1991 RCLB Driver

Dylan1991_1500 said:

Updates...but none of them good.

First, in an effort to reduce the brake squeak I was having I cleaned the rear brakes. I had to use a ball peen hammer to get the drums off but they came off rather easy, I didn't have to go into beast mode to get them off. Cleaned out a pound of brake dust on each side. Sprayed down with a can of brake clean and put back together. No biggie, done this a million times in 23 years. Yesterday I take the truck to work intending to visit Riter Restorations (www.riterrestorations.com) as the owner is a close personal friend of mine. Driving 60mph I notice a shake I hadn't felt before, thought a damn wheel was about to come off. So when I pulled into Riters parking lot I asked if I could borrow a ratchet and socket to check my lugs. They were all tight. My buddy and me speculated what it could be but no conclusions. I figure I would check it when I got home, at least I knew I wasn't going to lose a wheel. So I drove it to work from Riters and the shake was still there.

At work, I work for a heavy truck shop, I asked if I could borrow some air so I could loosen and retighten the lugs on each wheel thinking maybe one of the wheels was just not seated on the hub right. Did all four. Shake still there when i drove home. Got home and I decided to lift the axle with the jack and let the real wheels spin in gear at idle. That's when I noticed the rear wheel dancing all over the place. My first thought was damn, bent wheel. But how? Those were new wheels and I know I didn't hit anything between Saturday and Monday (never drove the truck after the brake service). So I tried a spare wheel, same thing dancing all over the place. I checked bearing play...nothing. No axle movement that account for how badly the wheel was moving. So I ran it with no wheel, just the drum and that drum was dancing. So great I think to myself I bent the drum when I hit it with the hammer. Must be a weak ass drum, better start shopping. Put the wheel back on and parked the truck for the night.

Spent some time researching terms like 'bent drum' and such and found most of the time the axle flange was at fault. So this morning I decided to run the truck on the jack with the wheel and drum off and what did I see? A dancing axle flange. That's right the axle is bent and has about 3/16 up and down run out. Yeh I'd feel that. So Bob1500 has gone from driver to project status. I will need to either replace just the passenger side axle or just go ahead with my 3.73 axle plan. I am not in any money position to do the latter since I am about to start tearing apart the front brakes. So we won't be seeing Bob on the road for a while till all this works out.

Lucky for me I do all my own labor, I have two other vehicles that I can drive and the Bob1500 is paid for so it can sit and it won't cost me anything. But how quickly we went to project status in one weekend makes me shake my head. I was hoping for a slow rolling resto-rat job but for now it's a non-rolling resto-rat. Oh well, I like projects, I only have 2 others going right now LOL!

And to top the story off and to talk about chain of events...I had a flat tire over night last night. Same right rear tire I took off to check the shake. It seems the tire had a goiter...(sidewall bulge) that decided to pop after I parked it for the night. Talk about luck...imagine if that had popped while I was driving home in the dark????

So yeh, last night sucked in Bob1500 world. Ordering brake parts and stuff is starting to show up UPS. It's more about having the time to work on it than any other factor. But I swear this won't stop me. It's a 25 year old truck with 187k on it...would you expect any less?

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