In the early years of Mark’s Off Road, I had a lot of counter traffic, and a lot of guys who just liked to hang out. One of them was the husband of my wife’s best friend from college, a man named Robert Hooper. Robert was mechanically inclined; his forte was Honda motorcycles and vintage VWs. He didn’t own a Landcruiser, but he was a cool guy anyways. And he was intrigued by the idea that I had just up and decided to open my own shop, and I think he wondered if he could do the same eventually.
One day when he was hanging out he said to me, “You know Mark, you can get all the mechanical education you want for a dollar a day.” I was intrigued.
I said “I’ll bite. Tell me how you can get all the mechanical education you want for a dollar a day.” He explained that it only cost a dollar to get into the self-serve junkyard, and that you didn’t actually have to BUY anything! You could just go in there for your dollar and take sheit apart, learning how things are put together. He opined that the yard didn’t really care, because they basically bought the cars for their scrap metal value.
This made a lot of sense to me, and I filed it away for future reference.
About a year later I acquired a Suburban that had belonged to a mutual friend, and about a year after that the Suburban developed a growl in the steering that I determined was coming from the tilt steering column. I had no idea how tilt steering columns work, and I didn’t want to experiment with my own as a Guinea pig. So off I went to Pick A Part, our local self-serve wrecking yard.
It didn’t take me long to wreck the first Chevy column I tried to dismantle. The second one I got disassembled, but still damaged a few parts in the process. During that process, the light bulb went off that a puller was needed at the pivot point to remove the main pivots. But I didn’t have a puller.
I theorized that if I put a socket over the pivot, a washer over the socket, and a bolt through the washer and socket that would thread into the pivot, that it would exert the required force like a real puller. Well I tried it on the third column and it worked perfectly! I had in front of me all the parts of an unbroken Chevy tilt steering column, and I studied them for several minutes. Then I went home.
I had my column apart in no time flat, and I could see that one of the support bearings had been installed backwards, its eccentric cage rubbing on the race. I flipped it over and it was better, but not as smooth as the one in the junkyard. And more importantly, they looked to be identical in size. Hmmm.
They had ink stamped my hand at the yard for free, same-day re-entry. So I went back to the yard, walked back to the vehicle I had successfully dismantled with my satchel of hand tools, casually dropped the caged bearing in the bottom of the bag, and walked out again. It fit perfectly in the Suburban, and I never had another issue with that column for the 15 years that I owned it.
Thank you Robert Hooper.
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One day when he was hanging out he said to me, “You know Mark, you can get all the mechanical education you want for a dollar a day.” I was intrigued.
I said “I’ll bite. Tell me how you can get all the mechanical education you want for a dollar a day.” He explained that it only cost a dollar to get into the self-serve junkyard, and that you didn’t actually have to BUY anything! You could just go in there for your dollar and take sheit apart, learning how things are put together. He opined that the yard didn’t really care, because they basically bought the cars for their scrap metal value.
This made a lot of sense to me, and I filed it away for future reference.
About a year later I acquired a Suburban that had belonged to a mutual friend, and about a year after that the Suburban developed a growl in the steering that I determined was coming from the tilt steering column. I had no idea how tilt steering columns work, and I didn’t want to experiment with my own as a Guinea pig. So off I went to Pick A Part, our local self-serve wrecking yard.
It didn’t take me long to wreck the first Chevy column I tried to dismantle. The second one I got disassembled, but still damaged a few parts in the process. During that process, the light bulb went off that a puller was needed at the pivot point to remove the main pivots. But I didn’t have a puller.
I theorized that if I put a socket over the pivot, a washer over the socket, and a bolt through the washer and socket that would thread into the pivot, that it would exert the required force like a real puller. Well I tried it on the third column and it worked perfectly! I had in front of me all the parts of an unbroken Chevy tilt steering column, and I studied them for several minutes. Then I went home.
I had my column apart in no time flat, and I could see that one of the support bearings had been installed backwards, its eccentric cage rubbing on the race. I flipped it over and it was better, but not as smooth as the one in the junkyard. And more importantly, they looked to be identical in size. Hmmm.
They had ink stamped my hand at the yard for free, same-day re-entry. So I went back to the yard, walked back to the vehicle I had successfully dismantled with my satchel of hand tools, casually dropped the caged bearing in the bottom of the bag, and walked out again. It fit perfectly in the Suburban, and I never had another issue with that column for the 15 years that I owned it.
Thank you Robert Hooper.
Note: if you enjoyed this, please consider hitting the like button
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