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My '85 SPG has needed a good front-end R'n'R for some time. Finally digging into it this weekend. All new ball joints, tie rod ends, four CV boots, yadda yadda yadda. It's even getting 4 new Bridgestones. Further, the driver's side CV was destroyed from the PO running it for YEARS with a torn boot--major play in the joint... and on top of that, the passenger's side wheel bearing was shot. Both brake calipers were problematic as well.
I had a pair of donor axles/spindles/brakes from an '84 8V N/A we parted out (brutal, savage structural rust in both lower control arm mountings) a couple of months ago. The car drove beautifully, so I planned to simply swap the tripod bearings, throw on fresh ball joints, and use the '84 axles. I would have preferred to upgrade the SPG to vented rotors, but I still suspect I'll do an '88/up axle conversion at some point.
All axles/CV components in both cars are original Genuine Saab, as evidenced by the markings on the CV joints and boots themselves.
I had always read that all I'd need to do here was swap tripod bearings on the end of the axles, as the '85 SPG has big inner drivers and the '84 N/A had small ones. I bought a puller and got to carefully yanking tripod bearings off the end of the axles only to find the spline size is different!
The fix was easy--I put the original good big tripod bearings back on the '85 SPG axles and just put those into the CV at the spindle end.
Just curious really, why is it that I thought I had read so many times that the tripod bearings swap straight across?
posted by 24.84.216...
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