7:15 am. Call to Mike
from the road – I think I woke him up, but he said, any time after 7:am. We are now 1 hour out from his place, and I
am driving like the rear axle is made of glass, not to mention the missing and
loss of horsepower. I attribute that
behavior to the likely contamination of the fuel from the breached lining in
the tank, and the fact that I did not re-tune the carbs after Telluride and we
are now at sea level for the most part.
Note to self – richen up the carbs following the new tank and new
gas.
We arrive at iRoll just before 9:am. Not the place you
expect to find a world renown Volvo mechanic, but then again, he is not the
typical Volvo shop. When you hear about
all that we did yesterday, you will realize there is only one place probably in
the US that this could have been pulled off in one day – even through it was a
12 hour shop day.
We were greeted by Mike’s son Matt and offered refreshments
in the “Service Lounge” complete with flat screen TV, air hockey and
kitchenette (Mike will laugh if he reads this).
Not 5 min later Mike arrived and quickly went to work clearing other
cars out of the shop and freeing up one of the lifts for us. A review of the issues was in order –
1.
Leaking fuel tank with a BOS (bar of soap) patch
2.
Clunk in the rear end
3.
Drive Shaft vibration at high speed
4.
Noisy rear end at high speed
5.
Tire rotation need
6.
Oil change in order
7.
Carb tune if time allows
8.
…
Then off for a quick test drive with Mike behind the
wheel. Of course she was quieter, and
hardly clunked for him, but he did hear it and feel the slack. Back to the shop and up on the lift.
Compared to the rear end the tank was an easy job, and Matt
had just done one recently, so he jumped right into that task as Mike and I
removed the cover plate to inspect the differential gears and try to find the
source of the clunk. He was convinced and ultimately proven correct, that it
was not an axle bearing. Some playing
and fiddling with the system up on the lift and we were able to see a lot of
slop and slack in the differential gears.
The details of this story would go on for pages, so I am
going to go into Readers Digest Mode now.
The lift went up, the lift went down we work gas tank and
rear axle simultaneously. I told Mike –
put me to work or tell me to get out of the way. I don’t know how Mike and Matt felt, but to
me it was like we had worked together for years, we were jumping in to help
each other, and all keeping busy like a slow motion pit-crew. By lunch time or probably later, we Matt was
95% done with the fuel tank, and we had gone through 3 donor candidates looking
for the best one using a set of criteria including the tightness of the gear
package, but also looking at the condition of shock mounts, and whether they
still had drums on them or not. If they
still had drums on them, it is likely those drums were not coming off. The fourth one we looked at and the third one
we opened up became the candidate of choice.
Now decision of what to salvage from mine and what to use
from the donor – short version, we decided to keep my axles, my brakes, backing
plates and drums of course, also the drive shaft flange and the differential
cover plate.
Now we all know that a project like this will have at least
one snag, and we encountered ours just as we thought we were rounding the
corner and heading for the home stretch.
140 LB PSI air hammer would not remove the flange nut, and we needed to
put a new seal on that or we would just be dumping gear oil on the 101 for the
next 10 miles and then it would be empty.
More than an hour later, Mike and Matt teamed up with a pipe wrench and
a breaker bar with 5’ pipes for leverage – and Pop! Off came the nut. All
that after an hour of heat and cold and impact wrench and intense psycho
therapy on the nut and wrenches and all it needed was some good old fashioned
leverage. There was a moment there where
I think we were all considering another donor candidate, but in the end, I
think this was the right one.
Jump to the end – 8:30ish Matt had left and it was me and
Mike doing the final step of bleeding the brakes and then time for a test
drive. Without the noise from the rear
end drowning out the engine and all other clunks and rattles, I could hear new
stuff, but much more mundane. I thought
it then and confirm it now after driving down the 101 to 880 to the 80 and onto
Fisherman’s Wharf, - it is like a new car! At least as much as a 52 year old car
can be new.
I cannot thank Mike and Matt enough for the exceptional
service, dropping everything else they had that day, and irreplaceable
knowledge that was needed to pull this off.
What we did in that 12 hours would have taken 2 weeks in a “normal”
shop. That team is a pit crew I would hire in a minute.
In the end what we accomplished was -
- New rear axle assembly
- New axle seals
- New Diff seal
- new gasket on diff plate
- bleed brake lines
- reposition e-brake cables
- transfer axles from old diff to new-donor
- new fuel tank installed
- oil change
- Tire rotation
- tighten leaking coolant hose
- ...
I forget the rest.
I could write for another hour on this topic, but I will let
photos tell the story, besides, look at the view I have, I need to get out,
walk around and enjoy this brief visit to my second favorite city in the
US.
As soon as the fog clears off the Golden Gate, we will be on
the road again. Joe is taking the honor
of driving across the bridge.
Mileage Check – ODO = 38,742, total miles as of new Rear End
= 4,335
From here on out, more night driving – we need more time
during the day to enjoy what we see and placed we pass through.
Wait. So are you coming to Bainbridge tomorrow or not? Have you gotten any of my emails? What's the story morning glory???
ReplyDelete