for proper pedal free play before the pushrod contacts the master cylinder piston, and the m/c piston travels the entire distance and works properly, why is it any more complicated than that? When I was doing this repair to my VW I read all the stuff about "never tampering with factory length", using makeshift guages, and so on, and I really couldn't make any sense of that. I adjusted things as above, including the pushrod, and my brakes work great. How can that be wrong? .. Jeff

Reply to
JeffRens
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The warning comes from experience showing that people who tampered with it were clueless and in hopes of getting better brakes, they adjusted the play to zero. Causing the master cylinder to not allow fluid to return back from the wheel cylinder properly. It may cause an accident if the brake system works wrong, so it was considered good advice to keep your hands off the damn thing.

But this all assumed nobody else BEFORE you has tampered with it, and that the travel stop is still stopping the pedal where it should, etc. etc. etc.

Jan

Reply to
Jan Andersson

The length is set at the factory to assure that you will still have one functioning circuit if the other circuit in your tandem system fails. It's quite possible to adjust the pushrod so that the system works just fine when everything's okay, but for the pedal to hit the firewall once one system fails. If you system happens to be set up that way, you've overridden the backup function of the tandem system.

Does this answer your question?

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----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

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Reply to
Jim Adney

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