[Kaos]

Okay guys...I have officially suffered my first breakdown in the 2 years I have owned my vette putting a very hard 13,000 miles on her. Anyway....I finally got her back together again yesterday and all shinned up for a vette cruise'n lunch. Well...sure enough as I am leaving the restaruant and honestly did not get up on here all that hard...no spinning tires, etc.....SNAP/BANK/CLUNK etc coming from uner the car about 20 feet down the road. I pull over and check everything....driveshaft, halfshafts, differential...nope all initially looks good. So I go back over it all and quickly discovered on my drivers side the spindle? has broke/snapped? (see pic below). The 4 bolts that mount the half shaft to the trailing arm assembly flange are still in place with nothing loose but the flange that it mounts to has broke onto a 30* angle away from the trailing arm bearing assembly. That made a ton of noise for the few short feet I went as I coasted back into the parking lot. Nothing more "cool" then telling all these other vette guys how great your car is and that you have been very lucky with no major probems...and then wham!!! just as you are pulling out. Ugghh!!! I am still new to all this stuff so exactly what did I break?

A little back ground info is that there are 100% new complete trailing arm assemblies from VB&P installed in December last year and have around 4,000 miles on them with my little whimpy 205rwhp rebuilt L46 powering my car so it is not like I got huge amounts of power to snap stuff. Also recently installed yesterday brand new 3" half shafts with spicer joints with the first time testing them out on the road. Also recently installed a Dragvette 6 link kit that I must say without a doubt the half shaft safety loops saved my battery box and rear shock as that safety loop got the crap beat out of it so the Dragvette kit has already in some respects paid off.

btw...i will try to take more pics later as of right now I am mentally and phyiscally exhausted with my baby after battling with the 6 link system, etc so give me a few days to take it apart to get better pics and see maybe exactly what broke.

 

[tracdogg2]

It looks like you twisted off a spindle. Were these brand new assemblies or fresh rebuilt?
Mike

 

[Kaos]

I just spoke with Chris (69myway) as he did the swap for me and he said they were new trailing arms yet they re-used 1 of my spindles and said the other was bent and could not use it. It is a spindle I guess I am very lucky I did not loose my rear wheel??? and that would have really sucked just putting on my new Bonspeed $$$ wheels for thier first cruise and bam...there goes a $650 wheel rolling down the highway.

Can I get stronger spindles? I think I heard that you can get 32 splinned spindles that are stronger? Hell...I just upgraded to 3" half shafts with spicer joints all around including my driveshaft so might as well continue the upgrade process if possible.

 

[yellow73sb]

I'm willing to bet that the new spindle broke

 

[tracdogg2]

It sounds like you got a rebuilt set with the arms being the only new pieces. So there's no telling what the true condition is of the the other pieces. The hardening process changed over the years and there are a lot of "soft" parts out there. Along with a few inferior replacement ones. The 31 spline spindle kit from Tom's will cost you 800 plus labor to set up the bearings. A high quality set of spindles cost 220 plus labor. You should not have been able to break a good used spindle with what you're running.
Mike
P.S. VB doesn't rebuild trailing arms. They send them out.
P.S.S. One thing in the pic is bothering me. If these were new/rebuilt arms why is the drive flange so rusty?

 

[redvetracr]

I'm willing to bet that the new spindle broke

the new "offshore" made spindle....

 

[mrvette]

the new "offshore" made spindle....

U sure??


Damnit man, just Damnit....

:WTF :devil: :surprised

 

[80VetteGuy]

It sounds like you got a rebuilt set with the arms being the only new pieces. So there's no telling what the true condition is of the the other pieces. The hardening process changed over the years and there are a lot of "soft" parts out there. Along with a few inferior replacement ones. The 31 spline spindle kit from Tom's will cost you 800 plus labor to set up the bearings. A high quality set of spindles cost 220 plus labor. You should not have been able to break a good used spindle with what you're running.
Mike
P.S. VB doesn't rebuild trailing arms. They send them out.
P.S.S. One thing in the pic is bothering me. If these were new/rebuilt arms why is the drive flange so rusty?

Maybe he got HIS arms rebuilt and thats why he only got new arms. VBP does farm thier T-Arms out. They farm them out to Van Steel who uses Bairs spindles, made in the USA. They also didn't include the spindle flange when they rebuilt mine. If you don't send it in they can't clean it and thats why it looks rusty. When I got my arms back all I had to do was torque the spindle flange.

I'm betting he never pulled the c-clips out of the diff and it binded up his axles and it transfered to the wheel.
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80544

 

[Strider]

I'm betting he never pulled the c-clips out of the diff and it binded up his axles and it transfered to the wheel.
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80544

Good catch. I responded to his other post and never associated the two
I agree. Not pulling the C clip AND shortening the yokes will cause all sorts of problems.

 

[Kaos]

I got some will power tonight and decided to see what snapped. It was the spindle. I will post pics later after I now figure out whats wrong with my brand new camera. It worked fine on Sunday!!! Hope its just a dead battery as I don't need anything else breaking.

How hard is it to replace the spindle? Do I just take off the caliper, then rotor, then slide remaining old unit out and replace with new spindle like shown below from Vansteel $170 and re-do the bearings?

I am not sure how I would go about shimming it up though and I don't have any real experience with doing bearings. I guess I kind of answered my question and should let somebody else set it up and pray I don't do this again.

btw...I am now seriously trying to get a set of custom "slip half shafts" similar to what Mark had made to not have to deal with this c-clip stuff ever again speaking of which are not broken as there is still less than 1/8" of side-to-side movement.

 

[SmokinBBC]

I got some will power tonight and decided to see what snapped. It was the spindle. I will post pics later after I now figure out whats wrong with my brand new camera. It worked fine on Sunday!!! Hope its just a dead battery as I don't need anything else breaking.

How hard is it to replace the spindle? Do I just take off the caliper, then rotor, then slide remaining old unit out and replace with new spindle like shown below from Vansteel $170 and re-do the bearings?

I am not sure how I would go about shimming it up though and I don't have any real experience with doing bearings. I guess I kind of answered my question and should let somebody else set it up and pray I don't do this again.

You also have the parking brake to do.

Here is GTR1999's tech. thread on a trailing arm rebuild which covers the bearing set-up

http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77000

 

[SIXFOOTER]

Hey Rob, I have the spindle setup tool and the knocker if you want to use them. I can walk you thru the setup, but you will still need properly machined spacer and shim

 

[Kaos]

Thanks Danny for your offer....but I am going to leave this one to a shop to have done. I would like to learn but it is such a pain in the butt doing this stuff on a rough cement floor of you condo's garage with very limited space and I have probably already been pushing the limit on the amount of work on my car I have been doing there.

I did find a shop to make "slip shaft" half shafts for me. This should solve my binding problem and also give me a little more flexibility vs. removing c-clips. I had them make it adjustable from 13~15" so this will allow me to set the wheels further out to help with the toe adjustability and also as you know how my trailing arm inside pockets are so close to the trailing arm.

Cheers...Rob

Maybe next week Tuesday/Wednesday I am back on the road again.

 

[69MyWay]

Ouch!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[SIXFOOTER]

Cool, just make sure whoever you have to the setup on that spindle does it like Garys paper says. Paralell ground spacer and shim to .001 -.002