Mexican repair shop nightmare???

[Alex Naz]

Originally Posted by Alex Naz

thanks for looking out. Drivers rear still pretty good think. Less than a year, about 20kmiles on a brand new K02 .

I just posted a close up on the driver rear

[carringb]

The new cat looks like a MagnaFlow universal cat. Or most other universal cats. It does look undersized for the V10 however. Most are only for V8's under 6-litres.

A agree with the tire assessment.... Unless you just rotated that from the front, it shouldn't wear like that. Inner edge will only wear like that if your bearing are toast.

[marret]

May just be the light, but it does look like the inner edge has more wear. If it looks good to you in person, than no worries.

[Alex Naz]

Originally Posted by carringb

The new cat looks like a MagnaFlow universal cat. Or most other universal cats. It does look undersized for the V10 however. Most are only for V8's under 6-litres.

A agree with the tire assessment.... Unless you just rotated that from the front, it shouldn't wear like that. Inner edge will only wear like that if your bearing are toast.

Thanks!
I was wondering about the quality of the replacement cat.

Yeah the wear on the inner edge is a little more than the front tires. My other rear is a replacement tire. Other one blew up 2 weeks ago after spending 3 days digging the van out the mud... got stuck on an endless salt flat that apparently was sinking... still not sure what happened, but it was completely off the rim.

So rear wheel bearings may need to be replaced I suppose. I’m not too well versed in all the parts and connections... which bearings are you specifically talking about?

[carringb]

The wheel bearings. If your van is an EB with the semi-float rear axle, it’s probably overloaded which eats those bearings up.

Can you post a pic of your rear wheel hub? If it’s flat, it’s semi-float. If it sticks out the middle, it’s full float. Full floats don’t fail like this and are rated for more weight. 2002 was a transition year. Wagons still had FFs but cargos got the SF axle.

[bigriver]

On the cat and your front end pieces - when yr stuck mechanically in unknown territory with light grasp of the local language sometimes you just get what you get and be glad you got it. I've been there more than once and, as long as the rig was put back together to be safe to drive, I've felt fortunate to head back down the road. Optimal? Of course not but you may not have a whole lot of options at this point and it's not like the $ is crazy.
Hope you work it out and get back to enjoying your trip.

[Twoxentrix]

Originally Posted by Alex Naz

I asked him in my crappy Spanish to fix the brackets that hold the exhaust on.

Just going to throw this out there...we have a translator app on our phones - It's come in very handy on many occasions (locally as well). For us, it insures the correct message is delivered. From experience, several occasions in the past we ended out "accepting" what the other party thought we wanted because of poor communication. No ones fault, just open to interpretation.

Last incident was the crew that waxed my Van; They work for a Yacht Detail company (I'm good friends with the owner), I explained I wanted everything on the Van waxed (2 coats) but not to wax the bumpers...well, they didn't wax the bumpers but they did wax the two Scepter Runts I had sitting on top of the rear box & the Thule storage box on the roof.

Don't get me wrong, these guys are great! just miscommunication...kinda like the exhaust brackets you wanted addressed and ended out with a new cat.

[Alex Naz]

Here are pics of the rear hub.

[bigriver]

It's a semi-float

[boywonder]

Alex: If you live in CA you may have a hard time getting that smogged without the OEM cat.......