The Kolar's trip to Wisconsin, 1997
Last update made on September 19th, 1997
 On the 18th of June Jeanne and I were on our way from Argos Indiana, where we had spent a few hours visiting with cousin Richard Kolar and his wife Joyce and taking a short nap before proceeding on, to Land O'Lakes Wisconsin in our 76 E-150 Ford Van *.
* Signifies a LINK to a viewable picture. More pictures will be added as they get developed.
At approximately 2:30 AM I noticed that the road seemed to get awful rough. Being rather void of traffic on Rt. 30 at that hour, I thought that I might try the left lane to see if it was any better. The roughness went away for a few seconds but then returned and seemed to be even worse. I was traveling at about 60 MPH so I applied the brakes to release the cruise control and at that point I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the brakes seemed to be soft. I stepped on them a little again and found that I had to pump them once to get the braking action. This felt very familiar to me from the time in North Carolina when a mechanic, while diagnosing why we would get a very soft brake peddle after a few minutes of driving, finally discovered that the left rear wheel bearing was overheating and about to go out. It was overheating the brake fluid and causing it to flash to vapor in the brake cylinder. The Van gave me no time to act on this feeling because the left rear wheel slid sideways out of the axle housing and the left rear of the Van dropped to the pavement and started to shoot sparks and flame like a Roman candle. The Brake backing plate was rapidly worn down so that brake parts had started to come off before the van came to a stop. The back end of the Van was on fire and the flames were illuminating the area between 2 recently filled gas tanks. Jeanne tried to hand me the Halon fire extinguisher that was hanging from the engine compartment's closure bracket but the top of it broke off in the excitement so she then handed me a cup of water from the sink tap so that I could use it to take the source of heat away from the burning brake fluid. I knew that once the red hot bearing surface was cooled a little that the brake fluid would not continue to burn. That worked like a charm. The entire brake assembly and brake line hose had been destroyed by the fire but at least the Van hadn't blown up.
The back of our Van has a carrier tray * that extends out from the back of the Van by about 24 inches and on which we carry several Rubber maid containers all wrapped up in a blue tarp and tied down with straps. The bottom 24 quart container was still on fire as well as the tarp that was covering it up. I knew this box contained quite a few cans of spray paint and that in short order they would be blowing up one after the other. I called to Jeanne, still in the Van, to hand me the fire extinguisher from over the sink. I emptied this extinguisher into the burning open hole * of the container and the fire went out. The 24 qt. Rubbermaid container * was a mess and the extra large blue tarp * that was covering it was destroyed but the contents, although burnt and charred had, at least, not blown up.
I then was able to collect myself long enough to check out where I was on the road and got one of the flares out of the seat locker and set it out on the road so that our breakdown was more visible. The cellphone was almost out of range in the cell we were in but through all the crackling etc. the 911 operator was able to understand our problem and after about 45 minutes a Porter County Trouper showed up and made the arrangements for the wrecker to come and take me off the road. Porter County Indiana is one of those areas of this country that rolls up its sidewalks and goes to bed TOTALLY by midnight so getting the wrecker to us took almost 1 and 1/2 hours. Naturally the wrong kind of wrecker came, a flatbed type instead of the kind that picks up one end or the other and pulls you. We had to unwrap the rear end and totally unload and dismantle the tray to allow the flatbed wrecker to load us up. Fortunately I signed up for the added AAA Plus service this year which covers the entire tow bill and covers it up to 100 miles plus the wrecker driver must chauffeur us to a motel of our choice. We wound up taking a room at the Merrillville Indiana Knights Inn. We left it the next day for a room at Motel 6, a much better room and even a few bucks a night cheaper.
The wrecker guy showed up bright and early the same day's morning to take me along when he dropped off the Van at Art Hill Ford for repairs. Ford was not thrilled to see a 21 year old Ford Van needing anything other than a trade in so getting someone there to commit to even looking at it was a challenge. The Van was at the Ford dealer from Wednesday morning at 8 AM and wasn't even looked at until approx. 2 PM that afternoon. Their "AXLE MAN" took the backing plate off and promptly pronounced the rear end to be irreparably damaged and that a different rear end would be needed. Ford Parts said that parts for that old a Van would be a problem to find new but that if I would accept a recyclers rear end without a warrantee that they would put it in for me. I felt that I had no choice in the matter and after they said that the replacement rear end would be inspected before they installed it, I told them to go ahead and find a replacement. Ford Parts made several calls and finally found one for $300, I told him that would have to be acceptable since there seemed to be no other choices available. My cousin Chuck Kolar of Crown Point, just a few miles away, was also looking for someone that would be able to work on the Van and was not able to find anything all day. I made a call to the only Junk Yard that I knew of in the area, "Wild Bill's" on US 30 west of Merrillville by a few miles, they never called back. Anyway, Chuck didn't find anyone that would work on it until well after Ford said they would put in the one that they had found. We went with the Ford dealer since that was where the Van was and it seemed only right to have a Ford Van repaired by a Ford dealer. What a mistake that assumption was as we later have found out.
