Quote:
Originally Posted by ilangop Vaidya,
I fetched a propeller shaft lying with my mechanic only and tested on my car. It worked fine without any misalignment and vibration. But the pillow block is worn out and the UJ bearings were dry & lose out of usage without proper lubrication. So again I temperorily reverted back to the old shaft and procured the materials to replace the UJ and pillow block. Hope my car is back to normal by this week end. |
Here is a list of experiments that I had done on my car and my car is back to normal now.
Tried replacing all joint & the pillow block in the shaft borrowed from my mechanic. Again the same issue -vibration. My mechanic raised his hands saying that he had done his best. One can imagine how annoying it could be, no results even after re-doing the same job twice from a mechanic who claims to be a Premier / Fiat specialist.
At this point after buring a small hole in my pocket, I decided to live with it and forcing myself to drive at <40kmph. During every drive my mind was filled with agony and was abusing my mechanic like anything for his negligence & all the money that went in water. For some time I reftrained from using the car at all. And that was when karthik (funkycar) visited me.
Once again the fire to solve the problem and bring my NE back to life got ignited. This time I didnt want to do a trial & error job. Rather go for a new one. By this time I had used my car for about 150 - 200 km of city driving and beacuse of which the swapped (good) differential got a mechanical damage because of which it would give a kad - kad sound for every rotation of propeller shaft.
First I approached Kalpana Motors, Pune and casually asked for an approxiamte price for a new differential & propeller shaft assembly. His guess was about 7 - 8K for the shaft assembly and 12 - 15k for half differential kit (only the crown & pinion & smaller gears set) which I have to get assembled outside. Having burnt my finger once due to lack of my mechanic's competency & the hefty price that he quoted I didnt proceed further. Later while searching in this team-bhp forum I took the contact details of shetty motors, mumbai and gave them a ring. Yes, they had them and the price I was quoted was 5.5K for propeller shaft assy and 6.5K for the differential unit.
Now I found them, but how to collect it. They are closed on Sundays, and I didnt want to take a day off from office. So a friend (our ex-colleague) in Mumbai went to Shetty Motors and got the parts. Though there was no discount on price, he was a good person. Shetty Motors has 2 branches - one in Opera house & other somewhere on the National highway (dont remember the name) My friend had paid for the shaft, differential & the packing for the differential. But while my friend visited their shop at Opera house, they only had the differential. And I had to collect the shaft from the other branch as it was on the way back to Pune. I was ok with this.
Thanks to Abhishek (Obsessed by fiat) who immediately agreed to drive till Mumai and help me collect the parts on his Ford Figo. We both of us along with our families left at around 6:30Am and reached my froend's place at 10:00. We were welcomed with Upma and coffee. Spent some time there chit-chatting with them and left from there with the differential. On the way we spent some time at a scrap market (Dont know the name of the place). It was really a nice place to roam around and I wanted almost everything that I saw.
AT around 4:00Pm in the evening we collected the Propeller shaft from the seller's residence itself and came back home.
Couple of days later took an appointment with another mechanic (Lawrence, a tamilian settled in Pune) and handed over him the parts. By evening my car was back with the new propeller shaft. Car was back to normal without any vibrations, still with the kad-kad noise from the differential. But Lawrence was too occupied with other vehicles, so gave me another appointment a week later. In a weeks time I had also procured new trailing arms and together with the differential they were also changed. Filled the differential with new oil and Yes, my NE is back in to action again. I had a big smile after the test drive and I take to office atleast twice a week.
At the end of this lengthly experiment I was setback by 16K, while I bought the car for 25K. The convincing factor is I have my car back and I once touched 100 Kmph. I shall share the post-mortem report of the old propeller shaft, the discovery of the source of vibration, the after effects of vehicle vibrations, and an upgrade experiment in the following posts.