Thought I might share this little story with you guys as I figured you'd appreciate it.
As I was finishing up my latest (and hopefully final) effort at the transfer case output shaft seal replacement yesterday, I began picking up tools and other related debris from underneath the Jeep. My task-at-hand was completed and I was feeling pretty good with the fact that I had finally resolved a weeks long problem. I had buttoned the transfer case and driveshaft back up without a hitch. New seal, properly installed companion flange, new bolts, fresh grease, things are good again. This was a problem that had led to a couple of sleep deprived nights, 3 or 4 parts orders, and a dozen or so SOS posts across various flatfender sites.
As I often do, I had put all tools away and swept the floor under the Jeep prior to starting work on it that morning. It's nice to have clean slate as opposed to starting a new work day in a pile of scattered tools and puddles of grease and oil leftover from yesterday�s frustrations. For me, there�s that small feeling of accomplishment when even during the worst projects, I can at least count a well swept floor as a small victory. Given the course of most of my projects, I need all the victories I can get.
As I was picking up the last couple sockets from the ground I saw something that caused me to freeze in horror and nearly regurgitate my own stomach. There, on the floor - the floor I had recently swept and done nothing else over except wrench on a transfer case - lay a lone ball bearing. No doubt about what it was. And it was sitting there directly beneath the skid plate, right where I had been working. Shiny and small, yes, but an object that wouldn't have done a better job grabbing my attention if it had been a 40lb bowling ball.
Whether you see one errant bearing or eighty of them, it�s all the same. Something has gone terribly wrong.
I picked it up for close inspection and some fleeting hope that I could identify it as something other than a ball bearing. No chance. In a knee jerk reaction of denial I quickly ran through my list of tools trying to find something, anything, that could have lost that bearing. Ratchets? Nope. Vice grips? Definitely not. Didn�t use them anyways. Screwdriver? C�mon now.
This is not good.
I went about picking up my tools in the manner a crazy person attempts some menial task after they�ve been subjected to an unbearably shocking event that they are unable to process and cope with. A soldier that continues to march across the battlefield even though an artillery shell has just claimed a foot and both arms. Or the car crash victim that stumbles from the fiery wreckage and insists they need to get to work on time even though half their face is missing.
For five or so long minutes I deliriously stumbled around the garage, quietly putting away tools and simultaneously sensing my mind disintegrate at the idea of having to drop the entire TC for a full rebuild to find where that bearing came from.
Just about at the point where my thoughts were funneling downward to a scene of a greasy me being wrestled into a white van by a group of orderlies, I looked over and noticed my old creeper sitting along the garage wall. It�s the old wooden style creeper that I scavenged for free out of someone else�s junk pile. I had used it in that morning�s project and then sort of kick-pushed it out of the way when done. The old creeper, sitting there where it came to a stop, partially obstructed by the lawn tractor.�
I stumbled over to the creeper and flipped it up on end. As I did, I could see and hear something magical. Someone, probably years earlier, had bolted a crummy replacement wheel in place of what was likely a broken original one. I could tell it was a replacement - plastic and cheap -�it didn't match the other three�.and at this moment, that replacement wheel was giving up the ghost. As a lifted it up, half a dozen or so bearings spilled out all over the floor. It had apparently started its death march while in service a few minutes before and puked the first of its bearings right at the job site.
I�ll credit the old creeper with a solid sense of humor and one of the best practical jokes I�ve fallen victim to in quite awhile. If any of you guys get bored and/or want to add a little stress to a buddy�s day just sprinkle a bearing or two under a vehicle he�s been working on. Or better yet, find an old wooden creeper in a junk pile, give it to him as a gift, sit back, and wait�..
