|
In December 1999, one day before the world was supposed to end with the changing of the digit, someone was inbibing a bit early and turned onto the road I was drving on, heading right for me. I swerved to the left and avoided him (or her) and hit a low traffic island with my crossmember and steering rack. I was able to drive the 5 miles home, but the crossmember, a control arm, and the rack were destroyed.
$100 at the local boneyard bought a crossmember with controlaarms. I had a spare rack from a turbo coupe I had parted out two years earlier.
With the aid of a space heater in my garage I spent a few evenings installing the new Xmember, new engine mounts, new ball joints and the used rack. When I was back on the road, I had a few thumps and snaps and other noises. I quickly discovered that my new used rack had a problem which caused it to snap loudly. A friend of mine had a couple of parts cars and I got another rack. All was quiet for a week or two. Then I began to hear other snap, crackle, pop noises. I felt like I was driving a bowl of Rice Krispies. Turns out that one of bolts holding the rear control arm brackets had broken. Fixed that and all was quiet for a week or two. Then I had a noise like bad wheel bearings. Put new ones in. All was quiet for a week or two. Seeing a pattern here?
About two months ago I started to get very loud SNAPing, thumping and other scary noises when I would back up and turn the wheel sharply. I thought it was the strut mounts. Or maybe the ball joints were failing with less than 6k on them. Since work and other commitments were preventing me from having more than maybe 30 minutes at a time to deal, I had no time to drop the struts out, but did test the ball joints which seemed fine.
After spending an evening going through the archives here, I tried to tighten the 4 bolts which hold the cross member in place. Imagine my surpirse when all of them were able to be tightened, one over a turn. Guess what!!??!! The snap,crackle,pop noises were gone. But now the secondary noises were clearer. Yesterday and today it seemed that every joint in the car was creaking. So I spent a few minutes tonight and discovered that the passenger side tie rod joint was creaking. I pulled the bellows back, unhooked the tie rod end from the knuckle, and packed the joint with grease. Put it back and now my front end is quiet as a mouse. I drove it around for about 10 minutes, stepping hard on the brakes and making the car bounce. No noise. What a concept.
I did discover that the rack is leaking a tiny bit. I have a good one in the 81 parts car (the one I got the power windows out of) so I'll swap that in this summer.
sounds-of-silence-ly yr's -David
|
