Today I had a chance to attempt to tweak the stub axle with a pipe as my homemade divice snapped on me again,this time on the left side. The right side has been reinforced twice due to breaking.
Remove right rear wheel,knock out the metal cup axle nut cover, remove nut (30mm socket) pull off hub bearing/drum assembly
measure the diameter of the axle stub (where the bearing slides on) = 28mm.
Hunting around the shop with caliper in hand looking for a pipe with inner diameter of 28mm.
An old floor jack handle is perfect fit on the stub axle.One half of the two piece handle.(borrowed from coworker). Nice and heavy feel to it.
Had another pipe to slip over this one for about a total of 7 foot levarege.
But before I jump on that I wanted a reference so I slipped the hub/drum assembly back on,layed a laser pointer across two adjacent studs against the flat face of the drum and projected a dot forward on 3 places that I marked with a marker.
First low on the back side of the plastic aerodynamic fence that runs along the bottom of the rocker panel,then a bit higher on the painted lip of the metal fender,then even higher in the inner fender liner. (just by rotating the drum while pressing the laser pointer against it)
Pulled the drum off slipped the pipes on,sat on the ground and gave it a good pull propped my feet up against another car's tire next to the mirage. (my car is on a car hoist lowered enough so the remaining 3 tires have some weight on them.This keeps me from yanking the mirage off the hoist!)
Pull pipes off,slip drum back on,check with laser pointer against marks,no difference so repeat with more and more force,checking after each attempt.
Well the jack handle pipe started bending right past the very short little stub axle. I had a steel coupler that was a perfect fit on the jack handle. So I tapped that on the pipe with a hammer (1-1/2" steel coupling from home improvement store) gave it more hell, now the pipe starts permanently bending right past my reinforcement sleeve,but it looks like the laser dot is just slightly outside my marks.
So I went to the other side and now knowing how much force it takes to pull and not move the damn axle stub at all,I gave it all I had which pretty much destroyed my buddy's jack handle. (bent it a bunch right past the sleeve.had to straighten it in a press before returning it)
But again it seemed as the laser dot moved just a little bit. Reassemble the car,set it up on the alignment machine and it shows this:
ORIGINAL READING HOW IT CAME FROM FACTORY
AFTER TWEAKING
Seems like it might have tweaked a total of 0.1 degrees.
This gives me hope that once I build a super beefy pipe with a 28mm inner diameter and I can really get on it,I might be able to straighten the defective crap on my car.
The little stub axle is incredibly tough as I just learned. This also confirms to me that there is no way the transport car hauler could have sinched the straps down hard enough over the tires to permanently cause this issue on these mirages. (hear me old mech? )
Little birds chirped that they had ONE jig screwed up in the factory and it is now corrected. Gee what a relief that is to us with the defective axles. And how do I end up with all of them when I have the opportunity to put a mirage on the alignment rack? Please don't ask where the little birds got their information from because I already got in trouble for sharing too much. On the other hand I really lost my respect toward corporate so I actually don't care.
My techline case was generated with 18K miles on my car. Now almost 40K on it and I'm still dicking around with the defective axle...think they are going to hook me up now?Pfft.
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View my fuel log 2014 Mirage DE 1.2 manual: 66.3 mpg (US) ... 28.2 km/L ... 3.5 L/100 km ... 79.7 mpg (Imp)