A New Toy

Can you guess what it is from the picture? It’s a driveshaft. Not very exciting to most people I suppose, but if you’d been waiting six weeks for the bloody thing to turn up, you might see it my way.

For those who don’t know what one is, and who care, and who are reading this (a very small group of people indeed), it’s a bit of a car. The end on the right goes into the diff, and the end on the left bolts into the wheel hub. In between are two CV joints and 10kg of metal. Any the wiser now? Or more excited?

The plan was to get it fitted at the garage, but I’ve waited so long I’ve decided to do it myself. We’ll see how that turns out. Bearing in mind that the first hurdle is to get the drain and fill plugs out of the diff (notoriously sticky, and haven’t moved since 1985), the most likely outcome is that I either give up right there, wrench the car off the jack stands trying to shift them, or blow myself into the middle of next week waving a blowtorch around under the fuel tank.

The rest of the job looks pretty easy though, so I might find myself driving triumphantly up and down the road before the weekend is out. Then, sooner or later, it will be time to do the other side.