From Veeduber@aol.com  Fri Oct  6 21:46:06 1995
msgnum: msg17145
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 22:46:04 -0400
From: Veeduber_at_aol_dot_com
Subject: Grendel's Good Friday

Ode to a Purple Thumb

I'm in the house, typing when I should be working.  There is no rain, the day
looks as though it will be a good one.  It's not yet ten a.m. and I've
already put in nearly three hours.  Things are going well.

Two days ago I struck the knuckle at the base of my left thumb with a hammer,
a common thing when working on your knees in the dirt.  Yesterday, when
removing the stuck drum, I struck it again, a much harder blow and with a
bigger hammer.  Already exquisitely sensitive, the pain was blinding.  It
left me in a cold sweat and wanting to throw up.  I now have a livid
sausage-tight
appendage where my thumb used to be, so tender it can't press the space bar
of the keyboard, so swollen it moves with great difficulty and sends a gulp
of nausea into your throat.  

The next step in dismantling Grendel's left rear wheel calls for me to lay on
my side under the vehicle and drive-out the axle with a drift.  Given the
position I'll be working in and the amount of force needed to drive it out
and the mushroomed condition of my too-long undressed drift, I'll hit my
thumb again.  I've come in to swallow more Tylenol, drink a cup of coffee and
bind up my thumb with tape, girding my loins as it were.  I'll wear gloves
and hope I hit the thing no more than once.  It isn't broken but I can feel
things moving around in there, like marbles in a greasy tobacco pouch.

I'm approaching the Limiting Factor in the Grendel Adventure.  I'm surprised
to find it is me.   I thought my wife and family would pull me home with
logical complaints of things more worth doing but they've propped me up, more
understanding than I ever would have imagined.  The money was a big IF but
some was found.  None to squander on twenty-two dollar sockets but enough to
get me home.  The tools have failed right and left, there's a trail of them
behind me like crumbs in the forest, but others have come to hand.  In the
end, it's my own body that is letting me down.  I'm a bit ashamed of it.  I
once ran the Marathon and swam from Malibu to the Santa Monica pier.  You'd
think it could stand being thumped with a hammer now and then.

I'll rest a while here, paint a bullseye on my thrumb with iodine, go out and
take another whack at it.

Evening

It began to rain about noon, got into it after about an hour and really hosed
down the place, and me.  Now it's clearing, now that I've come in and cleaned
up and am warm and dry.  I've yet to adjust to this rain business.

Even so it has been a good day, starting out with a minor victory pulling the
sealing can off the locking nut.  

The stub axles on early buses are part of an outboard gearbox, intended to
let a 25hp engine move a heavier load than a bug full of people.  The gears
are massive spur-cut things, each supported with equally large ball- or
roller bearings on either side of the gear. The larger gear is an intergal
part of the stub axel.  The axles inboard bearing fits into a machined seat
and is retained by an internal snap-ring.  The outboard bearing is a
roller-bearing that fits into a machined seat and is retained by the
bolted-on bearing retainer visible when doing a brake job.  The axle's
lateral motion is limited by the locking nut that secures the axle to the hub
of the inboard bearing from behind.  The locking nut is just a mild steel nut
with a lip around the thread.  After the nut is installed, securing the axle
in the bearing, the lip is tapped into a recess in the stub axle, locking the
nut in place.  To seal the access to the nut, a metal plug rather like a
freeze plug except for being installed  with the cup-side down, is pressed
into the recess around the locking nut.  Since the plug, which is more than
2" in diameter, is also an oil seal, it is liberally coated with Permatex
before being driven home.

The trick is getting the metal seal out so you can play with the nut.  The
can is perfectly smooth, no lips or notches to grip.

At the dealership we punched a hole in them, levered them out and threw them
away.  That was in the mid-1950's.  Today, you can't afford to throw them
away, you have to reuse them, which means making smaller holes, ones you can
easily patch.

To pull Grendel's plug I drilled four small holes around the edge of the plug
and installed #6 sheet metal screws.  To pull the plug I tried to pull the
screws with a carpenter's hammer.  It worked and the plug popped out on the
first try.  I'll be able to seal the small holes with solder or braze.

Once I had access to the locking nut I tried to spin it free with a chisel
but found I couldn't do it laying on my side.  Perhaps if the bus were higher
or if I were using a different form of support -- I have a pile of wooden
blocks under the tranny mount.  And part of the problem was my wounded thumb.
 I gave up, disgusted.  Drove down to the FLAPS prepared to pay $22 for a
suitable socket.

The store was empty.  It was a Friday morning, a few minutes after eight and
there was no one in the place, neither clerks nor customers.  Then a
heavy-set girl came out of the office, asked cautiously if she could help me.
 She was hesitant, unsure of herself, lifted her hands in distaste when she
found the metal frame holding the parts catalog -- a six-foot rack of manuals
-- was grimy, as all good parts catalogs should be.  It was either her first
day on the job or she was filling in.  I looked about, raised my brows.
 "Fellowship breakfast," she in a disgusted tone that said it was an all-male
fraternal bonding bullshit waste of time.  I smiled at her.  Then I grinned
and let that widen into a positive leer.  I was alone in an auto-parts store
with an inexperienced female clerk.  

