This week however hasn't been entirely without drama...
On Thursday, tired and slightly hungover after seeing my parents that had just returned from holiday..
I managed to have a few disasters that day... and should have just stayed in bed..
Worse still they were pretty much entirely my fault with no excuses!
First of all I was rushing trying to refit the rear axle seals, and instead of finding the perfect size draft to tap them in, used the 1/2" end of a socket extension to gently tap around the diameter until it was in place.. a job I've done many times before without any issue at all.. I'm not sure if it was harder as it was a new axle housing or not, but I managed to distort the metal part of the seals.
A slight panicked call to my local Toyota dealership and they managed to get me replacement seals for the next morning. That's good service!
It got worse however once I started on the rear handbrake reassembly. I needed to reposition one of the axle stands to allow my to fit the crank assembly. Sure enough there was a creak and a crash and the axle fell off the stand.. landing on the brake disk cover, which with no disk underneath it folded right over and ended up a very misshapen mess.
As you can imagine there was a lot of shouting and swearing.. I lifted it back up and looked at the damage (sorry no pics, far to much rage to think of such things)
I set about it with a collection of hammers, mole grips, flat bladed screwdrivers and a crow bar and I must say it actually doesn't look too bad now. It will never be quite perfect (which as you have probably gathered by now really REALLY annoys me) but if I didn't mention it, I doubt anyone would notice, and it looks no worse than most brake disk shields as they are rarely 100% straight.
Again I'll say how impressed I was with the POR15 finish, it stood up to much hammering pounding and reshaping very well. the finish only started failing when I was hitting it with the pointy bit of a crow bar. Needless to say it's been sanded back and repainted now.
The issues weren't over yet... I did something really stupid next... which in my defence is a result In a mistake in the TSRM!!
I took note of all the torque settings and started torqueing up everything as it should be, at the time I did think "that's weird, and a crazy amount of torque for a very small nut and stud"... even when tightening it up I thought "This doesn't feel right" checked the numbers again and carried on, stripping the thread on one nut.
It turns out that the TSRM states that the diff carrier bolts should be torqued up 3x more than they should be.. and like an idiot I didn't question my gut instinct...
I attached a screenshot.. spot the error!!!
Needless to say, the stud and nut were very easily removed (yay new parts come undone nicely too) and replacements are on order from Toyota, to arrive on Tuesday.
My final straw was when I went to re install everything at the front of the truck to at least get the front off axle stands.
I'd previously lifted the front diff in (it was heavy, I don't really want to ever do that alone again) and decided to quickly fit the driveshaft's and get it all back together.
It turns out that the hub nut thread on the drivers side driveshaft is utterly wrecked where it looks like it had been hit with a hammer.
I seem to recall that when I bought those 4 years ago after CV boot failure it was damaged on arrival (used parts, I figure older still good OEM Toyota is better than new pattern part) I was slightly annoyed but used the other shaft and stored it away... flash forwards 4 years I was comparing all my driveshafts and looking at play and CV condition, I didn't think to test the thread on the hub shaft... having totally forgotten one of them was damaged.
My job tomorrow is to pull those and refit the ones I had taken off before this job, which were actually ok... POR15 is currently awaiting its second coat before I go to bed!
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