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- Mar 28, 2003
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- 33
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- 334
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- Marquette, MI; Jackson, WY
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Go figure eh? ha ha
Well, I did look through search to try to find some info regarding this but nothing too specific. Guess what I need is maybe some advice from the birfield gods here. Anyway, here goes...
Last May, I had just returned back from a 2 month trip in the 80 that included a bunch of tough wheeling including a extended stay in the Moab area. My birfs, especially my front left starting getting extra clicky toward the end. My rig has 196,000 and I haven't done a repack since I bought it with a 118,000 5 years ago. I didn't get a service history with it, so I have no idea of what it had done prior. BTW, this is a '92. Soooo, I end up bringing it back home, basically just ignoring the clicking (but knowing deep inside that I needed to address it when I got back). Well, a week after I got back, I took a buddy of mine out on a trail right on the edge of town here and in a spot where the axles were articulated in opposite directions, I got a great big popping/cracking sound. I figured I just birfed out. I backed onto level ground, put the transfer case into high with the center diff unlocked put it into drive. A nasty metallic grating sound and know forward progress is what I experienced. I tried it again, then it moved a bit before doing the same thing. I figured that if it was a birf, then with the center and front diff open, it would be routing power right to it, thus the noise and no progress. I locked the center diff and drove it home a couple of miles, yeah not ideal I know but I did it anyway. I tried to avoid sharp turns and I would get an aggressive clunking occasionally from the front left. Two days later I was leaving for a trip for work for 2 months and I wasn't going to have time. I put the truck into my barn for storgae. Well, this past weekend I made the 5 hour drive down to where I'm storing it.
While I haven't done any work with the axle before on it, I printed off Jim Phillips description and some of the other info, and combined with a Hayne's manual, it was pretty simple getting it apart. This is what I found, the inner wheel bearing was practically disintegrated, just trashed. When I pulled the outer bearing, prior to sliding the rotor unit off, some of the bearings from the inner rolled out. Sweet right? shoot! So I pulled the inner axle out and at this point was running out of time (needed to head back north). I didn't have a chance to pop the birf off and closely examine it, but it didn't look like anything was horribly wrong with it. I've rebuilt cv's before and I know once you pull them apart and clean them, you see more of the wear and damage. Thing is though, I expected this thing to be in pieces or something. There was no indication of damage that would cause it to spin and not turn the wheel.
I know this is still a bit vague, but my question comes down to....
Is it possible that the wheel bearing somehow could be the problem? Yes I know it was fried, but even so, that couldn't explain the spinning of the axle and not turning the wheel could it? It wouldn't seem that way unless I'm missing something here.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Well, I did look through search to try to find some info regarding this but nothing too specific. Guess what I need is maybe some advice from the birfield gods here. Anyway, here goes...
Last May, I had just returned back from a 2 month trip in the 80 that included a bunch of tough wheeling including a extended stay in the Moab area. My birfs, especially my front left starting getting extra clicky toward the end. My rig has 196,000 and I haven't done a repack since I bought it with a 118,000 5 years ago. I didn't get a service history with it, so I have no idea of what it had done prior. BTW, this is a '92. Soooo, I end up bringing it back home, basically just ignoring the clicking (but knowing deep inside that I needed to address it when I got back). Well, a week after I got back, I took a buddy of mine out on a trail right on the edge of town here and in a spot where the axles were articulated in opposite directions, I got a great big popping/cracking sound. I figured I just birfed out. I backed onto level ground, put the transfer case into high with the center diff unlocked put it into drive. A nasty metallic grating sound and know forward progress is what I experienced. I tried it again, then it moved a bit before doing the same thing. I figured that if it was a birf, then with the center and front diff open, it would be routing power right to it, thus the noise and no progress. I locked the center diff and drove it home a couple of miles, yeah not ideal I know but I did it anyway. I tried to avoid sharp turns and I would get an aggressive clunking occasionally from the front left. Two days later I was leaving for a trip for work for 2 months and I wasn't going to have time. I put the truck into my barn for storgae. Well, this past weekend I made the 5 hour drive down to where I'm storing it.
While I haven't done any work with the axle before on it, I printed off Jim Phillips description and some of the other info, and combined with a Hayne's manual, it was pretty simple getting it apart. This is what I found, the inner wheel bearing was practically disintegrated, just trashed. When I pulled the outer bearing, prior to sliding the rotor unit off, some of the bearings from the inner rolled out. Sweet right? shoot! So I pulled the inner axle out and at this point was running out of time (needed to head back north). I didn't have a chance to pop the birf off and closely examine it, but it didn't look like anything was horribly wrong with it. I've rebuilt cv's before and I know once you pull them apart and clean them, you see more of the wear and damage. Thing is though, I expected this thing to be in pieces or something. There was no indication of damage that would cause it to spin and not turn the wheel.
I know this is still a bit vague, but my question comes down to....
Is it possible that the wheel bearing somehow could be the problem? Yes I know it was fried, but even so, that couldn't explain the spinning of the axle and not turning the wheel could it? It wouldn't seem that way unless I'm missing something here.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.