I suppose
I should really trust my work. Came home friday with a slight wobble in the front of the sploder, and feared my inner tie rod end had come loose. I just replaced it last weekend, and I thought, perhaps, I hadn’t gotten it tight enough.
Well, dammit, I got it farmerr tight, it shouldn’t have come off, and it hadn’t. I pulled the bellows back, and there it was, tight as a new shoe. Must just have been the crappy pavement on I-55.
That reminds me, I need to check tires before I leave.
When I changed the inner, I didn’t have the cash for an alignment, so I did what I usually do, I bungeed a laser level to the rear rim and used a tapemeasure to measure the distance between the front and back of the front rim. It works pretty well, and it gets you close enough that you don’t have a lot of tire wear, though the sucker will still shimmy a bit in the 85 mph range. Still, and Exploder wasn’t meant for sustained highway speeds of 85.
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How many miles on that Exploder? Half a million?
Getting close. 390,000
Exploder wasn’t meant to still be on the road after 5 years either. By that time, it was supposed to be spare parts at the pick-n-pull for someone else’s ‘sploder. Circle of life and all that.
That’s a cute trick with the laser. Beats the giant calipers I made out of 1/2″ conduit.
I had a pair of those too! Used to use ’em on the escrote. Actually they were a giant micrometer but it worked great!
Btw wobble turned out to be a stretch of crappy pavement.
200k on my ‘sploder. Went to rotate the tires over the weekend and was able to lift each front wheel about an inch or so up and down with the front jacked off the ground. CLUNK, CLUNK. Yep, totally worn out lower ball joints.
ARRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
The “fuck it” in me says to take it to a repair shop but the frugal, farm-raised, self-sufficient, never-pay-someone-to-do-what-you-can-and-SHOULD-do-for-yourself in me says to man-up and get it done.
Jury is still out on which side wins. Prolly depends on how cold it is and right now it’s pretty fkn COLD!!!
The ice buildup in the wheel rim and in the wheel well usually causes me front end hinkiness, like wobble, bounce, shimmy. More in the Saturn than the S-10, but enough in both. The work van is lousy with it. A couple of above freezing days and the rides all go back to smooth.
Libs: If you have a torpedo heater and a tent, or a garage, yes. Otherwise, no. It’s a days work. If you can afford to, have someone else do it. You have to pull the front halfshaft out to get to the ball joint.
Or you could get a newer car that already works.
Sure, Hale. Shoot me and MTS a check for about thirty large, and I’ll hook us both up.
We drive these vehicles because it’s what we can afford.