Okay, knowing that it is very important to clean and repack the locking hubs and wheel bearings at least every two years ... I decided to jack up the CJ7 and do it! I went to NAPA and got a bunch of premium lithium grease and I set out to take off everything on the front wheels down to the steering knuckle and clean the parts and repack the locking hubs and wheel bearings with grease. I thought it would take about three hours. Do you remember what happened to the SS Minnow when they set out for a three-hour tour? They ended up on Gilligan's Island. Do you know what happened to me when I set out on a three hour grease job? I ended up in Gilligan's Garage ... except I had no Mary-Anne or Ginger to "improve morale."First, I couldn't get the little allen bolts out of the hub. I had to use an impact driver to crack them loose and I destroyed the allen heads in the process. Apparently this CJ7 hadn't had the front wheel components disassembled in a long time ... which is scary given the fact this Jeep has been primarily driven on a beach with sand and salt water splashed up on it. I have a HUGE 1/2 drive ratchet, but it was not enough to get off some of the wheel bolts so I went to the little Amelia Island Sears outlet and bought an 18" 1/2 drive breaking bar. That did the trick ... and I strongly recommend that you add both a breaking bar and an impact driver to your toolbox if you plan on doing serious work on an old CJ (or any Jeep for that matter). Five hours and a quart of PB Blaster into this "three-hour project," I had the front right wheel disassembled down to the spindle ... and quickly realized this 3 hour project would turn into a multiple day job.
The next problem I had was the lack of information in my books. I got down to the spindle and then decided to take the spindle off too in order to check the spindle bearings. The problem was: I couldn't get the spindle off and my books had no pictures or detailed written instructions. I have three different CJ tech manuals and none of them helped that much. One of them said something like: "disassemble the front wheel assembly and remove the spindle and check spindle bearings." Gee ... ya think? Well, I GoJo'd my hands and took off my coveralls and went into my home office and fired up Google ... and I found a REAL GEM. The folks at Novak Conversions have a Jeep Knowledge Base that is amazing. I quickly found the Novak Guide to Jeep Closed-Steering Knuckle Repair and there it was ... step-by-step instructions with exploded diagrams and helpful tips. The $35 book was worthless ... the free website Novak Jeep Knowledge Base was outstanding. I printed it out and too it into the garage and read the "hint" in step 4: "This may require rapping with a block of wood of a soft-faced hammer if the spindle is stuck in the knuckle. I had spent almost an hour just trying to figure out how to get the spindle off. Armed with this knowledge I put a 12" piece of a 2x4 on the spindle and whacked it with my 2.5 pound hand sledge hammer ... and the spindle popped off on the second whack. The spindle bearings actually looked like they were in real good condition and spindle bearings are cheap ... only about $6 ... so I was thinking about replacing them anyway since I had come this far. But then I applied RULE #1 to working on old CJs: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Reinstalling spindle bearings can be very tricky (according to my tech books) so I packed them with grease really good and stuck the spindle back on. I repacked the wheel bearings too and then got everything reassembled. I have drum brakes on the front of both the 77 CJ7 and the 73 CJ5 ... so I had to manually adjust the brake lever to get the drum back on (that went amazing well).
Helpful notes from this project: 1) Have an 18 inch 1/2" drive breaker bar and impact driver handy for disassembling wheel components that haven't been disassembled in a long time (if ever). 2) Save the Novak Conversions Knowledge Base in your "favorite places" on your web browser (see link below) ... the information is awesome. 3) remember that a job that takes two hours on a newer, well-maintained Jeep will probably take a LOT longer on an old CJ that needs restorative work.
Here is a link to The Novak Conversions Knowledge Base Gateway.
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