[T3] Brake Calipers

[Jim Adney]

On 9 Aug 2011 at 22:18, Adriel Rowley wrote:

> > From: jadney at vwtype3.org

> > All late calipers came with 2 bleeders.
> >
> > Early calipers came with 1 bleeder, but later replacements for the
> > early calipers came with 2.
> >
> Then why did Russ say lates came at first with single bleeders, seen 
> others mentioned, and I have an example of one?  

I don't know why, or even if, Russ ever said such a thing. The VW 
microfilm shows 4 bleeder valves per car for all cars with the late 
calipers and that's all I've ever heard of or seen. You may be mixing 
up descriptions of early and late calipers, since the LATE 
replacements for EARLY calipers came with 2 bleed valves. Those LATE 
replacements should be avoided, because they were usually made with 
40 mm pistons, which were correct for Type 1 Ghias, not the 42 mm 
pistons that are correct for all Type 3s and Type 4s.   

ATe made calipers for many automakers and in a given era they used 
the same castings but machined them differently. I have calipers here 
that look like early VW calipers, but they have 38 mm, 39 mm, and 40 
mm pistons. Only the 40s were used by VW, on the Type 1 Ghias. If 
you've seen a caliper that looked like a late Type 3 caliper but that 
had just one bleeder valve, my guess is that it was made for an 
automaker other than VW.

I'm not familiar with all the other automaker versions, but ATe 
supplied that style of 2-piston fixed caliper as fronts and rears to 
Porsche, Volvo, Saab, Mercedes, BMW and possibly more. I usually 
can't tell what size piston is inside until I take the caliper apart.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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