"I'll take one of your inch and five-eighths sockets, please."  She started
for the rack of half-inch drive tools but a small shake of my head gave her
the clue and she went to the 3/4" rack, found the proper socket and brought
it back beaming.  "And a 20 inch long section of metric-to-metric brake line,
the kind with the bubble flare."  That stumped her and he made a tentative
move toward the catalog rack.  "It's probably hanging with the other brake
lines," I said, looking off toward the street, disinterested.  "Long, thin
metal pipes?"  That got a smile and she skipped off toward the back of the
place, inviting me to come along.  I followed so close I would of had to
marry the girl if she'd stopped suddenly.  

With the brake line in hand I gave her a stunning smile and shook back my
mane of long, blond hair.  It was dim and private, the counter forty feet
away down the aisles of racked parts.  "Now I'm going to show you something,"
I said huskily, "That you've never seen before."  She gave me a nervous
giggle and tried to back away.

I waved the length of brake line like a wand and described a cabinet or
drawer of parts that looked like the fitting on the end of the brake line.
 She frowned.  She had see it but couldn't remember where.  She tried one
aisle then another before snapping her fingers and leading me to a jumbled
rack of pull-out drawers.  In a minute I had a metric-to-metric bubble-flare
coupler in my hand.  "Somewhere in here there's an adaptor that will fit in
this end."  I let her look at the coupler and we began searching together,
she in one drawer, me in another.  She found it in a bottom drawer, jumped up
delighted with her success.  Her own store of parts jiggled wildly.  She was
very pleased with herself.  Being the counterperson at a parts house was
turning out to be easier and more fun than she imagined.  "Now we need the
SAE fitting that goes into THIS end of the adaptor."  She found it in less
than a minute and blushed in sunset hues when I praised her.

The SAE double-flare tool was more of a challange.  I described its
approximate shape.  The store had racks of K-D tools, I guessed it would  be
a K-D product.  She checked several drawers before asking me to look through
the dusty debris of things unsold, some racked so long their packaging was
faded.  The tool kit was near the bottom of the drawer.

When I added a pair of snap-ring pliers to the pile the bill came to nearly a
hundred dollars, thanks to the overpriced socket, the fifty dollar flaring
tool and the twenty dollar pair of snap-ring pliers.  She was ecstatic,
 "This will be my biggest sale all week!  I usually just do the phones," she
admitted.  She gifted me with a ball-point pen and a baseball cap while we
waited for the plastic to go through the computer.  When I thanked her,
telling her how much I admired a woman who really knew auto parts, she
impulsively threw in a key-ring pocket screwdriver tool.  "Normally, we only
give them out when the sale is over two hundred dollars..." and blushed.  I
hurried out of the place without looking back, afraid she would offer her
phone number or shout out "I get off at five!"  Lucky girl.

Removing a VW bus axle without pulling the brake drum is a topological trick
akin to a woman removing her bra without taking off her blouse.  They do it
all the time but it still looks like a trick.  The trick with the stub axle
is to remove all of the bolts holding the reduction gearbox together then
drive the thing apart by pounding on the unbolted end of the axle from the
back, working through the opening normally sealed by the can.  That is the
task I went back to after writing the first part of this message, my ode to a
purple thumb.

The pounding went slowly.  Cautiously would be more apt.  Even so, I whacked
the thumb again.  But it was the sort of job that you know will get done if
you just keep at it.  I kept at it and the gearbox popped apart about eleven
a.m., just in time for me to miss getting a ride downtown.  What I wanted now
was a hydraulic press, and I knew where one was.  But the stub axle, half a
brake drum, backing plate and part of the gear box weighed about forty
pounds, more than I wanted to carry without a pack-frame.  I had lunch while
I waited for my host to return with the car.

Three bucks.  That's what the machine shop charged to press the axle out of
the split drum.  It was a standard charge, posted right there on the wall.
 'Hyd. Press.  $3 minimum'  It took them less than a minute.  Then I had to
wait for my host to return, having dropped me while he ran some Friday
errands.

Back at the house I began cleaning the dismantled gearbox but soon realized
it was so contaminated with metal particles that I couldn't get it clean
without boiling it out.  The wobble was due to the failure of both lower
bearings, the outer-roller being so loose a fit it came to pieces when the
shaft was pressed out of the hub.  The inner was retained by a large snap
right that I popped out with my new snap-ring pliers.  It too was worn into a
rattly mess.  The upper bearings weren't quite so bad which was a bit of luck
since I had no way to pull the inner bearing without driving the axle out of
the tube.

Shortly after returning from the machine shop it began to rain.  A little
later the temperature took a sudden plunge and a keen little wind sprang up.
 I was able to keep my tools and the work area dry but couldn't avoid leaving
some part of my body exposed.  By three o'clock I'd made a good start on
rebuilding the gearbox but my boots were squishing and my levis clung damply
to my legs.  By five o'clock I had the inboard half of the gearbox cleaned
and the new bearings installed and a gasket made.  I had cleaned up one of
the gearbox overs from the junkyard and will use it instead of the
contaminated original.  But by then I was so wet and cold I was shaking.  My
thumb looked like a monsterous raisin.  I knocked off, wiped down my tools,
came inside and climbed into a hot shower.

This was a good day.  If it were warmer or if I were younger or if someone
was shooting at me, I could probably have Grendel back on four wheels by
midnight.  But it's cold, old and quiet.  I'll give it another go tomorrow.  

-Bob