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frozen wheel bearing; complete front brake redo

1K views 8 replies 3 participants last post by  Coaster 
#1 ·
wednesday after work i heard a horrible grinding sound and traced it to drivers front wheel. i thought it was rivets digging into the rotor and complete brake failure. i did think it was odd that i had no warning about this but parked it and took it apart.

this is what i saw. 76k, 19 years old.



man that rotor looks nasty. however when i took the caliper off there was 3/16" pad left on both pads and the caliper moved freely. spun the rotor and the grinding was still there. not the brakes! brakes are still worn horribly (why?) but plenty left.

it was the inner wheel bearing. full of grease and frozen solid. the tapered rollers had begun to flatten and would not move.



bought all new stuff. experienced the new green grease. apparently its awesome but i think its weird. real weird. green lucas grease. oh my



had some issues like the dust caps were loose in the new hubs. used a 2 1/8" trailer ball to expand them


this is real weird. ive never seen this before and i am old. i sucked it all out and flushed the lines, i now think the inner cap is disintegrating and thats turning the fluid black.



i need to do the pitman arms they are so shot they move in the vertical plane.

the hardest part was getting the rubber hoses off the steel lines. it took me over an hour to do that. i have ruined steel lines in the past with cars built in the 60's but managed to not wreck these (whew). these were really stuck though, i almost couldnt do it.
 
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#2 ·
So now you get to keep the name Coaster? Cool!! Yeah..goes to show you, never say never. That is a new one on me too!! Glad it wasn't more serious...what did the spindle look like? As for the steel lines I've clamped Vice-Grips to a cheap flare-nut wrench to bust them loose...you do what you gotta do! And WHAT is up with that green grease you're talking about? I still have half of the 15gal pail I scored at an auction sale 15years or so ago (Open) for free because no-one bid on it so I'll probably have enough to last the rest of my life. But I am curious about the green stuff? Is it from one of Lumpy's cupholders or what?
 
#3 ·
today i did the pitman arms. both of them took an hour and i broke an impact socket doing it. oh well. then i did the spark plugs and the first five plugs took 50 minutes and i didnt need any u joints. the last plug (cyl #2) took 70 minutes!!!!! i was so frustrated i was ready to scream. i finally figured out the damn heatshield was in the way causing the plug not to be able to be threaded. i bent it and pried on it and finally pulled it way to far forward, got the plug in then pushed the shield back. what a pain.

went for a test drive and it drives nice. need to bleed the brakes again though.

i pulled out autolite platinums and "surefire(?)" wires. any chance these were stock? the plugs were very very white with a small tan circle on the electrode. they were gapped to .45 to they probably were not stock. i didnt see anything wrong with them.
 
#5 ·
Coaster said:
today i did the pitman arms. both of them took an hour and i broke an impact socket doing it. oh well. then i did the spark plugs and the first five plugs took 50 minutes and i didnt need any u joints. the last plug (cyl #2) took 70 minutes!!!!! i was so frustrated i was ready to scream. i finally figured out the damn heatshield was in the way causing the plug not to be able to be threaded. i bent it and pried on it and finally pulled it way to far forward, got the plug in then pushed the shield back. what a pain.

went for a test drive and it drives nice. need to bleed the brakes again though.

i pulled out autolite platinums and "surefire(?)" wires. any chance these were stock? the plugs were very very white with a small tan circle on the electrode. they were gapped to .45 to they probably were not stock. i didnt see anything wrong with them.
Autolite is a trade name that falls under the Ford umbrella; ain't no WAY they were "factory". Not familiar with that brand of wires but regardless, AC / Delco would have been the default name brands from the factory. Or Delco Packard Div for the wires....sorry, LoL, just nit-picking. Yeah....#2 plug is a REAL hummer: Patience, & glad the spindle survived!!
 
#8 ·
when i saw the gap was .45 that was a good indication they were not stock. i think stock on this year was .65 but a tech bulletin changed it to .45. napa notes say that it has been updated to .45 when you buy any plugs and have my year 1995 plugged in to their system as the vehicle. i bought autolite double platinums and belden wires. i've had a persistent miss at idle while engine warmed up for quite some time and its driving me mad. when it misses (not a dead miss, its random but at the same temp/distance from home on the way to work) it causes the IAC to open up and rev the engine. sometimes the IAC takes too long and the engine dies as the idle is way low (500rpm?)

anyway i only took it for a short drive yesterday but i noticed that 65 now feels like 40 did before and when i got home it didnt do its 'revvy missy die' thing in the driveway. its definately different but ive said that about 18 times now and after 5 days it always changes.

in the last three months i have changed all these things: they all had either failed or tested bad. the only shotgun repair i made was the coil.

1. spider/nut kit
2. every sensor except ECT and knock
3. IAC
4. distributor/cap/rotor
5. fuel pump/filter
6. several hoses that blew up or looked bad. power steering and oil cooler hoses (preemptive repair)
7. coil. just a guess, didnt know how to test it. ran a little stronger with the new coil(?)

next is going through the rest of the steering joints a little closer as there is still a small amount of slop somewhere. its not much but enough. its always stayed in my lane just fine even with the idlers so bad.
 
#9 ·
Lumpy said:
Coaster said:
... 76k, 19 years old.
Wow! ... :eek:

Lump
it had 64k on it 18 months ago when i bought it. it was a university van and looked like it was setup to deliver something temp sensitive on campus. probably food? i think it went 25mph its whole life and probably idled a lot judging by the exhaust pipe/brakes/extremely carboned up engine (not carboned up anymore)
 
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