it doesn’t rain snow but it pours
On the way to a job yesterday the Exploder started making a really nasty noise, so I called in and turned around and limped home, hoping it would make it. It did, and Partner and I spent the rest of the day dismantling what I feared was a bad differential. We yanked it, (No mean feat) and dismantled it, but it seems to be OK. there is one wheel bearing that feels iffy and I have a spare, so we’ll change that, and I need to look hard at the Ujoint on the front propshaft, but at least I have a garage in which I can do this, and a torpedo heater that doesn’t smell to keep it warm. And I have a spare vehicle just in case, so it isn’t a disaster, but it certainly is an inconvenience. Today we reassemble and I can barely wait, which is why I’m up at such an ungodly hour.
Could it have been ice accumulation unbalancing or bearing on a rotating part of the chassis? That was a common problem when I lived in the UP of MI.
The bearing sounds iffy out of the vehicle, which is what made me think it is the problem.
Bearings can make a hell of a racket before they go. The front end on my ford is making a bunch of racket as well. It still keeps going. Course I use it like once a month.
Need to get it checked though as the last thing I need is being stranded a hundred miles for home.
We have it all together again. The diff was perfect inside, no noise at all, but one wheel bearing was noisy so I had a spare and I replaced it. The noise seems- for the moment- to be gone. Meantime I discovered that the daughter’s truck has bad brakes so I swapped those out. Partner, longsuffering dude that he is, stuck with me for the whole ordeal. Lord knows I’m gonna owe him when this is over. Then I topped off the fluids in the wifes ride and now I’m just chillaxing, wishing there was a winning lottery ticket on my desk but very thankful that I won the “Friend” lottery and the “Warm garage” lottery and the “Functioning space heater” lottery on a day like this.