Vacation

A couple of weeks ago we took the long trip down to New Jersey to visit my family for a while. We usually take Rachelle's car because it's quiet and has air conditioning, but I needed to do some work on my car with my dad so we took the jeep. The ride down wasn't that bad. It was an overcast day and was actually a little cold, so the missing a/c wasn't a problem.

Rachelle took the train to Long Island to visit a couple friends there for a few days while I hung out at home.

My dad recently got a lift for use in his barn, so we were able to raise the jeep up to our level while working on it. It made everything soooo much easier not having to bend over for hours at a time. It looks like it would be tippy, but it's really pretty stable. We were able to climb a ladder and get in it without it moving much at all.

The main thing I needed to do to the jeep was replace the driver side front-axle universal joint. The old joint was making a terrible pulsating squeaking noise when ever the wheels were turned while moving. While we were at it, we found that the wheel bearing was going bad so we replaced that at the same time.

The other thing I really needed to do was replace the rear differential cover. The pinion seal is leaking a little (still), and the check/fill plug for the differential was completely rusted in place. The only way to check the fluid level or add any would be to remove the old cover and replace it with a new one. Below is a movie of how the differential works. It's kind of neat how they designed a way of powering both wheels while allowing them to spin at different speeds (like while the car is turning).

That's my dad doing his teacher-thing in the background explaining why you don't want the spider gears spinning since they don't have bearing.