Since the drive shaft wiggles around too much, it is obvious that the front drive shaft bushing needs to be replaced.
Photo number 16 shows the front end of the torque tube with the drive shaft sticking out the end, the bushing access hole (the slot) and the locating pin that prevents the bushing from rotating.
The red arrow is pointing to the pin. It is 5/16" in diameter and really short (I didn't know this until I pulled it out). The blue arrow is pointing to one of the four places where the previous guy who worked on this peened the pin in place.
I'm going to use my dremel tool to grind the peened pin anchors away, so I first slipped a sandwich bag over the end of the drive shaft and taped it to the torque tube in order to protect these areas from the grinding and drilling that I'm going to do. See photo 17.
In photo 18, I've ground away some material at the peening points and have drilled a 1/8" hole in the middle of the pin.
Begin little saga within a saga.
My first attempt to get the pin out was to use an easy out in the little hole I drilled. No go. The tip of the easy out broke off. ;-(
Luckily, the easy out was a cheap one and was not hardened, so I could drill down through it and get back to square one. I then opened up the hole to 3/16" and tried a better easy out. The pin stayed put and the easy out just twisted out.
Next, I opened up the hole in the pin again to 19/64" (just under 5/16") and the pin now spins around, but won't lift out.
Enter Rube Goldberg. I took a hardened concrete nail and ground it a little to make the point into a tiny chisel. I then drove the chisel in between the outside of the pin (which is now a tube) and the outer edge of the hole in the torque tube. I hoped that creating a crimp in the pin/tube would stop it from spinning in the hole.
The crimp did the trick. Yay! I went in again with the 19/64" drill and now the drill bit dug into the pin/tube and yanked it out of the hole. Whew!! See photo 19, which shows the concrete 'chisel' and the pin at the end of the drill bit. That's a REALLY short pin!!! Like, only 3/16" long.
End little saga.
In photo 20, I cleaned out the crud that was in the slot and now you can clearly see the front edge of the bushing, along with its ridge for knocking it out. The hole in the middle of the pin hole is where my 1/8" drill bit went through the pin and into the bushing.
Using a short length of 1/8" square key stock, I knocked the bushing mostly out (photos 21 and 22). At one point, the square stock got stuck in the slot, so I used a bent nail to push the bushing out the rest of the way.
It turns out that there is an old cork seal and a steel washer that was behind the bushing. You can see the seal through the slot in photo 23. Using a skinny screwdriver, I cajoled the washer and seal out of the torque tube. See photo 24.
That's the end of this episode of squealgate.
Later, Dean
Last edited by Rustoholic; 06/12/20231:23 AM. Reason: fixed pics
