Often I find it helpful to grok parts and assemblies in situ, gleaning things from them in life that you can't get from a book.
Packing bearings is messy but fun, in a playing-with-big-gobs-of-grease kind of way.
It's weird thinking about how a whole car rides on these, uh, (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!) eight little bearings. But then I suppose it's even weirder that a whole car is held up by air.
Melissa said this spindle was as clean as she'd ever seen me get anything. Since it spends its life encased in grease, it's actually easy to achieve this level of shine: just wipe the grease off.
Here it is almost all put together, with even more grease. Nothing like a "new" 41 year-old part.
Fresh organic pads--yes, "organic"; it says so right on the box--and new spring installed, we pulled her out for a spin. There's some comfort in knowing that if worse came to worse, we could eat these brake pads. Don't worry, I remembered to take that 7mm wrench off the bleeder valve before we went anywhere. If you do this yourself and don't want to bleed the brakes, make sure you only open the bleeder when there's pressure on the pistons and tighten it up as fluid is steadily coming out.
The no-hubcaps look ("rally-ready", I like to call it) has always appealed to me, and Gertrude is no exception. I suppose Melissa'll have the final say--Gertie is, cough cough, her car and all. The long-term paint plan includes painting her roof the same color as the wheels. She pulls to the right during braking now, which I suspect will be cleared up when I replace the left pads this week. I know, I know, you're supposed to do them at the same time.
Update: both front brakes and bearings are now done and she doesn't pull so much anymore.
3 comments:
quite the risk putting the freshly powder-coated wheel and rubber under the rotor while doing the brakes and re-greasing the bearings. They don't look any worse for the wear by the final picture, though.
All of the organic brake pad farms are in California, aren't they? They might cost more, but you're doing your part to save the planet, right?!
@Anon-I always stick a wheel under there since I have cheap Chinese jackstands and I'm not a man of faith. I kept brake fluid off them by extravagant use of paper towels.
@bodeswell-Yeah, right. They're from Australia actually, so I'm a little worried they're engineered for wheels that spin in the opposite direction.
Alright,
whc03grady.
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