Friday at 3PM the dealer calls and says that the Van is ready and that we had until 5:30 PM to pick it up. At 4:15 PM we are there and paid the WHOPPING $1458. and took possession of our Van. That bill together with the rental of a car for the week, the motel room expense, and the eating all meals out expense the total is around $2000. So, I am broke right now and will accept any and all financial support, graciously. I asked Ford if they wanted to go for a test drive and they declined, saying that there was no need that they had driven it for 5 miles and that it was repaired as far as they were concerned. I drove it to the motel and was not happy with the noises that were being made as I drove. I was hearing a verp verp verp sound and didn't like the clinking sound that I was also hearing every time I hit a bump or dip in the road. I drove back to Ford immediately but everyone was gone except for the service writer who was there only to deliver cars to customers. In other words - useless. I drove the Van to Chuck's house and together we determined that the right hand rear shock was broken off at the top. This shock was one of two that Ford MADE me buy because the old set of brand new shocks in the back had oil all over them and therefore must be leaking, never mind that the axle had come apart and that all the rear end fluid had sprayed all over everything under the Van - shocks included. Plus neither Chuck nor I thought that the verp verp verp noise was TIRE NOISE, like Ford was insisting. So, we decided that we should stay and make sure that everything was as right as could be before trying to go the next 410 miles to the cottage *.
Monday 7:30 AM, we are number 2 in line outside the Ford service entrance and therefore we get serviced the same day at least. I asked them for the old rear end parts so that I could take it with us to Land O'Lakes, I figured that maybe if this new one was making a noise that I could switch the Pinion gears at least and maybe cure the noise that I heard and didn't like. They tried to tell me that it was gone already but I knew better because of how late we picked it up Friday and that the old one was still there then. No one works on the weekend, there are no such things as junk yard runs to get rid of old stuff so I started looking around the back of the building and sure enough, there it was tucked away in this earth bound trailer body waiting for the recyclers to make their routine pickup. I had the body shop manager tag it as being mine and then Chuck and I went over later that day and picked it up and took it to Chuck's house.
Tuesday June 24th, 1997, Chuck took the old rear end apart in about 20 minutes and then the next day when we were there to pack the Van up and start our trip to the woods, we looked it over very well and found that the surface that the "AXLE MAN" had shown me as being the bearing seat and being kindof oval and therefore "No Good" was actually the outer bearing race still seated in the housing. After this oval shaped race was removed we had in front of us an absolutely PERFECT rear end housing. All that I would have had to buy would have been a new or used Axel, new bearing and seal, new brake backing plate and naturally the new brake pads and brake parts but for only ONE side instead of both sides and certainly not the housing and shocks. I figure that they charged me about $850 - $900 more than was really called for. I am ashamed to think that I worked for Ford in one of their assembly plants.
After much assurance from the Ford service agent at Art Hill, we decided to chance the trip to Land O'Lakes in spite of the "tire noise" and started out immediately. The trip took us a little longer than it should have because I refused to drive over 55 MPH even thought the speed limit most of the way is posted at 65. The last 50 miles I drove no faster than 40 MPH because the verp verp verp noise was getting so loud and the vibrations were getting so pronounced that I was not sure we were going to make it at all without another tow.
Today, Thursday, I drove the Van into Butch's Auto Service and he took it for a drive, no more than 100 yards, before he proclaimed that he wouldn't drive it any further than to get it back to the shop. He inspected the old pinion set from our old housing and saw that it was in every way perfect. He is going to swap them out tomorrow morning. He is also going to put the old shocks back on because there is nothing wrong with them and they are better than the ones that Ford MADE me buy.
