Friday, February 19, 2010

Traveling Mechanic’s Preparation

This weekend I’ll be traveling down to Blacksburg to work on Heidi. Brianna’s been telling me of an intermittent scraping noise she’s hearing (and sometimes feeling) coming from the right rear of her car. My initial thought was a rear wheel bearing needing to be greased, so I packed the tools and grease required to do the clean and re-pack job. However, it could be something different, so I tried to prepare for all possibilities last night. In case the bearing on her car is too damaged to continue using, I rebuilt the bearing in one of the axle assembly I’d removed from the rusty, red ’64. I made sure the splines on the driven end of the shaft were cleaned and greased to facilitate the reinstallation of the u-joint hug. In case the noise is coming from a failing u-joint, I cleaned up and greased one of the u-joints that the aforementioned car had donated to my parts pile. To change out an axle assembly, the u-joint hub needs to come off the current axle’s spline. In order to do that, I’ll need penetrating fluid, a hub puller and a propane torch so all that went in the back of the PT Cruiser as well. I then added coveralls, rags, jack, jackstands, and wood blocks.

I’m quite fortunate in that Brianna’s future in-laws have offered the use of their garage. My main goal is to not make a mess on their floor, so a piece of cardboard went in the back of the PT Cruiser as well.

It’s going to be interesting weekend.

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