So, I’ve just sat down. I’ve sat down because my body has informed me in no uncertain terms that if I do not sit down it will put me down. Actually, I’m not wholly convinced sitting is enough to settle its desire for rest. See, I came off nights on Friday morning, and had a nice chilled out day. I slept for an entire two hours, before getting up (thankfully, Kathryn generously tidied the house up, because it was a tip, and we had the chimney sweep coming).
The Sweep came and swept, and left, and then we went out for lunch, and for a few errands, then came back and I’m a bit vague on the next block of time, but I think mainly I dinked on the internet, while Kathryn worked on her (awesome) blog. Yesterday I got up early and painted the house, then stayed up ’til 2230 putting the second coat on.
Today I thought I’d do some restful stuff on the car. Heh.
First, of course, came the job of getting the car into a position where I could, actually, work on it. She’d been parked in the garage hard-up against one of the walls, but having sold the motorbike, theoretically I could park her more or less in the middle. Only… the garage was full of crap. And filthy. So I spent two and a half hours this morning sorting out rubbish, tidying, sweeping. It’s still a tip, it’s still barely organised at all, but there’s a fair amount more space, and much less rubbish. Indeed, with some shuffling in and out I managed to get the Minor at a jaunty angle and definitely far enough from the wall to allow me to start stripping out the rear axle…
I’d forgotten how hard a job working on the car can be. Whilst it’s not phenominally physical in most regards, I had to keep my arms raised above my head squashed into the slim space underneath the car, with the car on axle stands. Now theoretically, the car could go up quite high on axle stands, but my jack won’t take it high enough for that, so it’s only about 14″ off the ground. Which means I can just about fit between it and the floor. So I’ve spent from 1pm ’til 6pm, roughly, with my arms stretched out above my head reaching for and working on things in that position.
They hurt.
Well, my shoulders hurt.
I am not looking forward to work tomorrow. I’d also forgotten the deep, deep joy of bits of crap dropping on my head and in my eyes. But, through the joys of nitrile gloves and my (c)overalls, I actually am pretty much clean following a shower (concrete dust and oil in my hair, yay). Clean but sore.
On the minus side, there’s this:
It turns out it wasn’t a bearing that failed in the diff (which explains why the oil came out clean this time), it was teeth sheering off and being, presumably, ground down into fine, fine, gritty shards. I don’t quite get the sequence of events though:
– Progressively noiser (very slowly, took me ages to work out that it was actually getting noisier, and I wasn’t just getting oversensitive to the noise).
– Changed the oil: No change in noise level (but hideous sparkly grey oil came out)
– Drove to work and back – still very noisy, but no change then sudden vast increase in noise level (sounded attrocious), limped home…
– Drove around to back of house after sitting for a few months (not very noisy)
– Driven in and out to get into position for working on the car (quiet)
Still, I’m waiting for a bit of amateur advice about whether replacing that component and the bearings will produce a reasonably salvageable diff, or whether it will permanently be very noisy and very sad. The crown wheel looked okay, as did the other gears, but that is ‘okay to my untutored eye’ not ‘okay to an engineer at Morris’. But whether a new pinion is available separately, and whether it’s even worth trying to change the pinion is a question I don’t have the answer to. Initial comments aren’t positive, though, which is a bit worrying.
Still, it came out, and there was only a small amount of swearing. I shall have to have a good clean out of the casing before fitting a new diff, although whether I should replace the bearings on the halfshaft is a question I’m still pondering. Rebecca was also surprisingly chipper, starting second try and although a little uneven, certainly not running perfectly, but since it’s about the third time she’s run at all in the last year, that’s not too bad.
Anyhow, so apart from the painful achy left shoulder, I think that’s gone surprisingly well :)
