From Veeduber@aol.com Mon Sep 25 23:25:01 1995 msgnum: msg16380 Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 00:24:59 -0400 From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com Subject: Grendel, Monday It's raining. They say it does a lot of that around here. Not a hard rain, but wet. I'm waiting for front wheel cylinders, due to arrive via UPS. Tackle the wiper problem and discover there is so much paint built up around the wiper shafts that I have to chip it away to get at the nuts. Spray it with paint remover, use the wire brush. Do that three times before I'm down to bare metal. Remove the nuts. Inside the cab, disconnect the speedometer cable and pull it free. The jury-rigged wiring includes several runs through new holes drilled in the package tray. Sort them out. Begin removing the three Phillip's head sheet metal screws that secure the package tray to the bus frame. Make that one Phillips head, one pan-head and one 3/8" SAE. Get them off. remove the two... oops. One screw securing the steering column brace, remove the two 13mm bolts that holds the brace to the package tray, remove the package tray. It still has its original vinyl liner, now serving only to conceal twenty years of rust and 63 cents in change. The package tray has accumulated more than a dozen extra holes over the years, some drilled, some punched, all rusty. Remove the 10mm bolt securing the wiper frame to the vehicle, work the wiper-arm shafts free of their grommets, remove the wiper motor and arms as a unit. One of the wiper-arm shafts is trashed. I may have to drive home with one working wiper, legal but not smart. I dismantle the thing, take a peek inside. The wiper gear box is as dry asSearle's Lake, the gears worn to sharp edges. The motor armature is oxidized black. I put it aside for a rebuild, continue with the wiring which is now more easily accessible. During one of Grendel's several accidents she suffered two electrical fires. Part of the mixed up wiring, accomplished with trailer splices and duct tape, was done to circumvent the melted/shorted/open wires. I traced them back to their source, or as as close to it as I could get. Having melted, there were no color codes. I solve three of the puzzles, replace those wires with properly spliced runs. The 100watt trouble light does a nice job activating the heat-shrink tubing. Two puzzles remain and will have to be solved by powering-up that portion of the system. When they removed the stock light switch they tied a lot of the circuits together, leaving others disconnected. The high-beam indicator lamp and associated wiring is completely missing, the interior light lead vanished into a melted loom. The UPS truck arrives just after 12 bringing four front wheel cylinders, a full set of metric taps & dies, a brass drift, another wire brush and several other useful items. I rig a plastic tent to protect me from the rain and tackle the corroded bolt holes on the salvaged spindle. The bores clean up nicely and I soon have the driver's-side backing plate installed on the rebuilt spindle. The new front brake shoes, purchased locally several days ago in anticipation of the repair, are curiously thin, the lining material a bare 3/16ths of an inch thick. Indeed, the new shoes are a sixteenth of an inch THINNER than the greasy old shoes. The new shoes are 'Raybestos' brand. I wonder if they are any good. Sand the drum. It has two deep scores and should be turned but it is close to the 9.9" max. I sand it and swab it out with lacquer thinner. The bearing races have a few light scores, enough so I would normally replace them. Instead, I clean them carefully, dry them and repack them with long-fiber wheel bearing grease. Pack the bore of the drum, as per VW's recommendation, alien stuff to American mechanics. To install the new oil seal I use a piece of 2-1/4" ID exhaust pipe and a block of wood. The bearing seats with one blow. Carry the assembled brake drum through the gentle rain to my plastic tent, misty on the inside from the heat of the trouble light. I'm working on a floor of wooden blocks covered with clean cardboard, my coffee cup handy on the edge of the door. The drum goes on more easily than I would have liked. This is the rusty spindle, polished to size with steel wool and toothpaste. Run the nut up on the threads that took so long to clean, seat the bearings while turning the drum. No crunchies and it spins true. Back it off, going by feel and experience since I've no dial indicator. When it feels right, I run up the other nut, strake down the locking tabs. Adjusting the brake takes fifty-one teeth for the upper, fifty-three for the lower. These are THIN brake shoes. Am I all done? Was it really that easy? I sit there, eyes closed, hearing the gentle tap of the rain on the plastic sheeting, letting my sense of touch be my inspector. Safety wire on the link-pin locking bolts and on the tie-rod end. It had been so long since the spindle was serviced that the cotter pins had disintegrated; replaced them with stainless steel safety wire. Put the jack under the shock and raise the rebuilt assembly, give it one last shot with the grease gun. The same piece of exhaust pipe serves to seat the dust cap, but lightly -- I've yet to install the speedometer cable. I like king-pins. You can keep a king-pin front end going forever with only a couple of tools. Ball-joints, you're dependent on someone to make the joints even if you do the installation. With king-pins, you can do it all yourself. But the link-pins need to be adjusted every second oil change. It only takes a couple of minutes but it's obvious the adjustment hadn't been made to Grendel in years, which is why the link-pin bearings failed. I move around to the passenger side. I don't know why someone would adjust one side and leave the other but Grendel's passenger-side link-pins appear to be okay... until I try to adjust them and find the upper link-pin frozen. It's twenty past six. My host has been waiting for me so they can sit down to supper. I've been at it about nine and a half hours. Time to call it a day, go clean up. -Bob