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Front end rebuild help

1081 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  KEN-E, 
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Just drove my son's '76 RC. GOOD GOLLY! It's all over the road and the front end is popping on every turn. So i'm thinking ball joints. Get back home, jack up the front to check it out. Pasenger side moved just a fraction. Drivers side tire was all over the place. I look behind tire while shaking it and lo and behold, it's not the ball joints moving but the u-joint. What am I up against here? I printed out the how to on the 77 u-joint replacemant but the axle shaft looks like it's moving around too. Does this mean the bearings are shot? I haven't heard any squealing or grinding that I usually associate with bearing failure. Will the axle shaft move with a worn out u-joint?
The how-to looked pretty straight forward I think we can handle it. What else do we need to do while we are in there with a limited budget?
My son's RC is a 1976 400 with full time four wheel drive and auto transmission.
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K
If you can get the axle & u-joint to move in and out when moving the wheel in and out, then the wheel bearings are fried. Suggest that you start checking ebay for a factory service manual. Have a look at the recent post " 1987 upper/lower ball joints". Cooper30 (who must eat FSM's for breakfast) posted a great description of ball joint replacement that will guide you most of the way through the job.
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M
Here is the how to:

http://ramchargercentral.com/boards/index.php?board=&action=howtoshow;id=35

I had a friend do mine a couple of weeks ago. It's not that hard of a job, we had more problem removing the old u joint (the hard way) then anything else.
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K
search some salvage yards and save yourself a lot of headaches and replace the whole thing
ken
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M
KEN-E said:
search some salvage yards and save yourself a lot of headaches and replace the whole thing
ken
Click to expand...
It wasn't that hard and it's a hell of a lot cheaper to do it yourself. Like I said the u joint removal is where we had a problem but we were using a socket and hammer to remove the u joint from the knuckle.
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K
I beg to differ I got my front ene for 100 and had it swaped in under 1hr god bless air tools :)
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