Been really busy working on the 72 pushing to get her ready for our local car show. I was able to repair and paint the L-88 plus finish installing the new leather seat upholstery. The interior looks great and I love the aggressiveness of the L-88. We had our show yesterday which I made. Follow below to see what happened....




After the show we had a parade through downtown Carson City. I was mid pack with my 13 year old daughter riding shotgun. Perfect day, 86 out, t-tops off, rear window out and then I it felt like I was driving a clown car. Up and down and left and right all at the same time....I pulled into a parking lot, gave a quick look over, nothing, checked tire pressure, nothing....hmmm...so I carefully drove back to our staging area...I was the first one back. Within 10 minutes everyone returned for the show awards and I had made the mistake of parking right near the grandstand. I was surround by all the other show cars....see below what was waiting for me when I got out of the car....

I pulled the center cap to see if the lugs came off...nope. Ok, this is bad. Called for a flatbed tow but had to wait around 1.5 hours for all the awards to be handed out first. I was locked in...no biggy but I really should have pulled to the side rather than right up to the grandstand....
Anyway, I broke it all down today and found a failed inner roller bearing on the stub shaft. Feel free to correct my naming of these parts. My manual does not address anything inside the hub assembly.
I do have a question: I'm assuming I have an inner and outer tapered roller bearings. There is so little material left on the inside I can only guess there was one before grenading....there appears to be a race in there. I found nothing that looks like rollers or a cage. My question, I cannot pull the stub shaft out. I'm inside of it all, the large 1.125" nut came off no issue, go the half shaft mounting plate off (under the nut) and there appears to be the center of the bearing kinda locked onto the stub shaft. I could possibly hammer the shaft out thus pushing this "ring" off the shaft but I do not wish to mess up whatever is inside the control that this thing would be resting up against. I might be able to a small puller on the "ring". Might not...there is not a ton of room inside the control arm. Whataya think?

Did some research and it looks like I need to have this trailing arm rebuilt. The inner bearing grenaded for sure. Oddly I cannot find enough trash to equal 1 bearing. I'm trying to decide if I should just yank the other side and do them both. 

  YUP! Do them both.

Dave...it takes special tools to get the stub shaft loose from the bearing. You can beat on that thing all day long, and all you'll get is a sore arm, and a severely messed up stub shaft. Don't even bother. Remove the t-arm, take the spindle support assembly off of the t-arm, and use a press. If yer really lucky, the shaft will not be damaged. As far as not seeing any shrapnel from the bearing, you'll see that once you get the shaft pressed out....it will all be contained in the hollow area of the spindle support.
I wondered if this wasn't causing your brake issue, but I could swear you had posted earlier that you had already done the rear bearings.....

Tough break, BUT....at least it happened close to home, and not on the highway at 75mph!

I second the comment that "at least it didn't have at 75 mph".  I just had both trailing arms rebuilt, did it locally to save on shipping, still not cheap.  But more importantly...is that a Honda Accord you are parked next to!!!!

Ya that POS Honda followed me in....couldn't shake him. I know...."what the...?"

Yup, will pull the arms and have them done up. I might press them out myself just to inspect the innards. Yes, I feel very lucky it happened at like 10 MPH in the parade and 2 miles from my house. As far as the brakes, yes this was the brake issue. The rotor was starting to wedge itself in the caliper as the bearing got looser. The disc brakes saved my bacon. It kept the wheel inside the fender rather than flying down the road. Hoping the rotor is not warped. It looks fine...no visible damage. All the brakes on this car are new including rebuilt calipers. This rotor looks to be a turned OEM unit. Now I did see how the internal e-brake works and and found the star adjuster. Tell me this: it appears you need to pull the spindle out of the t-arm to install the e-brake shoes etc. The e-brake stuff is all new. If yes you do need to pull the spindle to get at the internal drum then someone did that and didn't replace the inner wheel bearings. The grease in there is like old tar.  But why would you not replace the bearings if you had it all apart? I will never know.....

It has been awhile since I worked on the parking brkes but I don't remember having to pull all of that apart.  If memory serves I just had to remove the caliper and rotor to get at all the parking brake stuff.  Just did all that on "The Silver Buckboard" (my '01 F-150) and the setup is virtually the same.

The park brake stuff is easier to mess with if you remove the spindle/hub, but it isn't required. Just a little harder to wrangle all the parts around the hub. Since your plan is to have the bearings replaced anyway, if it were me, I would press the hub/spindle out, and then take care of whatever the p brake needs before putting the hub/bearings back in the support. Be aware that pressing the spindle out of the support will take some ingenuity to do without damaging/bending the backing plate. I take the p brake stuff off, then the 4 nuts that hold the support to the t-arm, remove the support from the t-arm, and then go to the press. You can buy special tools to remove the spindle from the support, BUT...if the bearing(s) has welded to the spindle, or are just really tight, you'll wind up bending or breaking either the tool, or the support....or both.
This is why most folks send them off to be done, or buy reman assemblies.




|UPDATED|7/1/2014 9:58:29 AM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

I guess its time to go shopping for reman and compare. Bummer.....I didn't expect the vette to be dead in the garage. I had planned on tearing into my motorcycle to get it back on the road this summer.