Hmmm, how about buring up the wheel bearings on a back road in texas..middle of nowhere BFE texas, about 200 miles from home.
Lets see, I went to 'visit' this girl I met and spend new years ever with her. She was about 250 miles from where I lived, but it all seemed worth it. (later she was dubbed phyco b!tch...but that's another story all together)
Anyways, the next morning, when i was heading home. I figured what the heck, the 'ole girl seems to be running good, lets see what she'll do.
After wrapping the speedo needle all the way to the M in MPH (look at the bottom of your speedo) I figured I'd better slow her down a little since I really didn't know this truck very well yet. (Had only had the GMC on the road for a month or so...if that)
About 5 miles later, I feel the steering getting sloppy and I hear a loud metal to metal sound just a moment later. I drop it down to about 20 MPH and limp 2 more miles to a feed store since there was no space to pull over on the road at all.
After getting out, I see my passenger side wheel was not sitting quite right...leaning in at the top like a mo-fo. Kinda looked like this from the front. |---\
Yeah, I was screwed...and broke too.
I camp out with this 'friend' for another night, and she gets me home the following morning...and I have yet to be able to speak to anyone at the feed store.
Well, I finally get the spindle/hub assembly i need, grab a hand full of tools, and head back out there...this is a month later.
I remove the wheel, (which I was almost able to pull the whole hub off with no tools) and slap my pickle fork in there to break the ball joint loose...(did I mention the 30 MPH texas wind and the 30 degree actual temp?) The pickle fork ends up not fitting.
Getting rather 'upset' I kick the truck (which i still regret doing) and the sicker fell off the bottle jack that was olding it. (DOH!)
As I was trying to get the bottle jack out from under it so i could pick it up again, i had a brilliant idea.
Quote:
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The voices in my head Hey moron...use the bottle jack between the pper and lower A-arms and split the ball joints THAT way...you stupid idiot.
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I got the truck back up, shoved the bottle jack in there (just barely fit after scraping some rust off the arms) and started jacking them apart.
After jacking a moment, I notice the arms flexing a little, so i grap my fave tool...the 5 pound tap tap, and I wollop on the lower arm.
BINGO!
Another hr or so of freezing and cussing and wanting to just say screw it and leave the POS there, I got it fired up and ready to rumble.
As I was cleaning up and letting the truck warm up, a sheriff car pulls in and asks me if I plan on driving that thing home like that, I look at him like he is stupid and say "yeah...why not?"
That's when he points out the freshly expired inspection and registration stickers.
Bad road trip...real bad.
I told the officer my story, he knew the girl I was talking about and told me that she was trouble and that if I promised not to go back to town, he would let me slide on the stickers.
truck drove like crap all the way home...the carb sucked up a bunch of rust from the bottom of the tank, and it surged
real bad as soon as I would hit 70 MPH.
Ended up getting pulled over 100 miles later for doing 85 in a 70. He let me off on that, but only becouse the dead registration sticker and inspection sticker as going to cost so much to pay fines on, and he was right...almost 200 bucks for the two tickets.
