Some Before & After photos of the rear suspension work on my '87 Corvette. Greg helped me with this project - we replaced the wheel bearing on the right side and removed both half-shafts and put in new U-joints. I also did a lot of cleanup on the suspension and undercarriage while it was apart.
Before Photos:
Yeah, that looks like an awful lot of differential ooze! Yuk, what a nasty undercarriage!
It's hard to tell from the photos, but I was able to figure out that the amount of ooze in the past 30k miles really wasn't that much. I had a new rear Y pipe put in about 30k miles ago. Tony's Corvette shop located one for me, which is configured just like the original one with the heat shields, instead of the cheap rusted out Midas crap that was in there with the undersized mufflers when I got the car. The splatter on this new Y pipe was minimal, though there was some present in the area around the front diff seal. I did get a lot of the undercarriage ooze cleaned up, but not all of it - I ran out of time and needed to get the car back together to drive to work tomorrow morning. :-) But enough of the big mess is cleaned up that I can keep an eye on the ooze now. I will have to replace that front yoke seal eventually. But I can't afford the down-time at the moment since it's my daily driver. I have a few other projects lined up for the winter holidays so hopefully I'll get to log more undercarriage cleanup time.
During Disassembly: Here is Greg with the monster pry-bar as a lever arm to decompress the spring. I unbolted it while he held it up. We put a wadded up shop rag over the camber bar and a rag & wooden block under the spring. The pry-bar is about 5' long and solid steel and weighs about 10 lbs. It worked really well! I learned this trick at Tony's Corvette shop when they did a rear alignment on my C3. Well what do you know, it works on C4s too! :-)
Note the nasty totally shot U-joint with the deep grooves in it with the cap removed. Two of them were this way! No wonder I felt a vibration when driving the car. One half shaft had Spicer solid U-joints. Sometime in the car's past, the left side's U-joints were replaced with generics with zerk fittings. Eeek! No wonder they failed. I replaced all four with Spicer U-joints just like the originals. :-)
This is the inside of the big wheel assembly with the wheel bearing and hub assembly and spindle all removed. The aluminum sure does clean up nicely! A bit of simple green, a tooth brush and lots of paper towels is all it took. :-)
After Photos:
Now lets hope it stays this way for at least a little while! :-) ~Juliet Juliet@annapolis.net