My daughter-in-law, bless her heart, has all along thought that we should have a new or newer Van. But, in the defense of our 21 year old Van, I must say that if we had bought a brand new Van last summer before we drove back to Connecticut, we would still have had this breakdown because even though the rear end bearings were relatively new (less than 36 months old) the fact that last year we accidently drove off the road * and had to be towed out of the ditch was the cause of this current breakdown. They had pulled us sideways out * of the ditch and unknown to anyone that I talked to (until just recently) this had most definitely caused the bearing to come apart just enough to allow the rollers to jump out of the cage that holds them in place and inline to the races surfaces. So even if the Van had been a new one, the bearing would still have come apart and then about another 1200 - 1400 miles later the same end result would have happened. No one that looked at our Van anytime after that ditching, and heard the tale of "Tow Truck Blues" ever even hinted that there might be a problem. It was only after this breakdown happened and I mentioned the sideways ditch pullout, did anyone say anything about the fact that this kind of a pullout will more than likely destroy the bearing.
I now have a Chapter 2 to add to this epic tale..
When I picked up the Van at Art Hill Ford the lead mechanic pointed out to me that who ever had tightened the lug nuts and in particular the locking lug nuts had so over tightened them that they had to chop off one of the locking lugs and 2 of the other regular lugs. This of course meant that I had to buy 8 new lug nuts at a cost of $19 because they only sold them in packages of 8. Never mind that I had several lug nuts in the back of the Van that they could have used if they had bothered to call me with this problem.
Now you would be willing to say OK to the lug nut deal if you did not hear the exact same thing from Butch, the next week, that "Art Hill tightened those lug nuts on there so tight that I had to burn a couple of them off. Who were those idiots anyway? Where they Certified Mechanics? Good thing you had a handful of lug nuts in the back of the Van."
Butch ran into far more Art Hill created problems later on in the retro-repair. Several other nuts that they put on were so overtightened that they had to be chopped or burned off. Butch said that it looked as though they had used an impact gun with sockets that were too large and that they just kept tightening things until the sockets would start to slip the lands.
When Butch removed the new (second) center section he found that one of the inside bearings had disintegrated *and that all the rollers were laying in the oil and throughout the rear end. The bearing's end cap * is and obviously was cracked and spread out, making the bearing loose enough to fall apart * through usage of any kind. This explains the verp verp verp * sound that I was told was tire noise. The big gear inside the center section was floating more or less and as it turned would rub on the opening * where the bearing should have been. Butch showed me several places on the big gear where the teeth were chipped, possibly from a roller being trapped in the teeth as they meshed.
When he was ready to install the old center section (original) he found out that they had not replaced the rear end with an exact match. The axle splines on this second rear end where 31 tooth splines and the axles that were in the first (original) rear end were 28 tooth splines. That meant that we would either have to get a different axle to replace the bad 28 tooth one or get an unbroken 31 tooth center section.
Two years ago I needed a new rear window for the Van. A new one was going to cost a small fortune so I looked around and found a 1977 Ford E-150 van * that was going to be crushed and bought it for $40. Best darn investment I made that year.
Since the outer bearing retainer covers are different between a 31 and a 28 tooth rear end we decided to check the parts van's rear end and see if it had a good 31 tooth type rear end that could donate its center section. If it didn't then we would have to find a usable 28 thooth axle and then cart the 4 axles 20 miles to CarQuest to get the bearings pulled, the retainer covers swithched, and then the bearings pressed back on again to the 28 tooth axles and then use the original center section. The parts van turned out to have a very clean almost brand new 31 tooth rear end. What a break this was, simplified things from that point on. Our Van is now back in the drive way. It runs smooth as silk with no TIRE NOISE at all and with the Gabriel spring assisted shocks back installed too.
Chapter 3 of this epic tale.. Starts on Thursday the 24th of July.
We decided to take the Van for a test drive to Eagle River just to check things out. As soon as we got going I realized that the speedometer was reading 65 MPH and I was being passed by everything. Further testing showed that due to the gear ratio change of the new center section that at highway speeds we were indicating almost 80 on the speedometer. No problem, I thought, we can just get a different tranny speedometer cable gear at the Ford garage. Yeah Right! Ford only has two different external gears available and both of them were not good enough for the ratio change. Ford said that the tranny would have to come out and the inside gears would have to be changed. Another yeah right! So, I decided that the old original center section would STILL have to go back into the rear-end if this was ever going to be totally right again.
We drove over to the local salvage yard and got a 28 tooth axle for 45 dollars. Then we went home and over the entire weekend (Friday to Sunday night) we worked slowly, methodically, and painfully (at times) on getting the 32 tooth center out, the original center section cleaned up and lubricated, and the 4 axles put in the back of the car. Thank God that a couple of years ago I was able to get a small air compressor and a few air tools out here in the woods or we would still be under the truck cranking off nuts etc. The Yoke nut has to be removed and installed with a socket and the impact hammer was a blessing for this operation.
