After an astonishingly easy time of getting my brakes working well
(rebuilt slave cylinders on the rear and for the master -- which demanded
attention by draining brake fluid literally onto my foot one day while I
was driving), I'm running into a bit more difficult to find and fix
problems.
My problem is the classic rumbling/grinding sound from the driver's side
rear drivetrain. It got to the "I can't pretend I don't hear that" stage
last night after a couple hours of around-town errands. Of course, it was
gone when I went to investigate it this morning, but started coming back
after a little bit of driving. I've been through the archives and know
the stock answers are:
U-joints: check for play, rebuild
Bearings: replace, have fun getting the @#$! hub off...
Loose bolts: especially check the spring bolts via the access behind the
seats (not likely since the noise went away after the car sat overnight
and isn't effected by turning)
But, I have reciepts from the PO indicating the rear U-joints were
replaced professionally less than 4,000 miles ago, and I also know the
driver's side rear bearings were replaced by a Grand Auto garage (a parts
store chain) about 600 miles ago. No, I didn't really want to get some
mass chain garage to work on my car, but I had no choice. Some of you
with a very good memory may remember my last post asking about towing a
Spitfire 700-800 miles from Seattle to San Francisco. Well, I ended up
driving her down and the rear started grinding coming down the Siskyous
pass (300 or so miles short of my destination) on a Friday night -- hence
the rear bearing replacement by Grand Auto.
Anyhow, my questions are: Is there any particularily likely, easy to miss
(hopefully easy to check :) thing that the folks at Grand Auto may have
screwed up or overlooked? They replaced the outer bearing, reassembled...
and the problem (that time the rear brake shoes were dragging every half
turn or so because the hub/shaft was wobbling so badly) was still there.
So they discovered an inboard bearing and replaced that too, and that
solved the problem until yesterday.
In the first incident, I drove for quite a few miles with the brake shoes
dragging, and really heated up the rear hub (not glowing, but rain was
sizzling off the brake drum and the wheel was hot to touch)-- could I have
warped something, creating a bearing-eating monster?
Can I just keep driving, AAA card firmly in hand, until the problem
progresses beyond the intermittent and I can more easily pin it down? Or
am I liable to be destroying something expensive if I do that, so I should
pull the axels from the car now and dive right in?
I'll be attempting about the same repair with about the same level of
information as they had (they worked from my Haynes repair manual) and
don't want to make the same mistake. Any extra info you can give me on
common screw-ups is much appreciated!
On a sidenote, I'm new to the Berkeley/Oakland, CA area -- anyone local
feel like pointing me to a reasonable garage for repair (my wife will only
let me strew axels around the living/dining room of our apartment for 7
days -- then I'd better have a backup get-it fixed plan, or else...)
and/or smog check, I'd love suggestions.
Thanks!
John Weale
1980 "British Racing Orange" Spitfire
PS Special thanks to team.net for providing the list archives and everyone
who's help provide the info in them. Just from looking through them I
feel halfway confident attacking the u-joints and the infamous pressed-on
rear hubs.
---======================== John Weale(jweale@u.washington.edu) ========---
The world does revolve around engineers... they pick the coordinate system.
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