What way does the axle nut turn on a vw super beetle?

Answer 1

If you're talking about the one in the back, it's a standard right-hand thread but thanks to repeated heating/cooling cycles the nut is on there TIGHT! You can't get it off with a regular wrench. There are a couple ways to do it.

The cheapest way to do it is to get a "VW Axle Nut Tool." This is a piece of steel with a 1/2" square hole for your breaker bar on one end of it, and a 36mm, or 46mm if you're working on a Bus, hexagonal hole on the other end. You remove the cotter pin from the nut, put your breaker bar in the breaker bar hole, put the other hole on the nut you're trying to get off, then WITH THE TIRE STILL SITTING ON THE GROUND press down on the breaker bar with your left hand and beat on the axle nut tool, right above where the breaker bar is going into it, with a three-pound sledgehammer. This is guaranteed to get the nut off. If you do it all the time you'll ruin your bearings, but if you do it just once every couple of years it's okay.

You can also use a 3/4" drive 36mm socket and breaker bar with a long cheater bar (when you do this you stand on the end of the wrench and bounce up and down until the nut gives up), a 3/4" drive impact wrench or any other way of generating a few hundred pounds of torque.