Date:         Tue, 10 Dec 2002 18:00:24 -0600
Reply-To:     Stan Wilder <wilden1@JUNO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Stan Wilder <wilden1@JUNO.COM>
Subject:      You nearly got me Mr Murphy
Comments: cc: wetwesties@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

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.

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