I found some to investigate the most recent problem. Getting the wheels off is easier said than done! Got the drive member off the front offside wheel and after peering inside, thought it looked OK. Except that the hub bearings looked a bit… loose. Without having a frame of reference, figured I’d check the front nearside wheel. Which was a bad idea as I managed to shear off one of the drive flange bolts. After a good few hours of bashing it with a variety of bodgers, a more scientific approach of teasing it off with a feeler guage and a small bodge, and it slipped off. The member was ruined in the process but hey-ho – it confirmed my suspicion – the hub bearing on the nearside was definitely not right.

Spent a lot more time trying to get the hub assembly out to replace the bearings… but figure that at the point the bearing broke, it must have got pretty hot and welded itself to the shaft. So now a bit stuck – and need to get the really big bodger on it. That’s waiting for the next dry day!

I recently posted some photos of Big Car in the snow. On one of these days, tragedy struck. The windscreen wipers stopped working! But actually, that was just a fuse and easily remedied. However, tragedy struck again later when there developed a horrible scraping, grinding and general all round “that’s not right” sound. We limped home to the safety of the driveway. I kicked the tyres a bit, didn’t do much. Looked in the engine area and confirmed that yes, it was a big engine, and that it went all the way down. Other than crawling around underneath for a bit and observing the usual array of oil leaks, that moreorless exhausted my knowledge in the subject.

So I called a local advisor who gave me some pointers. After jacking her up and fiddling, twisting, prodding and poking some bits, the issues can be narrowed down to either front brakes, the diff or, most likely, CV joints on the front axle. Replacing CV joints isn’t necessarily a bad job, it’s just time consuming, as you literally have to dismantle the front axle, to get at the half shafts to replace the CV joints. New CV joints are… £200. Each. (Pattern parts are a much more reasonable £35 ish).

So currently debating what to do. If it’s just the CV joints then the job isn’t too bad – my biggest fear is what happens if it turns out to be that… and a bunch of other issues?