April 20th Saturday, truck pressure wash in my driveway
And one last thing. Once I got home (around 6p.m. Friday EST), the next day the truck’s undercarriage really needed a good cleaning. I found a few pockets of dried on mud and gravel. the dust shields on the rotors trapped a lot of dirt too, so I suspect that was the source of the rotational squeaking that was driving me nuts.
First I used a floor jack to jack up under the rear diff’s cast iron cover. Then I carefully dropped the rear axle onto 2 jack stands. Removed the rear tires, but I don’t have more jackstands, so I could only remove one front tire at a time. Maybe next time I go harbor freight, I’ll get 2 more stands.
Once the tires were off, I’d fire up the pressure washer and really clean off the rotors and brake calipers with the small pressure washer gun. Using the creeper I rolled under the truck and clean things. It was a wet dirty job, even wearing my rain jacket and pants.
The driveway is normally asphalt color, so all the brown mud is from Arkansas
Note from the future!
I thought the squealing i was hearing occasionally was clay/dirt stuck in the leaf springs or something weird. Turns out the rear brakes were already shot.. Only 30,000 miles! Maybe i left the parking brake partially engaged at some point. The Ford Ranger uses the rear brakes as the parking brakes too.
First few photos showing my fabric blocker trick for keeping water/dirt from getting in the back of the truck through the tailgate gaps.
