He he he. Some of you guys will get a chuckle out of this.
I had a great day at MP. Tootled of home about 4:30, planning to stop at Aratula round about dark. All going sweet until the first turn to start going down the range at Cunningham's Gap and there's a bit of vibration. Hmmmm. That's a bit strange. Must be the change of surface. The vibration stayed with me all the way down the range. It didn't seem engine or brake related. I pulled over, had a look at the tyres and for anything obvious. Nothing. So I decided to limp on to Aratula, at 80kph, with this rather high frequency vibration. More like a hum you could feel through the steering wheel really.
At Aratula I pulled over at the Shell, pulled the front wheels, checked the tyres, gave the hubs a bit of a check but everything seemed OK. So I decided to push on at 80-90 kph, pretending I was on my way to bowls. It was now dark. Surprisingly, there was very little traffic that overtook me. When I got to Willowbank there was a huge backlog of cars leaving the V8 Supercars. I was almost glad to have my speed restricted to 60kph until Collingwood Park or thereabouts. Eventually I got home, with no apparent degradation. Three hours door to door. I didn't even unpack or garage the car or trailer.Straight to the couch. Next day I unpacked, put the car away, and did other stuff.
A week later I decided I better start checking out what the problem was. Went for a drive to refamiliarise myself with the problem. Pulled the wheels again, changed tyres, checked bearings, looked for bits hanging off. Still nothing conclusive. Went for another drive. The only hint was that the vibration was definitely speed related and that it momentarily disappeared when turning left. Hmmm.
The forum hinted that it might be a wheel bearing, probably front left. My records indicated that I had replaced that 2 years ago. It is the hardest working corner on my car so I decided to replace it with a new one. Nope. Repco no go, and $300+ anyway. So I decided to replace it with
my spare.
You know, the one that I sold to Keith and Tim at Morgan Park, temporarily elevating myself to God status. And the one that I fortunately bought back when they diagnosed Operator Error as the problem. The one I have carried back and forth to track for six years. And the one I was fully expecting to use at the Shell servo in Aratula. Lucky for me. When I opened the box I found my spare bearing and the 29 and 30mm sockets that I thought I had lost. They were in there for when they might be needed.
So I replaced the bearing. Took less than one hour. Went for a drive. Problem solved.
Now I can go to Lotus DTC this weekend.
20180729_153150.jpg
