=I did end up having a major adventure replacing the left rear outer u-joint
=-- I was very near to giving up on removing one of the pairs bearing caps
=from the yoke. It turned out that when I finally did manage to get it apart
=(after many, many, wallops with a big hammer on an appropriately sized drift,
=on top of my 61# vise), I found that one of the four yokes had ground away
=*ALL* of the needle bearings, and was starting to go to work on the bearing
=cap! I couldn't believe that the needle bearings were 100% gone -- not even
=any dust to show that they had ever been there!
I can believe this. The same thing happened to me with my left outside
u-joint. One of the arms had a bearing cap so rusted and frozen that I had
to use an 8 pound sledge hammer and a drift to get it out. Dust and
little,
broken pieces of bearings fell out of the bearing cap, whose edges were
chewed and chipped. I was astonished that it hadn't just seized up on me
while driving and caused a screeching accident.
=If anybody has actually read this far, I've got a question about this -- when
=removing the hub, two of the six nyloc nuts were more firmly attached to the
=hub mounting stud than the stud was to the trailing arm. How is one supposed
=to tighten down a stud -- apparently I must be needing to buy another tool!
You have to get the nuts off the studs and put the studs back. If
necessary order new studs. You are getting new nuts, right? Don't try to
put the nut/stud assembly back and torque it down - you'll run a very
high risk of pulling the stud out of the aluminum trailing arm and then
you'll really be up the creek! Also, trying to put the nut/stud back
together tends to create an uneven pattern of torque around the hub.
And be very tender torquing the nuts down. They really mean it when they
say 5 to 10 pounds of torque and no more. I went with 9 pounds and it
seems ok.
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