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VW Squareback
Always had a bad connection on the left side of the switch and noticed smoke a few times (should have been enough warning!). But, it always worked and I just chalked it up to the personality of the car.
One day, however, it just stopped working so I dug in and took the whole thing apart. If you ever do this, be very careful, there are lots of little pieces and they like to fly all kinds of directions.
As I found out from the Type 3 Mailing list, no one has pictures of the insides of these rare beasts, so here they are.
New: THE BEAST HAS BEEN CONQUERED!!
Updated as of 12/5/03
White lines show where crimped pieces are and the little one shows what I broke :-(
Again, little white line shows what I broke.
View without cap.
This shows the end cap with missing material that will have to be built up with JB-weld or PC-7.
Updated as of 12/4/03
Exploded view of the part that I didn't notice could come out.
The red line shows the part of the spring that is broken. Here, it is just hanging out in a nice, open space.
Here, the spring is resting against a stop as it would be in the "run" position. The spring would not be under tension at this time.
In this position, the spring is under tension. If you look closely, you can see why the spring breaks, and why the design was obviously changed. Only the tip of the bent end of the spring is supported on the shoulder. There is a long piece that is being torqued at a weird angle and is not supported in any way.
The infamous spring housing. If you look closely, you can see where the spring end was forced up (arrow) out of its correct position and up on the edge, where it started to score the face of the piece holding it in.
I worked the rolled pin out so that I could see where the spring was broken. This pic shows how the spring should look if it were not broken.
Here is a scale shot with the broken piece removed. Anyone know where I can get a new spring like this? Can I make one by bending a similar, circular spring? I guess that goes against what springs are supposed to do (ie. not bend).