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one less worry
you know what makes me happy?
when i drop off the car for (expected) maintenance and repair at a new shop, and the guy at the desk tells me he's envious of the roadtrip and that "you don't see many cars like this one around anymore." and then the second mechanic calls me back and says "You know, this car is in really great condition! Is that the original mileage on there? Wow."
so Matilda's getting a new muffler-pipe, an oil/etc change, and four shiny new tires. it's another big pile of money, but the exhaust pipe's been broken for months now, and i knew the tires were looking pretty sad. (i haven't really taken care of them, and Matilda's never had a garage. so, better to get them replaced now than to have one blow in the middle of Texas.)
wheee!
(also, i should make an icon for Matilda. hm.)
when i drop off the car for (expected) maintenance and repair at a new shop, and the guy at the desk tells me he's envious of the roadtrip and that "you don't see many cars like this one around anymore." and then the second mechanic calls me back and says "You know, this car is in really great condition! Is that the original mileage on there? Wow."
so Matilda's getting a new muffler-pipe, an oil/etc change, and four shiny new tires. it's another big pile of money, but the exhaust pipe's been broken for months now, and i knew the tires were looking pretty sad. (i haven't really taken care of them, and Matilda's never had a garage. so, better to get them replaced now than to have one blow in the middle of Texas.)
wheee!
(also, i should make an icon for Matilda. hm.)
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i picked her up this afternoon, and she purrs...like a 5-liter V8 engine with a functional exhaust system! and her tires are indeed shiny. :)
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On the other hand, I just took Buttercup in for an oil change and brake work (in retrospect, I really should've found the time and resources to do this myself) and ended up also getting a wheel bearing replaced. Total: $720.
Actually, the wheel bearing was kinda good news-- I had worried it was a CV joint on its way out
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anyhow, i'm glad to hear Buttercup's well taken care of. :)
(also: *bouncebounce* Matilda's back, and her tires are all shiny and new, and she's so quiet! it's amazing. i'm gonna have to readjust to the new engine-sound...)
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In a front wheel drive car (and a rwd with independent rear suspension) the differnetial is fixed in place, and with it one end of each half-shaft. The other end, terminating at a wheel, has to be free to move. Now, a simple U-joint could provide that freedom of motion, except that when deflected a U-joint takes a constant input and turns it into a pulsed output1-- the same rotational period, but one part of the motion is faster and one part slower. THe more the deflection the more pronounced the effect. CV stands for Constant Velocity and it offers the flexibility of a U-joint while maintaining a constant output. It's also more complex than a simple U-joint. For both joints, working in greater deflection puts more stress on the joint. U-joints, I believe, are more robust
In a fwd car, there are 2 CV-joints on each side. The inboard CV-joint allows for suspension travel (in a RWD with independent rear suspension [IRS], there are 2 on each side as well, but they're both about like the inboard ones on a FWD). The outboard CV allows the front wheels to turn for steering. The inboard CVs (and those on the back of a RWD, IRS car) are less prone to failure, as they deal with less deflection. The outbard CVs are more likely to fail, since they have to deal with suspension travel and the much greater deflection from steering inputs.
In fairness, and you've asked about this, my habit of downshifting into compression ans using engine brakeing, when I don't do it correctly and gently (and I try!) puts stress on the CVs that wouldn't be there otherwise. Braking with the brakes acts more or less directly on the wheels, not via the half-shafts.
I realized yesterday that bearing was worse than I had thought. I, too, just got new tires (only the fronts. The rears in a month or 2) and I had thought they were just way noisier than the old, droning on the highway. When the service folks mentioned bearing failure noise I was thinking of this rhythmic sort of 'toc toc toc' I was getting. I nearly told them to hold off on the bearing until after I got paid. But, since I'm going to durham this weekend, I went ahead and ponied up for it. I realized yesterday that the 'tire noise' is gone too-- it wasn't the tires but the bearing making the noise. So, the bearing was worse than I thought when they mentioned it to me. I'm therefore relieved to have gotten it done before the trip.
Also, while I should've done the brakes myself, if I had the bearing wouldn't've gotten diagnosed, so...
I'm 99% certain that Matilda has a live-axle rear end, which means no CVs for you to worry about. The driveshat may have a single U-joint up by the transmission or it may be a paired u-joint affair as described in the footnote.
[1] An exception to this is 2 U-joints connected by an intermediary shaft, with the joints properly aligned and the ends controlled so that the input and output are always parallel, if not in-line.
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--+ \ \ +-In such a case, the variation from one u-joint cancels that of the other. Contemproary BMWs (motorcycles, natch) use such an arrangement in their driveshafts (and I think the latest Guzzis do as well), while older BMWs and Guzzis used only a single u-joint at the juncture between shaft and transmission. For various reasons, the u-joint induced variation was minor enough to be of little consequence in these applications (not least, I think, being that the shaft probably spins several times in each wheel revolution in this application).
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do you just jack the car up to do the brake work, or what?
also, have a good time in Durham this weekend. give