Sunday 24 October 2010

17th October 2010. Post RBRR Repairs!

The 2100 miles we ended up doing for the RBRR were handled well by the car, although I had started to notice a 'droning' noise around Sunday morning heading across to Dartmoor from Bude in Cornwall.
The initial thoughts of it being my Co-Driver Dave were soon dismissed when I realised it was still evident when he was asleep. (Which was a lot!)
The first place I looked at was the propshaft, although it had had new UJ's and been balanced and should have been ok. The new UJ's were fine, so the slide mount was then re-packed with fresh grease and the differential was topped up with oil. Were we now good?  Were we b*llocks! A test drive over to Harlow on the Saturday night proved that we wasn't!
Sunday afternoon, while Dave was fitting relays to the Spotlights (We had to disconnect these at the start of the RBRR as they were drawing too much power and would have burnt out the full beam switch-We took action before 'Lucas' The prince of darkness did it for us!!!)  I decided to check the rear hubs and rear wheel bearings. I discovered that the drivers side was fine, but the passenger side had movement. Not a good sign! So the nearside drive shaft was removed and scrutinised.  

With the driveshaft removed and clamped in the vice, it was discovered that the cap that houses the rear bearing (the black circular bit under the two large nuts) could be moved by hand. This indicated that we had indeed had a bearing failure and would be where the 'droning' noise was coming from.
Unfortunately, changing the bearings on these is somewhat impossible without the proper tools and a bench press. Luckily though, I had another driveshaft in stock with new bearings in, so that was fitted instead.
A further test drive revealed that the problem had been solved. The car was still a bit noisy from the rear, but that may have been due to the fact that I have removed the back seats! Like the bumpers, (which have also been discarded) they are just heavy and serve no purpose, so why do they need to be in  a rally car? :-) 

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