lasher_350

Evidently I've lost all outer and inner wheel bearings on the passenger side of my 85 t/a....stock brakes....I pull the wheel off and the outer dome cover is laying in the wheel, the rotor is wobblling all over the place and the spacer/cover behind the nut is all chewed up in the worst way....trying to get the castle nut off, but that baby just won't move, almost like it was welded on. Could it be possible it got hot enough to weld itself to the threads?? Am I going to have to replace the whole spindle? and how the heck will I do it with the rotor still on the spindle? HELP!!! Of course, it had to pick the very coldest day of the year to do this, and it's my daily driver....need help fast....any ideas or experiences you can share to help?

5.7iroc-02ws6

You are going to have to cut the nut off.... I have had a simliar prob in the past... If you have a torch you can do it that way (careful) best way would be to use a die grinder..

On the torch subject... Did you try heating the nut up before trying to loosen it?

Ryan
(it is freakin cold out)

lasher_350

Good news....well, only a bit of good news, the rest SUCKS! used some liquid wrench on it....let it set for a while...she came right off....along with the threads on both the nut and the spindle....chewed up to heck...once the rotor came off, found the bearings siezed on the spindle shaft, both inner and outer...I don't know what the hell happened, but I am going to have to replace the whole spindle...and yeah, it's FREAKIN cold out....i figure this to be about a weeks worth of work, since I don't get off work until it gets dark out, and only have a limited amount of light where the car is laid up....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

anyone know how much a salvage yard spindle runs?

mystikkal_69

iTrader: (2)

around here $15 - $30.

lasher_350

Okay, spindle was $45 at the salvage yard....got it all put back together, replaced the lower ball joint while I was at it. Not too bad of a job....but I'm curious....I did NOT adjust the tie rod ends or anything, just dropped it down and put it back in the new spindle....so why is my car way out of alignment now? Wouldn't it be the same as on the old?

xplane

the only way to know is to take it for a drive. go slow at first see if it runs ok then you will know. if it is out af alighnment enough to cause problems you will feel it the second the car starts to roll.

lasher_350

Okay, I just did that, and it pulls to the right....the side I changed the spindle on....so I know that changing the spindle somehow changed the geometry of the whole front end....also, the steering wheel is not straight when I"m going straight, it is turned to the right about 15 degrees....I'm thinking that since I changed the ball joint, it sits the way it is supposed to sit, and before, the linkages were all set up for the bad balljoint...does this sound right? Dont' get me wrong, I know that messing with suspension parts is going to require an alignment, I'm just trying to understand exactly why.....

another thing, when I had the spindle off, I could move the strut up and down VERY easily....almost too easily in my opinion...and I"m sure I should have changed it (as well as the balljoint and strut on the driver's side), but once installed, there doesn't seem to be any excessive bouncing on that corner....

Dave_Jones

Actually, spindles vary quite a bit, from what I've seen. Also, there's usually a considerable amount of slop in the strut-to-spindle interface, so unless you deliberately located it in a certain position, it's simply a matter of chance where it happened to be when you torqued it down.

Anytime you replace a major suspension component like that, plan on having to realign the car.