The Pug is running sweeeeeeet now :)My previous estimate of how long the old bearings would last was way out in fact a few days later they gave up the ghost and I was forced to rip them out and put the new ones in, I became suspicious of them whilst driving home and this really nasty burning smell invaded the car, I pulled over on the lay-by near Cross Hands and sure enough the drivers side front wheel was very nearly glowing and gently smoking, confirmed by me stupidly touching the drive shaft followed by the sizzle of human flesh..... so I limped home at 30mph, which seemed to upset quite a few road users, it's amazing how many people point out there is something wrong with your car whilst driving at 30mph, the amount of people that madly gestured that something was wrong with the front drivers side wheel as they pointed downwards at my wheel like demented chimpanzee's.... do you know I hadn't noticed .... idiot !!! I usually drive at 30 mph on a dual carriageway dontchaknow ????
Anyway the job was done quick smart it took just over an hour to take both hubs off I whisked them down to my friendly garage near St Clears and pressed out the knackered bearings then pressed the new ones in, all told from removing the hubs to pressing in the new ones about 2 hours work ish.
the difference was noticeable immediately, plus I found out that the probable reason for the bearing failure was my inability to tighten the hub nuts up to the required 280 Newtons on a torque wrench, for a start the torque wrench I had didn't go up that far it only went up to 150 Newtons, The guy in the garage told me that to tighten up a hub nut to 280 Newtons would require a 6 foot scaffolding tube attaching to the wrench to exert that kind of pressure.... but I'm dubious that was the reason, after looking on various forums I found quite a few disgruntled Pug 205 owners who had used GSF Motor Factors for the very same bearings and they too had experienced failures in them in some cases as low as 2000 miles after fitting them !! so who knows eh ? Ohhh I also replaced the front brake pads @ £14.99 one of them was worn down to the metal, so I had to take the Bendix calliper off and free the sliding tubes, they've been put back in now with a mixture of Copper grease and PTFE hopefully that will be the end of it....famous last words I think. The main benefit is you can actually hear the radio/CD player even at low volumes now so all is right with my world :) .... oh and the quickest way to get ingrained oil out from under your finger nails is to soak them in washing powder solution for about 5 minutes then use an old head on your electric toothbrush.... brilliant and job done in less than 2 minutes :) (must remember to change it back ;¬) )
I'm on holiday as of tonight for two weeks, I'm really looking forward to it to be honest, work has been an utter drag of late we have had a contingent of Indians across from Mumbai and some guys from Rotherham and I have been teaching them my job, it's a bit of a slap in the face to be honest it's bad enough being told that your job has gone to India but then to actually have to train the people who are going to be doing your job in the near future is a bit off if you ask me....
Ffion is coming across tonight with her current boyfriend who happens to be an International DJ who has played in Russia and various other places such as Ibiza at most of the top spots and has quite a following apparently, it wouldn't be fair to say who he is, but suffice to say it's not Tiesto or Fat boy slim, or sadly Sister Bliss... but one of the less well known ones, it will be nice to get to know him and find out a bit more about him, Ffion is going to dye Andrea's hair and we are going to have a few drinks to boot, and generally iron out the plans for her coming camping with us to North Wales, which she is stupidly excited about.... it "should" be a blast as my mate Chris and Donna and their kids are coming too !!!
I'm getting quite excited about it to be honest, it may of course end up a complete disaster due to weather and the fact that Freya is coming with us (of course) I should imagine it will be really tiring trying to stop Freya putting anything and everything in her mouth that she might find on the floor including rabbit poo, which there was a lot of the last time we went, and no doubt she will taste the sand (once) and possibly the sea (once) ...... basically she is crawling like a beetle at the moment nothing stops her except lifting her off the ground to turn her around and even then her legs and arms still flail about, she is such a lovely girl though, no real trouble, very placid and smiley and screeches with delight when amused which is most of the time, although she can't be trusted with FiFi the kitten yet, the last time she got hold of her she tried to wave the kitten above her head by the scruff of it's neck, so the Kitten is just a tad wary of old Freya at the moment..... the only other development besides wanting to walk everywhere aided or unaided, the latter of which she usually falls flat on her back, is that she is currently being called "Wallace" because she pulls the strangest face when she is annoyed... quite funny really.... a practically square shaped mouth and a wrinkled brow (see picture above) that's about the same face but with less teeth, she usually smiles afterwards once she realises we are looking at her and usually laughing.... :)
anyway nothing more to report really, I'll come back to this blog probably after the holidays or maybe before that if anything really exciting happens :)
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