Atch is borken down on the side of I 57 with a wheel bearing out of his Ford 8". He needs to get the truck to someplace to replace the bearing and also needs the parts. Any South Chicago suburb H.A.M.B.ERS that can give a fellow board member a hand can reach him at this cel # 708 912 4471 He was on a HAMB relay, he picked up a feris wheel seat for me in Jacksonville Ill as he was on his way from his home in Mo to his fiance's house in Frankfort Ill. Hope someone is able to help him out tomorrow. Bob
Those Illinois HAMBers must be sleepin' or up to no good. I'm sure there's someone there to help him if they see this. BTTT
I'll try and get in touch with him from work when I get there. I have complete rear end install kits, but I don't think I can hook him up with wheel bearings... that, and I'm about 45 minutes away from him. I've got a friend in Joliet with a speed shop / chassis dyno and 10 bays. If he's open today, Atch will have a lift and good tools at his disposal. Unless he's fixed it and on his way already...
If I can help, I'll be at 800 424 8741 x159 from 8:00 to 4:00 today. I just remembered, a buddy of mine runs parts at Rod Baker Ford in Plainfield. He can help too! Mike
Just talked to Atch, he got ahold of a guy in Kankakee, evidently he is closer to there than to Joliet. The guy has an enclosed race trailer and they are not sure if Clarence will fit in there. He is going to get the numbers off of this post and call 35 or numm if he still needs help. Thanks Guy's B B
hi dudes and dudettes, atch here. yeah, i'm still broke, but have hopes of being back on the road this morning. right now i'm at sherry's house in frankfort, but in a few minutes i'm going to head back to peotone, ill. to where clarence rested overnight. i'm going to meet greg scott there. greg is in kankakee and is in the fellow pages. he's got an enclosed race trailer that he's measuring right now. he's going to meet me in peotone (where do you illini find your town names?) and measure clarence to see if he'll fit inside. if it will fit we'll go get his trailer and take clarence to greg's shop in kankakee (like i said, where do these names come from?). we don't have a plan b in case he won't fit. i guess we'll try to pull the axle on the side of the road. hopefully by now greg has found a shop that can do the bearing off/on trick for me today. and also a parts house that has the bearing. all that info is interesting, but can y'all take a minute and do some long distance diagnostics for me? i was rolling up I-57 without a care thinkin' how sweet it is going to be when i get to my baby's place in about 20 minutes when i feel a vibration and clunk, clunk, clunk, in time with the vehicle speed. sounds like it's the right rear. i'm only a hundred yards or so from an exit so i veer off on it and coast up to the stop sign. there's a town (peotone) to my right so i try to ease on over there. when i get on the gas and start moving all seems well. i'm thinking that maybe i just ran over something that somehow stuck to the wheel (pretty implausible, huh? but when you know something's wrong you hang on to all hopes that it's not as bad as you at first thought). well, as soon as i let off the gas here comes the sound and vibration back only worse. so i pull onto a side street (where he's still sitting i hope) and try to****ess the situation. could have been something inside the brake drum loose, so i jack it up, pull the wheel and drum, and look. everything looks great. i put the lug nuts back on and get out the 2 foot breaker bar i have in the tool box to try to turn the axle. it turns, but only with more force than it should take. i mean LOTS of force. so now i'm pretty convinced that i've fried the bearing. any concurrences or other suggestions? don't really know why i spent the time typing this 'cause i'm leaving here in about ten minutes and won't be near a computer the rest of the day. more my way of reaching out and touching a couple of thousand of my best friends in my time of need. i know there's a lot of you that would be here to help if you were closer and there was something you could do. the number i reached greg at last night is 815-939-0293. i don't know if that's a cell # that he'll have with him today or his home #. that's the only way i know of to reach me today in case anyone wants to try. i'm gonna write down the numbers you guys left above and take them with me today.
I spoke to Sherry about 1pm and Atch and Greg had found another rearend and were chasing parts to put it back together.
hi, gang. thanx for your thoughts and offers of help today. i have to say, though, that my little drama today pales in comparison to the sean howard tragedy. here's the outcome: while driving back down to peotone i got to thinking about the noise only happnin' on deceleration and not under acceleration. if i had a bearing problem then it would have been going on all the time. that got me to thinking about the gears inside the pumpkin. when i got there greg (remember greg, the guy in the fellow pages?) was there and we discussed it. we decided that we would pull the axles and check the bearings. if there wasn't any bearing problem then we would pull the center section. either way we needed to pull the axles, so we did. both bearings looked and felt good. out came the punkin. they seem to call them pigs here in northeast illinois. i'd never heard that term before. greg hadn't ever heard them called a pumpkin either. we couldn't see anything wrong with it, though. there were no shavings in the axle ends or the center. nonetheless we loaded up the axles and pumpkin and headed to one of greg's friend's garage who was open on saturday mornings. he looked it over and saw what greg and i neither saw: the inside of one of the gears that the axle fits into was cracked. the hunt was on for an 8" ford punkin. we struck out at the first two boneyards and all greg's friends who might have had one sitting around. at the third salvage yard, a pretty high class yard that only has pretty new cars in it, we found one "old" car, a '73 mustang. long story short: i bought the rear drum to drum. had to give an arm, both legs, the deed to the ranch, and the children's inheritance for it, but we were on the way. stopped at a parts house to get gasket/rear grease and headed back to peotone. all this took place in kankakee except the work that we actually did at the breakdown site. that's about 20-30 miles away. we got back to peotone and disassembled the "new" rear. installed it in clarence, and VIOLA!!! clarence was healed. thanx for all the good vibes i felt all day. and the good wishes. and the offers of help. tomorrow night clarence will be safely back in the atch barn in columbia. as they say: "all's well that ends well." and now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
good to hear your on the move again! seems when a guy is broke down the vultures(most parts stores) can sense it when you go shopping for parts and the prices they charge
I just called and spoke to Sherry and they are "off and Running"...! Seems they beat the rain for the repairs but they're driving through it now!!! Have a safe trip Mike and Sherry...! Mark
Sorry to hear you had trouble Atch. There would have been alot more replys, but we were all in Indy at the rebel rockabilly weakender. I just got home a couple hours ago. Glad it all worked out though. Lil Joe
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