Monday, 28th. I am entirely too wrecked to get up and stay in bed until past noon. We have normally tried to be up by 10 AM every day. Anyway, as soon as Jeanne got me dressed we were on our way to the CarQuest machine shop in Eagle River to get the bearing retainer plates switched from the 31 tooth axles to the 28 tooth axles. Why their "better idea" was to have two different styles of plates and brake backing plates on this year's van is beyond me. But the plates can not be interchanged so the good bearings that were on all 4 of these axles had to be cut off and the plates switched and then 2 new bearing kits pressed onto the 28 tooth axles. The machinist was a real nice guy but the store made up for this in the prices that they charged. Back in Crown Point when I was calling around getting prices and availabilities from various parts places the CarQuest price for a bearing kit was 22 dollars plus 15 dollars to press them on. Here, I had to pay 44 dollars plus 15 dollars to press them on. At least I was able to watch and talk to the man as he worked, his idea not mine so I know that I wasn't bothering him.
Too tired and stiff to work on anything more on Monday after we got home but instead went back to bed. Fortunately, this current work was taking place about 6 days after my really bad time that I get from the Lyme disease every 28 days so I knew that if I just kept at things slowly that I would be able to get this done in the next few days.
Got up Tuesday at 9 AM and after 2 cups of coffee we started in on the job. The old wheel bearing races had to be removed from the housing before anything else could be done. This requires, normally, a slide hammer which I don't have out here and didn't want to get dressed in street cloths to go into town and try to borrow one. So I took an old 8 foot piece of half inch water pipe, that I have had stuck in the garage since it was replaced by PVC some 15 years ago, threaded a coupling onto the one end that had threads and stuck this through the entire rear-end. I held the coupling against the inside edge of the race with pliers while Jeanne held the other end of the pipe and banged on it with a hammer. This worked great and we got both races out without a problem.
I laid a piece of plywood on the ground and then we set the center section on top of the hydraulic jack and while I balanced it on the top of the jack, Jeanne slowly rolled the jack to the hole in the rear-end housing. When it was in position, she started to pump the pumpkin up higher and higher until I was able, with very little effort, push the pumpkin (center piece) into the housing and right into place perfectly. One nut at the top to hold it there and then we took a break for a little lunch and then a nap.
After napping for an hour, we got going on getting the axles in and pressed the new races in place by gently tapping the axle into place with a hammer. Nuts were put in place and the rest of the job went very easily. I don't know how this job could ever have been worth 1458 dollars after doing it myself. I say the job went easily but actually when it came time to inspect the u-joint before connecting it to the center section yoke, I found that Art Hill's mechanics had screwed something else up. I took the end cap off the u-joint and found that it was very pitted and worn, I looked at the roller pins in the cap and there were pins missing. I looked all around the clean area that we had established under the van with a big blue tarp and there definitely were missing pins even if you counted the ones that were laying in the bottom of the cap * all broken. Someone at Ford had taken it off and carelessly pushed it back on with pins missing and several pins in the bottom of the cap instead of standing up around the side. I have always carried a spare u-joint in the Van's seat locker and was able to change this u-joint without further delay.
Today is Thursday and I still haven't test driven the Van. I think that it is totally ready to go but I haven't been up to the test drive yet. After all, I have to be able to handle things if the test produces more problems and I haven't felt good enough for the possibility of a problem. Maybe tomorrow.
OK, it is now Monday the 4th of August and I took the Van for a long test drive. What a pleasure it is to drive the Van when it is completely right mechanically. Smooth as silk and the speedometer was correct, of coarse, since it now had the original center gear installed. I drove it to town and left it with Butch for a few hours too so that he could look it over and make sure that I didn't miss anything. He gave it a very clean bill of health so I am very satisfied that it will get us home to Groton when the time comes.
All of this could have been avoided if Art Hill Ford in Merrillville Indiana had done what they told me they had done, inspect the rear end when they got it from the recycler. It was quite obvious from the caked on dirt and rust that they had not inspected the center section. They had both axles out of the rear end so that new bearings and oil seals could be installed. So, with another 20 minutes of time they could have taken the center section out and seen that the bearing cap was broken. They could then have called the recycler and gotten another one delivered. Their lazy (give-a-shit attitude) larcenous (we'll never see this guy again anyway) behavior could have cost us our lives. Just imagine * if that rear end had locked up while I was driving at hiway speeds.
Chapter 4 entitled, "Who Else Should Know About This, ie. The Better Business Bureau"...... has yet to unfold.Anyone having suggestions as to who should be made aware of Art Hill's performance, please e-mail me at the address given below and thank you for your trouble.
 Questions or comments?Please email me! Attn: Ed Kolar 
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