Whew! That took a lot more time than I thought it would. Not so much the time I spent doing the work, but rather the days required to find the needed hours to do the work.

Either way, the 80 now has totally rebuilt knuckles. 4wd is smoother, no clicking (clicking is bad), less play in the wheel bearings, and I think that the ride must be smoother, though that certainly could be my imagination!

Regardless, it was an immensely rewarding project that was impressively messy and sometimes a bit daunting, but overall... not that bad.

If you are interested in seeing what I'm talking about- I didn't photograph anything at all due to the massive amounts of grease involved- you can take a look at the IH8Mud writeup of how to do a knuckle rebuild on a Landcruiser. That is about how I did it, except for making one massive mistake and installing the short-side axle into the long-side of the housing, which required re-rebuilding the left side of the axle. That was disappointing! The upshoot is that I think I did a better job the 2nd time around, so I shouldn't have to rebuild it again for 80,000 miles instead of 60,000. Or something like that.

Labels: landcruiser