I don't mean to cause any unnecessary alarm or hysteria, but . . .
Monday night, Dan Walters came over with his monster hub puller, and after
dinner we had a marathon axle-hub-pulling session. We jerked the hubs off
eight axles in little over an hour--like seven or eight minutes each!
This adventure was the result of a busted ring gear bolt in the Series II,
which had fallen to the bottom of the differential case and subsequently
took the heel ends off seven of the nine teeth on the pinion gear. Since I
was going to have to either borrow Dan's puller or make one for myself, I
decided to fish the three rear ends out of the shed, remove all the axles
and pumpkins, and do the whole lot all at once.
After dehubbing the last axle, we raided the suds locker and I asked Dan if
he wanted to look at all the nasty stuff I had found in the bottom of my
axle housing.
"Busted teeth and bolts?" he asked.
"Teeth yes, bolts, no, just one," as I showed him the body bag.
"Just one? All the rest were loose though, weren't they?"
Well, I didn't know 'cause I hadn't fooled around at all with the busted
pumpkin, so we went over to the other corner of the garage to have a look.
Sure enough, all of the ring gear bolts were loose! I mean like
not-even-finger-tight loose!
Then we checked the others. I had all four pumpkins lined up there on the
workbench, and . . . Would you believe? All of the ring gear bolts were
loose on the second pumpkin! And on the third! Only the fourth had bolts
you couldn't wiggle with your fingers! And yes, I mean "wiggle" with your
fingers!
So, three out of four rear ends taken from various parts cars had very, very
loose ring bolts. I guess that does not necessarily mean that three out of
four cars on the road will have loose ring gear bolts, but it certainly is
something to think about.
I asked Dan what he thought the problem might be, and he blames it on those
"lock" washers, which are really just over-sized flat washers that are
bashed up and down across a flat on the bolt and the differential carrier.
He says that they are too soft. They get crushed by the torque on the
bolts, and then let the bolts come loose. I think I'll toss all of mine in
the original-but-useless parts bin, get some new bolts, and use real lock
washers with a whole sh*t-load o' lock-tite when I put mine back together.
Ramon
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