atnolan94
I'm Your Huckleberry
- Thread starter
- #181
Been too long since I've posted on here! The truck did great all throughout HIH. After my last update, we ran Black Bear, Kendall Mountain, Poughkeepsie Gulch, Corkscrew Pass, Clear Lake, Engineer Pass, and even ran up to Leadville to run mosquito pass, the highest drivable mountain pass in Colorado. On the long drive home I noticed some major vibrations, which about 3-4 weeks ago turned into popping and clicking. i'm guessing after all the abuse of HIH, my 244k mile CVs finally gave up. I got some OEM CV avles and new sway bar end links to replace while I'm in there. I attached a pic below of the rig on Imogene taken by our very own @geanes
The passenger CV took me a couple of days, I simply could not get it to pop out of the diff. I tried all my pry bars, all of my screwdrivers, all my punches, etc. it would not budge. I eventually invested in a tempered steel pry bar that is about 24" long, and after an hour of hammering it witha 4.5 lb sledge, the CV finally came out. I had it back together and on the ground in no more than 10-minutes after that.
The drivers CV was very different. My big pry bar wasn't fitting between the diff and CV end, so I decided to the a really fat flathead screwdriver, put it in the gap between the Diff and the CV, two taps of the hammer, and the whole thing popped out.
Many people said that you need to pull the entire knuckle to do this job, and that's just not true. I undid my tie rod (really didn't need to), and UBJ just to allow me enough room to slide the very long hub-end of the CV out of the hub. To undo your UBJ, you need to also undo the brake and ABS sensor brackets that are held onto the knuckle with 12mm bolts. The drivers side, since the CV came out easily, took me 60 minutes. and this included the ~10 minutes it took to replace my sway bar end link.
So far on my front end I have replaced:
Outer tie rods
Inner Tie rods
CV axles
Sway bar End Links
This truck literally feels brand new. No vibration or humming, no front end clunk AT ALL. It was a pain but I'm glad I spent the time to fix all of this properly. I was test driving Colorado ZR2's the other day and seriously considering calling it on this cruiser, but these repairs have really brought me back into the fold. Now I need to buck up and do my steering rack bushings....
The passenger CV took me a couple of days, I simply could not get it to pop out of the diff. I tried all my pry bars, all of my screwdrivers, all my punches, etc. it would not budge. I eventually invested in a tempered steel pry bar that is about 24" long, and after an hour of hammering it witha 4.5 lb sledge, the CV finally came out. I had it back together and on the ground in no more than 10-minutes after that.
The drivers CV was very different. My big pry bar wasn't fitting between the diff and CV end, so I decided to the a really fat flathead screwdriver, put it in the gap between the Diff and the CV, two taps of the hammer, and the whole thing popped out.
Many people said that you need to pull the entire knuckle to do this job, and that's just not true. I undid my tie rod (really didn't need to), and UBJ just to allow me enough room to slide the very long hub-end of the CV out of the hub. To undo your UBJ, you need to also undo the brake and ABS sensor brackets that are held onto the knuckle with 12mm bolts. The drivers side, since the CV came out easily, took me 60 minutes. and this included the ~10 minutes it took to replace my sway bar end link.
So far on my front end I have replaced:
Outer tie rods
Inner Tie rods
CV axles
Sway bar End Links
This truck literally feels brand new. No vibration or humming, no front end clunk AT ALL. It was a pain but I'm glad I spent the time to fix all of this properly. I was test driving Colorado ZR2's the other day and seriously considering calling it on this cruiser, but these repairs have really brought me back into the fold. Now I need to buck up and do my steering rack bushings....
