So this past weekend I took my car over to a good friend of mine, Wayne. He was going to redo my differential since it has always howled and also fix my recently noisey wheel bearings. Since I wasnt much of a guru on differentials i decided to come and help. What we found was incredible...a real toast to people's lazyness. The crush sleeve was never properly crushed,the differential unit wasn't shimmed correctly, washer on the pinion was wrong, pinion depth was wrong, backlash was wrong and to top it all off the differntial units bolts were torqued to less then 20ft lbs since i was easily able to take them right out (they are supposed to be around 70). Next after all of that..we decided to redo the brakes back their as well. Well, the caliper bolt on my right side was about 2 inches long..and if youve ever taken the rear caliper ones out before..the correct ones are what? 1/2 an inch long? Whoever did it put a bunch of washers, some big thick crown looking thing and a nut on the bolt to take up all the slack. I mean for christ sakes they could have at least cut the bolt to be a similiar size to the correct bolts.. So then we looked my rear wheels...and my god there was at least about 1/4 inch of thick..****..all on the inside of the wheels, i had to have scraped off AT LEAST a couple of ounces of crap (which im sure was causing an inbalance in the wheel) <--i can really blame anybody but myself on this one...i should have seen it earlier and cleaned it. So to top off the night we cleaned out all the crap inside the wheels and noticed a nice huge scar in the wheel..i believe it came off the right side of the car (same side with the retarded caliper bolt) and it looks like the disc had like fallen off into the wheel and put a nice long scar inside the wheel. It wasnt deep enough to cause any issues, but it still sucks. Well anyway we got everything back together and made it all squeeky clean. However unfortunately the ring and pinion were worn too badly and the howl is still there..but the car feels much more solid...cant imagine why though Well anyway, just thought id share....its funny to find some history i guess.

 

I paid $500 for my '91 and now I can see why.
-My tranny pan bolts were only finger tight (couldn't figure out why it was leaking)
-My fenders were taken off for a MAACO paint job and just threw back on, not adjusted at all
-The rocker arms were all tightened as tight as they'd go, no setting them at all
-Previous owner put in a new timing chain and just cut the oil pan gasket instead of dropping the pan
-Wiring harness is cut and spliced
LOL, and that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I am slowly but surely bringing her back to life. I had the front end completely off this past weekend and straightened out 99.9% of the body lines. I also tightened up the squeaking doors and replaced the interior. So far I haven't spent a dime on the car at all and it's coming along great. I can't wait to get some taxes in Feb to replace a lot of seals and get some decent wheels.

 

ah yes the joy of finding those little suprises in each of your cars. i seem to find one or two every day!... like my exhaust....it was held to the cat using a drywall screw and piece of wire strung through the hole! kinda scares me when i think what else could be like that.