My husband & I have a '98 Jetta Wolfsburg that we just discovered needs far more repairwork than we had thought. The wheel bearing that we were told would need to be reapired/replaced has now expanded to include the brakepads & rotors, master cylinder, and a few other needed repairs. We can't drive it for safelty reasons & for fear of making it worse, but we need it to get to work. Does anyone know if this is something we could do ourselves and where we could find instructions if so? Any advice anyone has to offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

Honestly any repair can be done with research. Replacing brakes/rotors is relatively very easy, the master cylinder is a little more challenging but it's easy to locate and could possibly be repaired without completely replacing.............some shops try to rack up repairs to make money so if i were you i would get a second opinion.

hope to help

[X(]

 

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ...NEVER HEARD OF A MASTER CYLINDER REPLACEMENT..UN LESS THE NEGLECT WAS TOTAL...AND DAMAGE WAS DONE TO THE CYLINDER...THEY CAN BE REBUILT...BUT I THINK THAT GARAGE IS PADDING THE BILL....BRAKES ARE EASY TO REPLACE UN LESS THE LINES ARE BAD AND LEAKING...BUT BLEEDING IS A NO BRAINER AND VERY EASY TO DO AS A HUSBAND AND WIFE TEAM.....YOU SHOULD DO BRAKES.....INSPECT THE BEARINGS FOR SCORING(BURNING)CRACKS, IE BALL BEARINGS FALLING OUT OF THE RING BEARING!...GREASE NEW REPLACEMENTS VERY WELL...I MEAN GOOP IT ON...ITS GONA BE MESSY...BUT THATS THE WAY THEY LAST...OTHERWISE YOU HAVE YOUR PRESENT SITUATION!

 

We have a 1975 Super Beetle that we just replaced the brakes (pads and master cylinder). We are having a hell of a time with it. We did a gravity bleed on the master cylinder and bled the other brakes as well. The car will stop...eventually. We have replaced the brakes on our 99 Jetta and it was no problem. Does anyone have any advice to what the heck we are missing. I am sure it is something extrememly silly. We are die hards and spent 9 darn hours trying to figure these brakes out with limited success. I would have gladly paid a shop to do it, had I known we were going to have this many problems.Now we are going to take it to a shop since we can't figure it out. Any help would be great!

 

clumberbug

did you prime the master cylinder before you installed it?

priming just takes a few minutes. you put the new master cylinder on a vise. but some plastic connectors to run pvc tubing from the master cyclinders back to the resevoir. use a screwdriver and press into the master cylinder. keep doing this until there is you don't see any air bubbles. then drain slightly and install, bleed and your done. and you save over $200 to do this. the shop was going to charge me $140 to install the master cylinder and $120 to flush the brake fluid. spent $60 for the master cyclinder, almost $20 for the brake fluids (i wanted to completely flush out my brake system) and $15 for a used vise clamp.