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Login to post Forums » Off-topic discussion » "easy" jobs are the worst

April 2, 2010 2:33 p.m. skruffy Dork

2004 Vue. Rear wheel bearing, tie rod end, and a swaybar link. 2 hours, tops. Right?

I started yesterday. Tie rod end and swaybar link took about 15 minutes. Oh this is gonna be a cake job, easy money. It took the remainder of yesterday to get the rear drum off. Hours of heating it red hot, banging on it with various hammers, etc... Towards the end I was gearing up to cut it off with a torch. 200k Ohio miles and the rear brakes have never been touched. Wheel bearing is a bolt in with the hub affair. It's stuck. Again, torches, hammers, slide hammer, etc... nothing moves this thing. Now I'm taking that whole damn side of the rear off to stick it in a press. That means bleeding the brakes and all sorts of other fun stuff when I put it back together.

Seriously, I'll do a billion 3000gt timing belts and be happy about it, but no more of this "easy" work.

As an aside, the Honda powertrain in this thing is spotless. Literally. No grease, no drips, no indication that a fluid has ever even thought about leaking out of this motor. The rest of the car is dirty as hell and falling apart. I'll take a pic when I'm wrapping it up, I can't believe it.
April 2, 2010 2:39 p.m. mtn SuperDork

Easy jobs for me right now are impossible. I need to change the oil, but can't do it cause I don't have any place that will let me do it--its always parked in a public garage. Jiffy Lube, here I come.
April 2, 2010 2:44 p.m. Tommy Suddard SonDork

That's an easy fix. Find a gas station that has service bays, but doesn't do service anymore. Often these will be on the outskirts of town, and not see much traffic. Slip the guy a $20, then proceed to use his service bay for an hour or two. Buy a drink or two during that time. Be friendly, and he may even let you do it again another time.

Sorry for the threadjack!
April 2, 2010 2:51 p.m. mtn SuperDork

Tommy Suddard wrote:

That's an easy fix. Find a gas station that has service bays, but doesn't do service anymore. Often these will be on the outskirts of town, and not see much traffic. Slip the guy a $20, then proceed to use his service bay for an hour or two. Buy a drink or two during that time. Be friendly, and he may even let you do it again another time.

Sorry for the threadjack!

Thats a good idea... I'll have to look into that.
April 2, 2010 3:49 p.m. 16vCorey SuperDork

For sure. Last weekend I was servicing a friend's '00 Forester. I did the timing belt and water pump in record time. Drained the transmission, dropped the pan, and changed both filters in no time at all. Then came the ball joint. It was originally a northern car, so of course the bolt in the spindle broke off. So then I removed the spindle to try to extract the bolt to no avail. It was pretty much welded in with rust. Then I drilled it out, which took forever. After it was out, the ball joint still didn't want to leave the spindle due to more rust. After about an hour it was finally out. I put the new ball joint in and had to use a longer bolt and put a nut on it, since the threads in the spindle were pretty much gone from all the drilling. It sucked so hard.
April 2, 2010 3:49 p.m. CarKid1989 HalfDork

saturn vue = hond motor? whhhaaat?
April 2, 2010 3:51 p.m. skruffy Dork

Yeah, there were a few years that got the honda 3.5 v6 with a 5 speed auto. Same powertrain as the pilot and some minivans I believe. It's surprisingly quick, albeit not happy at all to be driven hard.
April 2, 2010 3:51 p.m. 16vCorey SuperDork

Yep, the 3.5L V6 they used is a Honda engine.
April 2, 2010 4:33 p.m. poopshovel SuperDork

I'll hang my head low and admit that I had never seen, nor heard of an impact screwdriver until after I'd completely mangled the hub retaining screws on the rear of the integra a couple weeks ago. I feel your pain.
April 2, 2010 4:48 p.m. 16vCorey SuperDork

poopshovel wrote:

I'll hang my head low and admit that I had never seen, nor heard of an impact screwdriver until after I'd completely mangled the hub retaining screws on the rear of the integra a couple weeks ago. I feel your pain.

Those things are a life saver if you ever have to work on an older jap bike. There are phillips head screws EVERYWHERE on those things. The first thing I did when I got my CB750 was get out the impact screwdriver, take all those crap screws out, and replace them with allen bolts.
April 2, 2010 5:00 p.m. skruffy Dork

It just keep getting better. Now that the upright is loose one of the bushings is fused in place and will NOT come out. This means I'll have to remove the suspension arm from the car, carefully marking the alignment bolt.
April 2, 2010 5:44 p.m. minimac Dork

The $100/hr that the stealer charges doesn't look too awful bad about now, does it. If it helps at all, the stealership my brother works at does a LOT of them. The mechanics there all have trouble too.
April 2, 2010 6:18 p.m. Lesley SuperDork

I used to go behind the loading docks at the newspaper on a Sunday, no one around. Did oil changes, even changed the shocks on my dakota.
April 2, 2010 6:26 p.m. Jensenman SuperDork

16vCorey wrote:

poopshovel wrote:

I'll hang my head low and admit that I had never seen, nor heard of an impact screwdriver until after I'd completely mangled the hub retaining screws on the rear of the integra a couple weeks ago. I feel your pain.

