Places to Stay, Things to do.

There are a lot of sites and You Tube videos about how to repack wheel bearings of various types. I probably don't need to go into extensive detail for you here.

This is what I did. I used the bottle jack from the Pajero to lift one wheel at a time. I used the wheel chocks i bought at the Caravan & Camping Show to prevent the caravan moving while I had it on the jack. The tool I used to remove the wheel bearing caps, after removing the wheel, was a small flat bladed screwdriver and a hammer to tap it into the join to create a gap and then I used the same screwdriver to leaver the cap off.

The reason I pulled these off at this time was to check the bearings as I had no idea of when they had last been done. As it turned out one of the bearings had black grease in it. Black grease is an indication of wear so I had a seriously close look at the bearings etc. in that one to determine where the wear was. I think that the castle nut had been installed too tight and the wear was from the washer under the nut rubbing on the bearing. There was a groove worn into that washer that matched the bearing shell.

The bearing itself didn't appear to be worn which was nice so I cleaned out all the grease, as I did for all the wheels, washed all the grease out of all the components, repacked the bearing with grease and replaced the worn washer with the wear on the outside so the bearing had a much cleaner surface against it.

So what tension should you have on the castle nut to have the correct tension? The tension should allow the bearing to expand a little when it heats up so what you do is do the nut up finger tight. Then you back it off far enough to be able to put in the cotter pin. If the cotter pin aligns with the finger tight location back the nut off to the the next position because finger tight would be too tight.

All up it took me the best part of 4 hours to do all four wheels as I did spend a little time trying to work out how to back off the brake shoes so I could also do the inner bearings but gave up on that part for this time. The rule of thumb is that if the outer bearings are OK then the inner ones will be also. This is acceptable for the trip we are doing next weekend as our shake-down cruise as I will be tearing it all down again the weekend after and I will do the inner bearings as well this time. This will give me a chance to have another thorough check of the wheels and bearing before our next trip which is planned for after Easter..

Today I took the van for a little drive (tow?) to check the tyre pressures, I could have done this at home but I wanted to go through the process of hitching up, packing up all the goodies, pulling it put of the car port and putting it back in. Yeah, I know, overkill. That's the way I roll. I like to be sure that I know what I'm doing and I like to check stuff out. I'm happy to report that reversing the van back in from the other side was so much easier and I was able to put it away with only two false starts.

All the lights worked correctly as did the electric brakes so all my wiring turned out to be correct, that's nice to know.

A couple of other things of interest. I ended up buying the 240V outlet for the caravan from L&H which I wasn't entirely happy with as I had to pay a bit more than I wanted to but it is now installed and looks fine. A trap for young players, this doesn't come with the screws required to install it. Fortunately I had some suitable ones in my shed but you may need to ask the salesperson what to use and where to get them from.

The other thing is a purchase I made when I bought the wheel bearing grease (get the blue stuff). I had been thinking about putting a back-up battery in the Pajero for all the usual reasons but was reluctant to go down the path of dual batteries because I'm not planning to put a fridge in the back. Mostly I wanted a way to jump start my or some other unfortunate's vehicle, have a back up supply for all those small devices which seem to need charging all the time, like the phone or laptop, but without having to use up diesel to do it etc. What I found is a small LiPo battery which is capable of jump starting petrol or diesel vehicles and will easily fit in the glove box of even a small car.

I haven't tried it out yet but when I do I'll report on that as well. What I have done is gone to my favourite wholesaler and asked some questions and I appears I might have been a bit hasty with my purchase. I think I can get a better one for perhaps less money or one which will do 12 & 24 volt vehicles for about the same money.

I'm not real fussed though, I recon I'll buy one of these other ones as well and then do a comparison post so you can all see the differences and which represent the best value for money, I'll even see if I can wrangle a deal or two for you. Just ask.