so I guess today was forward progress... of a sort.....
my dad was paid over for the day in pembroke, so I ran up there, had
lunch, and we both came down to work on the truck. we tried lots of
heat and lots of pounding to get the spindles off the knuckles, but
made no headway at all. the spindles need to come off to pull the axle
shafts, and I need to pull the shafts to replace the ujoints. the
knuckles also cannot be pulled without the axles being out of the
housing, of course. The only option left was to cut the ball joint
studs off to remove the knuckle.
After about 4 wasted hours of heating and beating, the torching too
probably another 1.5-2 hours, but I got them cut off.
There are no outer axle seals, so there's a LOT of dirt in the axle
tubes that I need to clean out so I don't push it into the chunk.
I'm going to have find a machine shop with a BIG press to try and get
the spindles off the knuckles. I'm going to try tomorrow to do the
ujoints, and if I can't do it with hand tools, I'll get the shop to
press them out for me too.
I'm back in Rochester right now, I'm going to see about getting some
slightly better tires for the ramcharger tomorrow morning, and then I'm
heading back down to Forestville.
Tomorrow, I'll get the inside of the axle tubes cleaned out so I don't
push a bunch of dirt into the diff, and then I've also got the trans
crossmember to finish, more tabs to fab, and a complete panhard link to
put on the truck. Plenty to keep me busy until I get the spindles
taken care of, and without starting to put things on an axle that I
still don't know for certain will work.
As long as it's going to be in a machine shop, I'll have them take care
of the broken off tap, and drill + tap the passenger side knuckle for a
steering arm.
-- Michael Maskalans <http://mike.tepidcola.com/dak/> '98 Dakota CC 4x4 318 '84 RamCharger 4x4 360 mobile.612.618.4652 campus.585.274.2246 fax.954.697.0487
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