Aloha folks,
After too many years of listening to my pops telling me to get everything done right the first time by taking things to a professional mechanic, I have decided to step out of the shadow of his fear and my ignorance, and learn how to do the maintenance myself.
And I sure have not gotten it right the first time. Fortunately my roommate has been helping me, but he's never worked on a TLC, either, although his experience with his VW & Xtrerra has been so vital. If I can figure out how to get pictures from my phone onto here, I will see if I can post them if necessary. However, when I look at them now, I don't think I took pictures of anything useful. I had no idea what I was doing.
I read the first 4 or 5 pages of the FAQ badly prior to beginning the rebuild of front knuckles. I say badly because due to my naïveté, and upon review of the FAQ, I'm beginning to start to have a clue about where I may have gone wrong. I'd like to hear what you guys have to say first.
I rebuilt the PS first because there's some negative camber on that side, causing noticeable outer wear on the treads after 8k miles. The vehicle would also pull slightly towards the PS, even though I had taken it to a shop for an alignment twice. Sometimes there'd also be a bit of wandering with the steering and an occasional wobble. Replaced all seals, gaskets, bearings, & tie rods. This side looked relatively good inside, not soupy, just quite low on moly grease. It took half a day with a torch to get the front tie rod end off. Took a total of two days to complete the PS rebuild. Learned about the in-lbs thing - will need to redo this side because I broke two of the wiper seal bolts inside the knuckle housing. One of them broke off just while I was trying to unscrew it. I also did a piss-poor job of installing the inner axle seal. I used a block of wood, but the wood was too soft. Pieces of wood went everywhere. I have found out that a Sharpstone herb grinder will work almost perfectly for getting that sucker close to flush, then finished it off with a socket. I am wondering if I should try to replace that sooner rather than later and how many of the other things in the knuckle would need to be replaced after such a short time?
My plan was to do an alignment myself (I found the thread here on Mud - bookmarked it somewhere) after completing both knuckles. The steering was worse after the first rebuild.
The following weekend, we did the DS. This side was visibly leaking, difficult to tell if it was just from the wiper blades or if the where the steering arm attaches, if it was leaking there too or just dripping down to there. Grease inside the knuckle was extremely soupy. There was residue of some sort of sealant on various parts, which I removed. I didn't find this on the PS. I also did not take pictures of this, and can't remember which parts had this residue. At some point, during reassembly, I discovered that I lost my spring gauge scale. We winged it by just estimating pulling by hand. Right when we were wrapping up the DS and tightening those final bolts on the flange, the last ones you tighten just before installing the snap ring & dust cap, one of the nuts stopped tightening. It literally just spins in place now - can't tighten nor loosen. Not sure how I'm going to get that off. Plan is to grind it off if we can't come up with a better solution. Any ideas?
Decided that since that nut wasn't going anywhere for the time being, to finish putting it together and go for a test drive. We only changed the back tie rod end on the DS, as the plan was to change the front DS when doing the alignment. Even with this not having been done yet, the steering was much improved. The vehicle still pulled, but wandered much less and no more wobbling. Drove the vehicle around for 3 days, even going up to 70 mph on the freeway. But on that 4th day, crunch crunch knock knock. oh boy.
Pulled over, looked underneath, nothing obvious. Pulled off the dust cap, and the grease is all cooked off, snap ring sitting in the dust cap. I managed to have this happen a mile away from home. Managed to coast home, every second and every crunchy sound was agony.
I've reinstalled the snap ring 4 times, and test drove 3 of those times. Each time, it comes right off after less than 5 min of driving at no more than 25 mph. I've tried tightening the snap ring & that did not seem to help. So it's sitting all put together after that 4th reinstall, but I know it'll just pop right back off without me doing something else.
The other detail I think important to mention is that the thrust washer, adjusting nut, and lock nut on both sides had some sharp edges, were a little chewed up. I had taken a file and smoothed them out. I'm wondering how this plays a role in everything that's happening, and why they might have been chewed up in the first place? I'm considering replacing them. What are your thoughts?
The timing is so funny. My goal was to get the work done before a business trip so upon my return, there'd be no more work. Not the case it seems, so I will have to go dark after Tuesday for two weeks. Upon my return is when the correcting work will begin.
