July 6, 2018
As you might recall from my HotRod Power Tour post, I encounter a left wheel bear noise between 45-60mph. Finally at home in the garage and several days after counting my Power Tour short, I decided to have the rear trailing arm wheel bearings check again by my good buddy, Gene Tanner at Mean Gene's Machines. With more that 1/8 -1/4" play on each side, the decision was made to rebuild both sides. (even though they had been rebuilt back in June 2012). Due to space constraints and time factor especially tying up Gene's lift, I took the 65 home and began the work in my garage. After setting the car on jack stands, I started with reference pictures below.
Once completed, I started the disassembly of the right and left trailing arms. Lot of work just to get to them.
Below are the complete left and right trailing arm assemblies removed from my 65 Corvette.
I packaged both trailing arms and sent them to Pennsylvania to Yogi Bairs for a complete overhaul. While I waited for their return, I re-painted my calipers a pretty red.
I got a phone call from Ed at Bair's telling me there's not a lot of good news with both trailing arms I had sent to him. The left arm was bent severely and the right one was slightly bent. Whoever tried to replace the bearings had used a torch to heat the races up and crazed the housing rendering them pretty much as junk. The axles were worn. Explaining that he had already amassed $674 in parts alone and not done yet, I asked the simple question about their new trailing arms.....$695 each. DUH ! Doesn't take a genius to figure out my next move. After waiting almost 3 weeks, I received my new totally built trailing arms with new brake rotors that were set and indexed to each respective arm. I did take pictures, so I thought, and in my excitement to get them reinstalled, I can't find any pictures of the new arms. So here's the brand new one from their website.
My car finally got back to Mean Gene's for a wheel alignment. It's running great and no more noises from that left rear bearing. YEAH!