Following up on my new year’s resolution to improve my wrenchability,
from 4 years ago…
I embarked on the mechanic’s 102 assignment (oil change being 101?): changing the brake pads
The newb highlight film would begin almost immediately as what I thought was a pretty heavy duty jack (4 ton) was not tall enough to raise the slugmobile. Putting the jack on top of car ramps would probably make real car guys cringe everywhere. So of course that’s what I did. It probably would have been fine if I had old fashioned steel ramps. Plastic ramps are amazingly strong they said. They can do anything metal ones can they said. After smushing the top surface oddly I don’t think I’ll be trying that again. With the jack and ramps in the way (in the high jack point) I had no room to put the jack stands except under the axle. Which was, can you guess? too low. Oh well, I think that other strong looking support rod should be strong enough!
OSHA approved vehicle raising
Thank you internet for revealing the importance of changing the brakeclips too
After watching a million youtube vids, I still hadn’t internalized that not only does the caliper piston need to be pushed back with the c-clamp trick, but also the bolt points also slide (which makes sense when you think about it!) If they are out when you go to slide the caliper on, it looks im-tetrisable. My first thoughts were, no those don’t move, the bolts need to be stabilized by them. Wrong.
so much rust everywhere - just seems wrong
It all went pretty smoothly all things considered, for the left side - out of daylight, surely the other side would be a slam dunk in the morning, right?
This is why you should not let your weekend chores slip into monday - things like this happen!
broken wheel stud
I never expected discount tire to actually help me out for free on this (although they probably are the ones that crossthreaded it or otherwise jammed it on pneumagically on the last tire change. But they did! Happy ending!
epilogue: May 20: Now I’ve managed to change the serpentine belt. Although I did seem to find myself in a predicament that noone else on the many videos I watched runs into (the wrench used to loosen the tensioner gets trapped under tension after the belt is removed - and is very annoyingly in the way.) It is stressful knowing that you are messing with a part of the system that drives the other critical systems - and I found out how painfully hot parts of the engine get just running a few minutes. Nevertheless, I am declaring victory on this one and exiting stage left… (feels like the matrix “i know kung fu” / billion)