Hmmm. That makes sense. And gets me thinking, too…
As long as I’ve owned Fezzik, I’ve noticed a droning under under load at speeds above 45mph. It sounds like gear whine, but I can’t quite place if it’s front or rear.
Cruising along above 45mph, the noise goes away when I let off the throttle and unload the driveline. I can literally modulate the noise by touching the throttle just enough to maintain speed. Goes away in neutral. Installing manual hubs up front made no difference, suggesting it’s the prop or rear diff.
I’ve probably greased the prop shaft zerks 3-4 times in the 4+ years I’ve owned the truck. Never seems to make any difference. And yet, I had a lot of junk all over the magnet on the rear diff drain bolt. (Like 1/8" all around.)
Interesting thing on the Montero prop shaft, though, I believe there’s only one zerk per end. Or maybe I’m wrong and should just plan on buying a new prop shaft when I do the re-gear this winter…
With the u-joints removed it was time to focus on the shafts themselves. Plenty of rust to remove, but at least I had some help. (I wonder if anyone would recognize what might be sitting behind my son on that work bench…goodies for a later day.)
They cleaned up pretty well, but even with a little helper and a bench grinder it just takes forever. I decided to try and learn something new that would hopefully cut down on the elbow grease and the rust boogers. Thus we enter the magical world of electrolysis.
I can’t remember the exact wording of the incantation or how this whole process worked, but Geoffrey Croker explains it well here (his YouTube channel is hilarious and amazing btw). You basically just need baling wire, a rusty horseshoe, baking soda, and electricity. Sorcery ensues and rust turns into bubbles.
There’s lots of math involved in doing this “right”, but I just kinda worked with what I had laying around. On the electrical end you’re basically setting up a DC circuit that passes current from your rusty part through your baking soda saturated water to the sacrificial annode or cathode or whatever it’s called. I used an old laptop power cord for my power source because I didn’t want a flux capacitor like the internet says you’re supposed to use. Whatever. I upgraded the lucky horseshoe too to some old brake rotors I had laying in the scrap pile. Because racecar.
Little space gnomes, in excited admiration of my god-like ability to command the elements, then began picking away at the rust with their little pickaxes, turning it into goopy soup.
At this point all the rusty stuff was prepped and ready for paint…except for the axle housing itself. It was way too big to fit into my magical green tub so I had to revert to slave labor. I handed out a couple of toothbrushes and told the minions to get scrubbing.
The minions did well enough that I gave them the job of shaking up the paint can before getting after spraying everything that highly satisfying shade of black known simply as Chassis Black. If it’s good enough for Turbo Tom, then it’s good enough for me.
This is officially the bottom. Everything from here on is putting it all back together better, stronger, and not as junkyard’ed as when I found it. Should be fun, assuming I can find the time to spare for it.
I wonder, if you could drive a truck into, say, 2 feet of baking soda saturated water, with rusty steel beams on either side, jumped out, and threw the switch, could these space gnomes remove the rust without disassembling anything?
If that worked, there’d probably be shops, huh.
Good to see you back and working on the truck.
Godspeed, my good man.
Edit: And congratulations on the new addition. She cute.
