Just finished a front end refresh today. Much of what's below got stuffed into the Red Car. I replaced the wheel bearings, all bushings (including the radius rods), all ball joints, the hub and lug nuts, and even the pivot tubes for the upper control arms. You have to remove the knuckle to replace a wheel bearing or lower ball joint, and that's a LOT of work. If you're going to do it, you might as well replace everything you can while it's all apart.
I started on June 20th and finally finished today. God was it a bear of a job. First, I managed to screw up my order and get wrong parts because Rock Auto makes their site confusing. Nor could I return them because they've been sitting around here for a year already. What can I say, I buy parts, then 15 things catch fire immediately and it takes a year to get back to where I was.
Here is my poor Red Car, heedless of the protracted trial that is about to befall it. Rock Auto sent me a few parts that were not usable, like a lower control arm that was so old the bushings had turned to stone. Then I managed to ruin a wheel bearing installing it. Then I ordered the wrong part to replace it. Each order involves another week's wait to receive a replacement in the mail.
Alas, how the Red Car sat for more than a month. Then I finally had it near done. I torqued down all my nuts, installed all the cotter pins and began to lower the car. That's when I noticed that BOTH lower ball joint boots had burst when I torqued their nuts. Moog had overfilled them with grease, I think. So there was more re-ordering and the third or fourth or fifth (I lost count) removal of the knuckles from the car.
I took the opportunity to take some measurements in a search for brake options.
After I put it all back together yet again, I found that my driver's side wheel would not turn after I torqued down the spindle nut. So after another half-dozen removals of the knuckle from the car I learned that TrakMotive has got some key areas of their CV joint too large, so it jams against the dust ring in the back of the knuckle instead of applying proper torque to the wheel bearing.
Here you can see the cv joint bedded against the dust ring at the back of the knuckle. Basically, where the shiny part above turns into dirty part, there should be a gap. I spent some more time chewing on TrakMotive's tech support (who haven't been very helpful, frankly), before handling the issue with a belt sander and an angle grinder. So hillbilly. So terribly, terribly hillbilly.
You can see the shiny areas of the dust ring where the CV joint rubbed.
They look so similar, but they aren't.... I did ask them to correct the problems so the rest of you guys won't have an issue. Who knows if they'll do anything.
Anyway, the car is back on the road again.
The deal is, there was nothing wrong with any of the parts I replaced. Nothing was cracked or making noise or showing any sign of problems. I felt guilty replacing it all. Still, the front end felt loosey goosey when I drove and I couldn't shake the feeling that everything there was 30 years and nearly 250k miles old. I think everything but the lower ball joints rolled off the assembly line with the car. It's pretty impressive to me that it's all held up so well.
After my road test tonight, I regret nothing! The front end is so tight and super precise now! I haven't driven too much because I need an alignment, but what a difference. Yay for the Red Car!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Dr_Snooz
Bookmarks