A second-hand VY2 Cross-8 came with a brand new pair of Basco front wheel hubs (in non-matching boxes) which I installed last month. Since the nearest tow truck is over sixty kays north, I've just been test driving up and down the road when I take it for a drive once or twice a week to keep the battery charged.
First just a kilometre in each direction, and gradually stretching the drive out to a couple of kays each way. All has gone very nicely for half a dozen drives until last week when I felt lucky and drove a few kays up to the next farm's driveway, to do a uwee at his entrance and avoid a three-point turn on the gravel, and took it up to a hundred for the drive back here. What a feeling!
Just as I was coming down the hill back on the bitumen again, about to turn in to my road, down to around forty or fifty, on the brakes, I heard a knock, knock, knocking from out front, and as I slowed right down and gauged the frequency, it was about every two and a half metres, or one wheel rotation. Uh-ow.
So I got out and had a good look, and tried rocking the wheels to see if I could feel anything loose, naturally suspecting my own front hub job, and either the 36mm main hub nuts, or the three 10mm 'inhex' allen-key bolts on the inside of the hubs. I felt nothing so I got back in and crossed my fingers and babied it back the couple of hundred metres ... ke-tung, ke-tung, ke-tung ... to the garage, parked it, and walked away to deal with my newfound anguish with an intemperate substance that night.
Since that tragic driving event, I've raised it up, removed front wheels, loosened the 36mm hub nuts so I could turn the front end at full lock and push out the axles with the CV-joints bent, and double-checked the tightness of the three 10mm 'inhex' allen-key bolts, and then refitted the axles to the hubs to reposition the CV joints in the places where the feel most comfortable, retightened the 36mm hub nuts as hard as I could with a 600mm 1/2" breaker bar, and I probably weigh about 80kg = 470Nm.
Then the next day I went for a drive, or went to try and go for a drive anyway. As soon as the front wheels had cleared the garage I heard the first knock, somewhere mid-left down near the front end, about where the front driveshaft is located on the Cross-8, left of the sump.
It is probably not the front hubs or bearings, because I have double-tested the tightness and the bearings are sealed, and the wheels both turn smoothly without noise or wobble when I test rotate and wobble them when the front is raised. However, it probably is, because those are the parts I hav e just replaced ... but then it drove very nicely for a month after the transplant.
Have I knocked the CV joint bearings in when ignorantly brutalising the axles? Or is it something coincidentally unrelated? I hardly think so.
Why I am writing this long story down here is to ask if anyone else has had some kind of similar knock problem with a VY2 Cross-8 before, and what did you do about it, please?
