If you're going to do the wheel bearing on one side….

You'd better do the other side too.

For the last month or so the passenger side rear wheel bearing has been singing- though shrieking would be more appropriate for the past week…

Changed it out today.  Sweet silence driving down the road!

Noticed the brake discs are a bit worn- probably time to do those soon as well.  Never ends!

Getting through inspection: Golf check engine light, headlights, wheel bearing...

No pics from this round, as I did it in a bit of a hurry.  Golf failed inspection on three counts- bad rear wheel bearing (I knew it needed to be done but thought it would last a bit longer), headlight lenses were too clouded over (never heard of failing inspection for this!), and finally, the check engine light kept coming back on, no matter how many times I reset the fault code.  It was throwing a 'intermittent open circuit' for glow plug circuit number 3.

I installed a new wiring harness for the glow plugs, and 4 new plugs- that took care of the fault.  A headlight polishing kit from Autozone took care of the headlights, and I did the drivers-side rear wheel bearing.  Given my other experiences with wheel bearings on these cars, this one went surprisingly well!

Getting through inspection: Trooper- Steering box

State inspection time is always nice- it gives me a chance to see the cars up on the lift (since usually there's something the inspector wants me to see)…  This year the trooper finally failed for the leak in the power steering box.  That leak had been there since I bought the car in 2003- in fact the previous owner had a rebuild kit with gaskets that he'd given me when I got the car…  But I hadn't done it since it didn't really leak that much and had never caused me trouble…

Turns out I got to learn about recirculating ball steering!  Google it if you're interested- it's a fascinating design.  

The pump on the bench, ready to be rebuilt.  Just getting to this stage required several special pullers to remove ball joints etc...

The Ball Screw- this moves ball bearings that in turn push the piston that moves the Pitman arm (which then moves the wheels back and forth):

This is the interior of the piston that drives the pitman arm… 

It was pretty cool to see the interior of this thing- but it was a bit of a pain to rebuild…  In particular I was surprised by the ball bearings when they fell out of the box all over the garage floor- fortunately I was able to find all of them…  Always learning!

Exhaust(ing) work, take 2- Golf

I'd noticed the Golf sounding louder for a little while, but I'd been able to ignore it…  Until the thing finally actually fell off (and unfortunately stranded Suzanne):

 The break was right at the back of the Catalytic converter.  Midas (and really anyone online) wanted $800-1000 for a replacement pipe (unlike on the Trooper the rear pipe was fine and I just needed the front section, which was available, just really expensive!)…  That didn't seem right.  So I pulled out my grinder, torch, and went and bought a $8.39 pipe section from Advance Auto Parts…

A reasonably nice weld, even if it's ground down smooth...

I realized my repair section was actually a bit bigger than the original pipe I'd had, so it didn't fit in the existing joint with the rear pipe- so I had to harvest a short piece of the original pipe (which was in ok shape) and weld that on the back end to make it fit:

 The finished pipe, ready to install.

 To prevent this kind of thing from happening again (I noticed that the pipe had failed where it had been welded- makes sense sense the aluminized coating would have been burned or ground off in the welding process)- I painted the welds and actually the whole catalytic converter with POR-15.  Hopefully it lasts a good long time!

Sasha the dog is here!

Introducing Sasha, our new puppy.

She chewed up that teddy bear 😞😞😞
- Olivia guest Blogger.

oil & filter change- Golf

Nothing really special, just an oil & filter change on the Golf, Mileage: 215k.

Exhaust(ing) work- Trooper

Exhaust work on the trooper.  I'd noticed it being a bit loud, and finally couldn't ignore the leak any more….  As it turned out, it was just about to fall apart!

Many spots looked like this- maybe a pin-hole but once you start poking, it all crumbles.  

Worse- on disassembly the flexible joint completely detached from the rest of the exhaust…  Definitely need some new pipes here, and it turns out we need everything from the manifold back.

The pipe comes in two sections to be clamped together.  Unfortunately the front section is completely unavailable for ordering, and the rear section- well, there's something that looks right but is listed with a different part number, not guaranteed to fit…  So after ordering it I learned that the pipe is the exact right shape, but the hangers are mounted in the wrong place for the trooper.  Fortunately, I needed to work with the guys at Midas to get the front pipe fabricated, so it was pretty quick for them to also weld the hangers on to the right spot:

Here's the whole system from the manifold (in the foreground) back to the tailpipe. 

  I decided I didn't want to try to fabricate this complicated pipe myself, so I brought it to Midas where they have a pipe-bender and they made up a custom pipe for me:

 Unfortunately, it's really hard to make a pipe to fit perfectly when you don't have the car there to test-fit it in, so when I got the pipe back to the garage to put on the trooper, there were several spots where it wasn't fitting.  So it fell to me to do some re-bending too get it into shape:

This process was repeated many, many times- note that after the pipe is heated up and bent a bit, you have to wait for it to cool sufficiently to handle in order to crawl under the trooper to test-fit it, and determine how much you need to bend it next, and where…  so it was a time-consuming process.  But in the end, the exhaust is in and well sealed!