After too many years of listening to my pops telling me to get everything done right the first time by taking things to a professional mechanic, I have decided to step out of the shadow of his fear and my ignorance, and learn how to do the maintenance myself.
And I sure have not gotten it right the first time. Fortunately my roommate has been helping me, but he's never worked on a TLC, either, although his experience with his VW & Xtrerra has been so vital. If I can figure out how to get pictures from my phone onto here, I will see if I can post them if necessary. However, when I look at them now, I don't think I took pictures of anything useful. I had no idea what I was doing.
I read the first 4 or 5 pages of the FAQ badly prior to beginning the rebuild of front knuckles. I say badly because due to my naïveté, and upon review of the FAQ, I'm beginning to start to have a clue about where I may have gone wrong. I'd like to hear what you guys have to say first.
I rebuilt the PS first because there's some negative camber on that side, causing noticeable outer wear on the treads after 8k miles. The vehicle would also pull slightly towards the PS, even though I had taken it to a shop for an alignment twice. Sometimes there'd also be a bit of wandering with the steering and an occasional wobble. Replaced all seals, gaskets, bearings, & tie rods. This side looked relatively good inside, not soupy, just quite low on moly grease. It took half a day with a torch to get the front tie rod end off. Took a total of two days to complete the PS rebuild. Learned about the in-lbs thing - will need to redo this side because I broke two of the wiper seal bolts inside the knuckle housing. One of them broke off just while I was trying to unscrew it. I also did a piss-poor job of installing the inner axle seal. I used a block of wood, but the wood was too soft. Pieces of wood went everywhere. I have found out that a Sharpstone herb grinder will work almost perfectly for getting that sucker close to flush, then finished it off with a socket. I am wondering if I should try to replace that sooner rather than later and how many of the other things in the knuckle would need to be replaced after such a short time?
My plan was to do an alignment myself (I found the thread here on Mud - bookmarked it somewhere) after completing both knuckles. The steering was worse after the first rebuild.
The following weekend, we did the DS. This side was visibly leaking, difficult to tell if it was just from the wiper blades or if the where the steering arm attaches, if it was leaking there too or just dripping down to there. Grease inside the knuckle was extremely soupy. There was residue of some sort of sealant on various parts, which I removed. I didn't find this on the PS. I also did not take pictures of this, and can't remember which parts had this residue. At some point, during reassembly, I discovered that I lost my spring gauge scale. We winged it by just estimating pulling by hand. Right when we were wrapping up the DS and tightening those final bolts on the flange, the last ones you tighten just before installing the snap ring & dust cap, one of the nuts stopped tightening. It literally just spins in place now - can't tighten nor loosen. Not sure how I'm going to get that off. Plan is to grind it off if we can't come up with a better solution. Any ideas?
Decided that since that nut wasn't going anywhere for the time being, to finish putting it together and go for a test drive. We only changed the back tie rod end on the DS, as the plan was to change the front DS when doing the alignment. Even with this not having been done yet, the steering was much improved. The vehicle still pulled, but wandered much less and no more wobbling. Drove the vehicle around for 3 days, even going up to 70 mph on the freeway. But on that 4th day, crunch crunch knock knock. oh boy.
Pulled over, looked underneath, nothing obvious. Pulled off the dust cap, and the grease is all cooked off, snap ring sitting in the dust cap. I managed to have this happen a mile away from home. Managed to coast home, every second and every crunchy sound was agony.
I've reinstalled the snap ring 4 times, and test drove 3 of those times. Each time, it comes right off after less than 5 min of driving at no more than 25 mph. I've tried tightening the snap ring & that did not seem to help. So it's sitting all put together after that 4th reinstall, but I know it'll just pop right back off without me doing something else.
The other detail I think important to mention is that the thrust washer, adjusting nut, and lock nut on both sides had some sharp edges, were a little chewed up. I had taken a file and smoothed them out. I'm wondering how this plays a role in everything that's happening, and why they might have been chewed up in the first place? I'm considering replacing them. What are your thoughts?
The timing is so funny. My goal was to get the work done before a business trip so upon my return, there'd be no more work. Not the case it seems, so I will have to go dark after Tuesday for two weeks. Upon my return is when the correcting work will begin.
