Dodged that bullet,,,

Unk had NOT staked that nut,,,,

there was nearly a 1/4″ of play at the pinion shaft forwards and backwards and that led to quite a bit of side to side motion as well, and THAT made a shit-ton of noize on decel, idle cruise, and reverse (Reverse is what told me it wasn’t U-joint, though that was also an option seeing how much strain they were under recently)

Anywhooos,,, popped the rear-end up on blocks (seems like this is becoming a thing,,,) pulled wheels, and went to town with wrench and sockets. Adjust the nut by feel: a little tighter wiggle for play, little tighter, wiggle for play, when the play was taken out and the pinion didn’t want to move at all, back off that nut a sixteenth of a turn and check play again. Dunno if thats ‘right’ but it worked. When I took her out for the test spin, I drove by the flood wall of town with the windows down and didn’t hear any squeals, howls, growls or other weird noizes,,,, and those vibrations at any speed or throttle position are gone again.

And I staked the hell out of that nut!!!! Nice shiny clean metal showing where I drove that center punch right into the collar of that nut, into the threads of the shaft. If she comes off now,,,,

“Careful Dio,,, don’t be jinxin’ yourself,,,

Yeah, no shit,,, with the ‘things happen in threes’. I have been watchin’ the hell out of my dogma to make sure that karma doesn’t run us down at speed. Or, in the case of Buffalo, turn around to finish the job it started.

Bizzy day today,,, return to the last job site and attempt to finish as much as possible. Ain’t no way in hell it can be done today: We were punching holes in 10″ of asphalt on top of three inches of concrete before we ever saw dirt, and that was hard packed 1″ gravel bed, and still no dirt,,, 18″ deep holes to hold the posts we are putting in (wrought iron wannabe fencing,,, I despise the crap,,,) At least this time I will have the diamond blade with us and that should speed things up considerably,,, Fingers crossed,,,

gonna be long hot day in the sun on top of THICK asphalt doing heavy work,,, yay,,,,

and I am awaiting an email from Customer service at Wilderness Systems in answer to ‘what is the recommended adhesive/resin to reset the hatch ring?’,,, Till I have that info, I have Lyssa in the horses with parts pulled apart and cleaned but no other forward motion,,,