After telling the kids these stories, we decided that he'd get the
new bearing and start the job on Thursday afternoon, as he had
Thursday and Friday off. However, on some of the newer cars, you
can only get the bearing and hub. It cost me about $60 for my Taurus
and cost Leigh about $90 for his Civic.
Thursday arrived, and finally so did Leigh. The hub had to be shipped
in and the truck had been in an accident so the part didn't arrive
until about 2 pm. so we didn't get started until about 4:30 pm.
The job started out smoothly enough. We jacked up the car, put it on
jack stands - You always do this right? - pulled the wheel. Then
loosened the axle nut and started to take the rear caliper off so we
could remove the rotor. Removing the caliper was a little more trouble
than I'd expected, but not to bad, because you couldn't really get to
the bolts and everything was on exceedingly tight!
Unfortunately, the center of the bearing stayed on the axle. We tried
various methods to remove it, using vise grips to grab and rotate it,
using a chisel to get between the bearing part and the back of the axle
and force the bearing part off the axle. Nothing work. It was now
about 6pm, and I suggested that we take a brake, and go make some
phone calls, to see if we could find a stub axle. None of the local
auto parts houses had the part. I checked a discount Honda dealer in
Rhode Island that I've done business with for years. They had the
part, but you couldn't buy just the stub axle, you had to buy the entire
rear control arm for about $275! We really didn't want to spend that
much money on the part. I suggested that we hold off until tomorrow,
Friday, and we take the control arm to a shop, that I does work for me,
and see if they had any ideas. If we did that early in the morining,
and they couldn't help us, we still would have enough time to order the
part out of Rhode Island or try a junk yard. So we went back and pulled
the control arm off so we were ready to go in the moring.
Continued
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair1948@cox.net
Va. Beach, Va
Phone: (757) 495-8229
48 TR1800 48 #4 Midget 65 Morgan 4/4 Series V (B1106)
75 Bricklin SV1 (#0887) 77 Spitfire 71 Saab Sonett III
65 Rambler Classic
Morgan: www.team.net/www/morgan
Bricklin: www.bricklin.org
If you can read this - Thank a teacher!
If you are reading it in English - Thank a Vet!!
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