rear wheel bearings done!

[Greg Merritt <gregm@engin.umich.edu>]

	Thaks to all those who had advice for the rear wheel bearing
replacement on my 1971 (IRS) squareback.  It's done! :)

	The weather here was an unseasonably warm 60F... on Friday.  Too
bad I wasn't free to do the bearings until Saturday, when the temps were
back to below freezing.  I don't have a garage.  Ugh.  Mark ('62 Kombi) and
I headed over to our buddy Gordon's ('58 single cab & '71 Beetle) place, as
he *does* have a garage, as well as a 35,000BTU kerosene heater. :)  A real
lifesaver.

	Of course, my square & the Kombi were coated w/ ~1/4inch of ice
from the freezing rain overnight, and that ice melted onto the cold garage
floor all afternoon.  It even iced up again on the pavement at first!
Argh.  The low spot on the garage floor collected the bulk of the melted
ice, and as the puddle filled up, we swept it out with a broom.

	There weren't any terrible surprises with the bearing swap, but I
must say that it's quite an annoying job.  It took a *lot* longer than I
had estimated.  We started in earnest by about 11am, and it was nearly 9pm
by the time I had packed everything away & cleaned up.  Quite a bit of
things to remove to get to the bearings, plenty of pounding to get things
apart, lots of grease everywhere, and more pounding to get things back
together.  The old inner bearing seals were installed backwards, making it
very difficult to hook them for removal.  Also, I understand why Keith
suggested a *good* pair of snap-ring pliers be used to remove the circlip.
Mark loaned me his standard automotove snap-ring pliers from Sears to do
the job, but they were a tad on the small side.  Gordon modified the tips
with a hacksaw and convinced the circlips to come out.  I kind of lucked
out on the combination of drifts & pipes that I used to drive bearing bits
on/off; they were *just* the right size.  The car seemed to drive fine
after the repair, and spun like a top for Sunday errands today.

	Some additional notes... I confirmed that the strange scraping
noise from the right rear wheel *was* due to a bad bearing:  the inner race
of the right outer bearing was split in two!  Yikes!  I got my replacements
from Rocky Mountain Motorworks.  The inner ball bearings were like $12
apiece, and were factory-sealed.  I went ahead & packed lots of grease
around them after installation just for good measure.  The outer roller
bearings were a mere $4 apiece, probably due to their Chinese manufacture.
Kind of funny, coming from RMMW; they tend to be particular about stuff
being German, and once apologized profusely for sending me Brazillian T3
drums instead of German ones.  Go figure.

	Thanks again for the help, everyone!

-Greg
'71 squareback
'63 Beetle