Sponge Wobble

The new tire is nice and sticky, but did not affect the wobble, but that's ok because now I remember why...

The rear wheels, especially the left one, have a wobble. It's very subtle, but definitely enough to affect the front end.

My first fear, and probably why I put it out of my mind, is that the axle was bent.

Having suddenly remembered this, I began shopping for axles for the eventual replacement. Turns out there are two lengths of swing axle, so I consulted the oracle ("Tinker" in my local BTW chapter) and he suggested that the axles are VERY hard to bend and that there could be several much easier to fix things wrong instead.

Last night, I pulled the left wheel off and, while I could not find my dial indicator to quantify it, I did not *need* the indicator to see that the aluminum wheel adapter is bent.

Upon further investigation, I see why it's bent...

The brake drum, in a departure from the usual hub/drum setup for Beetles, has a separate brake drum and wheel hub. Seems that it may be the way the brakes are done on a Type 3. The brake drum is held on the hub by two low profile bolts.

The bolt shown here interferes with the back of the wheel adapter.

Someone tried grinding away some material on the back of the adapter:

...but either they didn't remove enough or they didn't remove it soon enough and the adapter plate bent.

These plates depend on one eccentric bolt in order to adapt a hub with four bolt holes to a wheel with five studs.

It occurs to me as I write this that I may be able to reposition the eccentric bolt to a hole adjacent to the low profile bolt head. This may simply bring a different spot into interference.

I will try that with the new adapters, which I am picking up a lunch today, but I may end up just cutting away some material to relieve some clearance on the back of the new adapters.

[update]

I forgot to update this blog until the next entry was already posted. I removed the two low profile bolts, "depending" on the lug bolts to hold the hub in place. The rear wheel wobble is gone. The 30MPH front end wobble is unchanged.