JohnnyBfromPeoria
I'm Getting Around To It
I've been having "fun" putting Jorge's 83 Mighty Max's front brakes back together, as I'm slow at things, to say the least. We discovered Saturday that since he let things go for so long that the grinding sound on the passenger side was the piston in the caliper grinding directly on the rear side of the rotor. The caliper was known to have been sticking and it ate up the pads we put in it last summer to the point that the outer pad was down to the backing plate, but the inner pad went further and actually disappeared.
This creates problems, it should be noted. Evidently, metal particles start to fly around and stick to things, like the spindle. When we removed the bearing retainer nut, it had to be wrenched the entire way off, despite constant spraying with lube. Consequently, the nut's threads were trashed and the outer threads on the spindle may be damaged to the point that a new spindle might be required. Jorge went to Pull-A-Part on Sunday and got two more spindle nuts in the hopes that we can run one in and back out to square away most of the spindle threads before putting the hub back on and using the second nut to retain it and torque the bearings. If not, he'll be searching for a newer spindle and new ball joints.
The shop press once again proved to be the easy answer to seating the new bearing races and the inner bearing seals. There's just no going wrong with the proper sized seating disc from the Harbor Freight set (72 mm) to set the four races in (dry of course), then flip the tapered disc over to flat and set the inner seal down nice and even. The new discs were bolted on first so I wouldn't kick any garbage down into the new bearings that I'd packed and stored in Ziplock bags since the weekend. I put the driver's side hub back on but haven't tried to mess with the messed up passenger side yet. Messing with the "it sort of fits" GM hub socket is a P.I.T.A., since the two tabs on the socket slip out of the adjusting holes so easily while trying to get the spec torque on the bearings to initially seat them. Even with a second person sitting on the ground and placing a foot against the socket while the other turns it with a breaker bar, it's tough to even get it to 80 ft-lbs. If someone stumbles upon the actual, real socket for this, it would be nice to have one local that we could share.
I also knocked out a bum wheel stud and put in a new one, easy any time, but especially so when the hub is just sitting there, since you can get a hammer to the back side of it to ********** it in. As usual, my trusty board is always under the hub(s) any time I'm pressing or hammering on them.
The rebuilt calipers look decent and the new brake soft lines are correct, so hopefully this will be done soon and Jorge can start driving it again and I can have both my driveway space and my '95 back, since that's all he's got to drive while both his '89 SWB and this '83 are on jack stands in front of my house. Anybody got a cattle prod I can use to get him working on this stuff? J.K. I've been around a farm and those things look like they'd leave burns.
John B.
This creates problems, it should be noted. Evidently, metal particles start to fly around and stick to things, like the spindle. When we removed the bearing retainer nut, it had to be wrenched the entire way off, despite constant spraying with lube. Consequently, the nut's threads were trashed and the outer threads on the spindle may be damaged to the point that a new spindle might be required. Jorge went to Pull-A-Part on Sunday and got two more spindle nuts in the hopes that we can run one in and back out to square away most of the spindle threads before putting the hub back on and using the second nut to retain it and torque the bearings. If not, he'll be searching for a newer spindle and new ball joints.
The shop press once again proved to be the easy answer to seating the new bearing races and the inner bearing seals. There's just no going wrong with the proper sized seating disc from the Harbor Freight set (72 mm) to set the four races in (dry of course), then flip the tapered disc over to flat and set the inner seal down nice and even. The new discs were bolted on first so I wouldn't kick any garbage down into the new bearings that I'd packed and stored in Ziplock bags since the weekend. I put the driver's side hub back on but haven't tried to mess with the messed up passenger side yet. Messing with the "it sort of fits" GM hub socket is a P.I.T.A., since the two tabs on the socket slip out of the adjusting holes so easily while trying to get the spec torque on the bearings to initially seat them. Even with a second person sitting on the ground and placing a foot against the socket while the other turns it with a breaker bar, it's tough to even get it to 80 ft-lbs. If someone stumbles upon the actual, real socket for this, it would be nice to have one local that we could share.
I also knocked out a bum wheel stud and put in a new one, easy any time, but especially so when the hub is just sitting there, since you can get a hammer to the back side of it to ********** it in. As usual, my trusty board is always under the hub(s) any time I'm pressing or hammering on them.
The rebuilt calipers look decent and the new brake soft lines are correct, so hopefully this will be done soon and Jorge can start driving it again and I can have both my driveway space and my '95 back, since that's all he's got to drive while both his '89 SWB and this '83 are on jack stands in front of my house. Anybody got a cattle prod I can use to get him working on this stuff? J.K. I've been around a farm and those things look like they'd leave burns.
John B.
