Just thought I'd share...

[Slam]

I write for the local paper and figured I'd give you all something to cast your eyes over while having a beer or two after a repair that went well. This is my column for this week:



Sometimes God looks after fools like me in unexpected ways. Let me share with you my adventures over the past three days as I changed the rear bearings, CVs and rear brakes in my Porsche 944. I have a love/hate relationship with this car. I love it and it hates me. So I hate it right back and that’s when it loves me - a foul ploy to prevent me from selling it. Perhaps I give the car too much credit for being sentient...
In three days I only managed to fix one set of bearings. Why? Deus ex (in?) machina, I guess. In this case, ‘Deus’ had my best interests art heart. I didn’t know until after I’d taken my first test drive to make sure everything was okay. Half a mile from my house I was treated to the sounds of a bang followed by rhythmic clickings and grindings. Lovely.
I’m very careful when I work on my car. Partly because I’m meticulous by nature, partly because I know that if I get things wrong my budget won’t allow me a second chance, and partly because I’m terrified of ruining my primary means of transportation. But this time things had gone horribly wrong. I needed the car to get to a weekend-long rehearsal and had to leave in four hours. I’d given myself from Thursday night to Saturday morning to get the job done, and here it was Saturday afternoon and the job had not been done. My wife offered me her 924. I declined, setting my jaw, determined that this recalcitrant example of European machinery wouldn’t get the better of me (why do we do this?). She told me in no uncertain terms I should “Drop it right now before someone gets hurt.” Who was she protecting? Me or the car?
To get to the rear bearings on this car, I had to remove a 36mm (read:huge) nut, torqued to 340-odd foot-pounds, from the axle shaft. For this express purpose I’d bought myself the biggest, blackest, ugliest socket I’d ever seen. Fifty bucks’ worth of persuading power when coupled with a four-foot breaker bar. My primary concern was in not being able to get the nut off. No nut off, no bearing job. (Should i rephrase that?) My lovely wife planted both her little feet on the brake pedal and put all her little pounds into it and I heaved on that breaker until the nut gave up. It was so easy she agreed to help me with the nut on the other side. I was being lulled into a false sense of efficacy.
As well as big nuts, Germans seem to love snap rings. Monstrous, over-sized, diabolical Teutonic ones. My 944 has a particularly evil one lurking in the dark recesses of its water pump, holding its thermostat in, and also one on each trailing arm retaining its inner bearings. Waiting for me. “Zimon, you vill nein be getting zis berring mitout curzing und svearing much. Ya. Und zer shcraping knuckles mit blud.” One can’t just dive in with cheap hardware-store “universal” snap-ring pliers - which is what I was attempting to do. The ring sat in its groove, gloating. After an hour and a half of using language that would make a two-dollar hooker blush and employing cheap hardware-store pliers that deformed every time I tried to use them, I managed to get a cheap screwdriver behind the cheap pliers and lever the ring out. “Ping!” It hit me in the nose. I’ve learned not to jerk my head out of the way - I’ll just hit the transmission if I do and then jerk forward again and hit the axle dangling in front of me.
Back to the racket. To find it, I had to take apart everything I’d taken apart two days before and put back together yesterday. No mean feat, but needs must when the devil drives. My mantra became “Find the noise. Fix the car. Find the noise. Fix the car.” A good rhythm if not born of desperation. I got that sucker apart and back together twice in two and a half hours. Checked this, checked that, looking for the cause of the heart-stopping “If-you-drive-this-car-on-the-highway-you’ll-die” cacophony. Maybe I exaggerate...but still...
What I found was that part of the parking-brake actuator had popped loose (these things hurt when they spring shut on your finger) and was machining itself to death on the inside of the hub. My bad. I put it back where it belonged. But in my travels I discovered that the outboard wheel bearing had actually broken - pretty little cylindrical balls every which way. Not my bad. Quality control issue? Smoking gun either way. I wouldn’t have heard that until I’d travelled far enough to be truly stranded.
Sometimes God looks after fools like me in unexpected ways.

[jkrustchinsky]

that was pretty funny

[Eldorado]

LOL oh simon...

[onZedge]

...YA, ve vill design dees Porsche to be verry easy to service...see Hanz, you haf to take apart not more than two tinks to get to zee item you vish to vork on...

[Slam]

^ WWSCD?

Love it! Actually, I find myself thinking that quite often.

[p-talk]

Great article! Not that any of us have done such things before . .

[FRANKYDOOM]

yeah funny read - and knowing that yourself being trhough it many times - like spring on the nose - banged head etc .............

[Techno Duck]

I am doing my friends rear bearings right now. You may find this picture amusing...



I have never seen a breaker bar flex so much in my life!

Archimedes would be proud!

"Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth."

[924Sman]

in re the photo........The sunlight in the rear is the same light I saw in the morning as I awoke as a young man .....funny I had the same issue as the bar!!

"Man those were the good old days!"
Dal

[callmethewander]

Thanks for sharing.

[Slam]

My car didn't warrant such a shiny new persuader. Mine's all rusty...

[TNT25169]

My persuader is a 1/2" impact wrench, pb blaster and as many PSI as my compressor feels like giving me.