Success!!!
Tie rod/control arms were just fine. All the bolts everywhere were nice and tight to torque specs.
What I ended up doing was removing the calipers and taking off the outer flange to expose the two locking nuts, lock washer and thrust washer. PS was fine. Carefully slide off the rotor and inspected the oil seal and visually inspected the inner bearing. Plenty of grease that still looked close to brand new. Stuck a little more grease in for safe measure, did a quick palm of the hand repack of the outer bearing and put it all back together to FSM spec right down to the preload.
DS was a different story!!! Removed the flange and found the locking nuts HAND LOOSE!!!!!
That had to have been the source of the thunking!!!
Performed the same procedure on the DS. One thing I did notice on both sides is that I hadn't bent the locking washer down both ways. I'd bent one tab down against the outer locking nut but not one against the inner locking washer like the FSM says you are supposed to! :whoops: I'm betting that's why the DS worked itself loose.
Next moved onto draining the front diff because I knew water had to have gotten down in thru the breather tube. I've been thru the Lower Coyote Canyon creek crossing a dozen times or more, stopping before too, but never any water issue.
I removed the fill plug first and got a very distinctive hissing of compressed air escaping!
Removed the drain plug and the diff oil looked like green syurp! I was aweful! It took quite some time for that gunk to drain. Once it did installed brand new magnetic allen head low profile drain plug from Marlin Crawler and filled the diff with brand new diff oil. Pep Boys had Castrol, Lucas Oil an Mobil 1 in stock. Castrol was the least expensive and as I figure I'm going to let the new oil stay in there for a thousand miles or so and replace it again to get rid of the remainder of the contaminated oil, I'll put in better (?) oil next time.
Proceeded to do the rear diff oil next figuring that it may have been contaminated also. Well it wasn't but replaced in anyway. Only issue I ran into on the rear was that the last grease monkey to put the fill plug on must have used an air gun because that plug was on so damn tight I rounded off the head. Jammed on a 6 point 7/8 socket instead of the 12 point 24mm socket I had and got it off. Emergency call to Capo Toyota. In luck, they had a fill plug!! Got down there and they actually had both the OEM and allen head plugs. Went with the allen head since that's what the new drain plugs were. Replaced both the front and rear fill plugs with the new allen head plugs. Damn they are shiny against 15 years of dirt and grime on the pumpkins!
Got done in enough time to head out Ortega Highway to have dinner with the scout troop out at Camporee this weekend. Good test drive for the cruiser as well on the windy road. NO thunks and everything was very smooth. Scoutmaster had bacon wrapped filets, sauteed mushrooms with onion and garlic and a ceasar salad for dinner. Topped that off with an angel food cake with strawberries for dessert! All in all a very successful Saturday!!
I'll be hitting the FAQ's for the diff breather extension write up as my next mod!!!
