I've been experiencing a slight roaring noise from my front suspension recently. My adventures took me about 1200 miles last week and the roaring continued but didn't seem to get any worse. I had the tires rotated ......... not a fix. I made myself a mental note to check the other possibilities. It took me a week to think about it and fifteen minutes to fix the problem. The washers under the locking nuts on the front Vanagon spindles can go into several of the slots provided there. When I had the front suspension work done in January of this year the shop mechanic missed the main slot for the lock extension in the wheel bearing washer. It simply fell into the wrong slot allowing the bearing to wobble. The nut tightened up *almost enough* but not quite. As long as the bearing had plenty of grease it functioned well even with the slight wobble. After finding one washer in this condition I had to see if Murphy's Law had attacked both spindle nut assemblies. There it was .......... a pair, both installed wrong. After checking the possibility of a burned out or damaged bearing by sticking a pipe cleaner inside deep enough to capture some grease I found no metal in the grease, no flakes, chips or metallic coloration. I used my 'Ta Ta", CV joint greasing 1/8" diameter grease gun extension to grease the inside bearing and I removed, cleaned and re greased the outside bearing. Don't worry guys, this could never happen to you. Stan Wilder 83 Air Cooled Westfalia ....... Silent Running Again. ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com |
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