Those things are a life saver if you ever have to work on an older jap bike. There are phillips head screws EVERYWHERE on those things. The first thing I did when I got my CB750 was get out the impact screwdriver, take all those crap screws out, and replace them with allen bolts.

Oh Gawd yes. The first thing I did on my old Hondas SL's was buy the Allen bolt kit. Still own an impact driver.

As I have said before, if I ever meet that guy Phillips there better be someone there to restrain me.
April 2, 2010 7:50 p.m. rmarkc Reader

I agree...easy is a code word to double or triple the supposed time to complete.
I had to replace my slave cylinder on Wednesday in my driveway. I could not find my 10mm flare wrench. Looking for it cost me 45 minutes. I ended up breaking the fitting loose with the vise-grips and managed to not booger it up too bad.
Of course, trying to reach the bolts and fitting without putting my extremities in too much danger should the car slip took too much extra time too.
April 2, 2010 7:59 p.m. 93celicaGT2 SuperDork

I needed to get a bumper support for my MX6 today. Easy, right?

WRONG. After mangling a 1989 MX6 LX, culminating in snapping 6 bolts, (also forgot my hammer), i had to give up. 1 hour lost.

Moved to a 1989 626 LX. Spent 2 hours wrestling with 47 PHILLIPS HEAD ARRRRGGGGG screws, nuts, and bolts just to get the damn bumper off.

Hope this sucker fits. If it doesn't, i'm going to duct tape a bar to the front of the car and zip tie the bumper to that.
April 2, 2010 8:41 p.m. wbjones HalfDork

zip ties and duct tape FTW
April 2, 2010 9:28 p.m. Volksroddin Dork

If you need a second set of hands I can be there after I drop off the little wrench spinner at school on monday.
April 5, 2010 10:38 a.m. 81gtv6 HalfDork

There is a friend of my wifes that helps us out with watching the kids from time to time. In stead of paying her I will do some of the maint. on her Elantra. A couple of winters ago I was going to change the oil and do a brake job on her car, super easy right? First I could not get the disks off the front of the car, getting fed up with that I moved onto the oil. I ended up cutting off the oil filter, the base of it was like it was welded to the block. Those couple of simple jobs took me a whole weekend. What a pain in the butt.
April 5, 2010 2:59 p.m. skruffy Dork

Well, I ended up getting the bearing out. Took a 25 ton shop press maxed out and me beating on the flange with a 5lbs sledge. The bearings exit from the hub was "enthusiastic" to say the least. The knuckle was so rusty I had to clean it up with a flapper wheel to get the new bearing in.

I was this close to junkyarding a new knuckle until a friend told me to stop being such a Bob Costas with the press and just go for it. I've never used all my 255lbs on the press pump before.
April 5, 2010 4:10 p.m. Matt B Reader

Congrats on the bearing!

A few months ago a friend and I thought we'd go ahead and knock out the front balljoints and bushings on my AW11. The rear balljoints were a breeze, so no problem right? 6 hours later we're still cursing, dancing on, and setting fire to the first balljoint and seriously considering some sort of pagan sacrifice to appease the gods that govern 80's sports cars. We had a torch, an impact hammer, and a 12-ton shop press. The balljoint laughed a deep guttural chuckle. Satan's snicker. A few hours slowly drilling the bastard out of the control arm eventually did the trick.

I keep the remnants in my ashtray as a trophy of good over evil.
April 5, 2010 11:41 p.m. neon4891 SuperDork

I'm looking at how some "simple" fixes to pass inspection can end up running me close to $1K. I need new rear pads and my e-brake is weak. $20-30 for a set of pads and if the e-brakes needs done just let the shop muck around with that.

-OR-

Just do it ALL myself.

E-brake requires pulling the hub/bearing, while those are of, I might as well replace them with the Mopar Performance hubs($150 each). $300

New new e-brake shoes($??), rotors, and pads. Might as well use performance parts. Rear rotors($30-130 each) Hawk HPS pads($64) $124+

If I'm gona do up the rears I should also do the fronts. Disks ($35-135) same pads up front ($76) $146+

At this point I should also swap the rubber lines for braided SS ($213) I try to avoid working on the wet side of the brake system so that also means instalation and a flush with dot 4 ($60+) $273+

Total including tax $910 and up. It is good that I don't have a credit card.

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