My Rear End is Leaking

The rear end was leaking and demanding attention. This was one of those slow weepy seeping leaks, not big enough to require an immediate repair, but an irritating incessant drip that nags you to action. Pampers were not an option and neither was putting cardboard under the truck to catch the drips.

As you recall my ¾ ton truck is a special needs vehicle and I could not find a replacement gasket to save my life. Finally on one of the truck forums someone mentioned that they had “made” their gasket. This was the solution to the problem.

 The gasket making procedure is fairly simple; you basically use a caulk gun to put down a bead of the gasket material around one side of the part and then bolt the other side to it. As you tighten up the bolts the material squeezes out like the cream filling of a Moon Pie.

Gasket making is as simple as it sounds - once you get through all the mistakes. With this step done, the last thing I had to do was tighten down the bolts to the proper torque. The shop manual said to tighten them to 85 ft/lbs. I got out the torque wrench and started tightening and tightening and tightening. I must point out that the torque wrench will click when you get to the correct torque setting. With all this tightening and no click, I was getting worried because at some point bad things will happen if the bolt is over tightened.

 Well you guessed it, I kept turning until one of the bolts snapped in half. The only good news was that I have been in this position before and knew the authorized extraction procedure. At about step four of the extraction process the bolt remanent came out. As it dropped into the inside of the differential, I heard the delicate ping of the start of another unplanned task.

I expected a metal filing or two to get into the differential and knew this would be okay; however, half of a grade eight bolt in the differential would turn my rear end into a Cuisinart and quickly shred my gears into coleslaw.

 Well once again the good news is that I am now an expert gasket maker. I was able to remove the differential cover, retrieve the bolt, make another gasket and replace the cover.

No leaks so far.

I Am Back

Guess What? The Huntsville Times reinstated my column. I get to finish the year as a Community Columnist.  My columns will be in the first Sunday newspaper, but the digital version will come out earlier. I tried something different with this column and hope you like it, I know I had fun writing it.

http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/10/linda_stays_cool_when_kitchen.html