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BY Will Wills

I’ve always felt my Bronco II has led sort of a charmed life.  No matter what I do to it, or how often, it always seems to start at the first twist of the key; lurch happily down the road as I scull through the gears and cheerfully endure the bumps and bruises of it’s weekend life of chores and recreation. So imagine my surprise when I have a tire off for something or another and find the drivers-side wheel bearing loose; the locknut still tight as a greedy clam.

So I decide a ten degree wheel bearing wobble is probably sort of unsafe and pull the thing apart.  I don’t have much hope it’s just loose, but maybe I can get it snug enough to make the Snowball run with it.  No damn fear: I’m sitting there with a handful of rust-corroded rollers and the outer cone in my hand thinking maybe, just maybe, I should have inspected it after my umpteenth jaunty splash through the creek.  So chalk me up for a new disk/hub, wheel bearing set and inner seal. That should do it, right?

I reflectively began to clean parts, thinking, yes, it has been a while since I’ve really inspected this truck.  I mean, only three weeks ago (or was it four, five or six?) I put the airbags in the front springs to support my plow and it seemed fine. I mean to say; no obvious signs of disgruntlement with its situation. But then I plowed snow and graded my driveway several times since then, didn’t I.  Yes but wouldn’t that have effected the axle shafts and things more than the wheel bearings, I ask?  No, I respond, jiggling the stub shaft with the rag I’m holding, it would have… Hell! That’s more than just a little of the old missing lockout looseness. That’s axial play.  The spindle bearing is wasted!

So I pull off the spindle and look in. No seal: it disintegrated. And there are no needle bearings in there.  They are gone like last Thanksgivings pumpkin pie. Vanished.  All that remains is a thin film of bearing case that it takes me an hour to peel out of there.  Add a spindle bearing and an inner seal to the list.

Now fear begins to creep in here. I mean to say, does a spindle bearing ever die alone? Or does it shoot the hostages on it’s way out?  I reach shakily for the lock-out and look inside.  It looks bad. A fine metal powder coats its innards. But it works, right? Well, sort of.  It’s been in the LOCK position since Admiral Nimitz was a plebe getting wedgies at Annapolis . Or is it the Army guys at West Point they call plebes? Whatever the case, the knob is frozen in LOCK.  I’m pretty sure it’s no good as a bushing for the axle anymore so I chunk it into my toolbox as an emergency spare and add “WARN #37781” to my growing list.

Now I’m pretty hardened to whatever else might be lurking in the dark recesses of my front axle.  With stoic indifference I pull out the axle and sure enough, the joint is rattling around like a maraca. I add a Spicer #5-760X to my list.  Then, remembering I may need spares since I’m trying out some 35” tires this trip, I add a few more joints so I can build up a few spare shafts.  That done, I shuffle dejectedly around to the other side of the truck and begin pulling it apart.

Surprisingly, it’s all fine--almost. The grease is a nice bright red through and through and the joints are smooth and solid.  But the upper ball joint bangs in and out with about 1/2" of total play. Wasted.  But there’s a limit to what I am willing to do to take this truck out and decide that it’s going to have to take a few Motrin and call me in the morning.  Bad hip or not, the old girl is going to Wellsville and it had just better get used to the pain.  I slap the passenger side together and skip off to find some parts.

In the aftermath of the Snowball, I think the magic feeling is back.  I mean, the ball joint totally failed and the tire looks like an old wagon wheel leaning against a tree. But the axles all survived a full day of full-throttle fun against the 35” ‘hawgs.  All the pretty spare shafts I built up can go back on the shelf until April.  And when I get around to renting a pressure washer, I’ll see if my truck is somewhere inside that geological mound still sitting on the trailer.  I guess my only real complaint about the affair is that the squeaky wheel never squeaked. ~TRS

 

 

 

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