So after dinner tonight, Connie says she's going to bake a cake and shooed me off to the garage. I figured I might as well put that driver side half shaft in, as everything is as clean as it's going to get there, and the paint on the caliper bracket has been dried for a good week. So I started putting things together. Temporarily mounted the knuckle in place loosely on the control arms then installed the hub into it. Fortunately remembering to put the emergency brake bracket in place this time.
The reason I mounted the knuckle loosely as it is impossible to get to that lower hub mounting bolt with the knuckle installed on the lower ball joint. You would think those engineers could have figured out a way to simply rotate those mounting bolts 45 degrees or so, so this wouldn't be a problem.
So with the hub installed with the bolts torqued down I bolted the knuckle to the lower ball joint and torqued that down. Now I have been at this spot before on the other side, and my game plan had been then to first put the half shaft end into the differential and then manhandled the other end into the hub. But try as I might, I just could NOT get that to go. So this time I figured I would try the reverse: Put the shaft end into the hub, and then manhandle the other end into the differential. But again, try as I might, I just could not get that other end into the differential. It's like the new shaft is longer than the old one by about two inches. I haven't measured it, but I would be surprised if that is the case. Well, no, maybe not surprised at all. But what puzzles me is that I was able to get the old shaft OUT of the differential with the other end still in the hub. So why can't I install the darn thing that way?
So I pulled the half shaft out completely and left it at that for tomorrow. I'll just have to pull that knuckle off of the ball joint again and then mount the shaft into both the differential and the hub before tightening down that ball joint nut. Like I did on the passenger side, I'll just have to tighten the bolt based on the number of grunts I make tightening it. Two grunts about equals 52 ft./lbs, I think.
The new rear rotors should be shipped out tomorrow, and the guys at ANplumbing say "they are on it" concerning my order. Maybe if I get that half shaft back in without any other issues, I may try out that HPTuners trick to drain the fuel tanks. I figure I could drain the tank to where the low fuel warning comes on. Certainly don't want to burn out the pumps by running the tanks completely dry. I'm planning on pulling the fuel line going from the stock pump to the input of the Aeromotive pump (a -06 AN line) and just use that line to drain the fuel into the tanks. That would be what I think is the simplest way to do this now.
Maybe with any luck I'll have that fuel pump out and on it's way to be modified by the weekend. Supposed to be a two week turn around on the pump mod, so in the meantime I can get the rest of the fuel system fixed up the way it should be.