a photoblog of what i did today.....

[chrisinhouston]

May as well add these 2 other shots of recent projects I completed.

1 is an extended work table for the band saw with an adjustable fence and miter gauge.

2 is also an extended table for the drill press with an adjustable fence and 2 lock down jigs to hold work in place. This is the old Delta drill press I got for $50 and rebuilt. It is solid as a tank!

[glatt]

I love that old drill press.

Good work on all those table tops and fences, etc. They are all going to make work much more pleasant.

[classicman]

Very nice work Chris.

I'm envious of your drill press. I couldn't afford (space nor room) a stand alone, so I bought a tabletop model. Its great and all, but too many times I find I cannot use it on certain things as the distance between the bit and the shelf is too limiting.

[glatt]

We bought a used car a couple weeks ago, and knew when we got it that the brakes were pretty worn and would need to be replaced soon. So at around 2PM Saturday, I realized I had a beautiful 4.5 hour empty window until we were meeting friends for dinner. I stopped in the auto parts store and bought new brake pads.

I got home and switched the cars in the driveway and my son and I proceeded to take the front wheel off the driver's side. I went to install the new pads, but they didn't fit! So back to the store to exchange them. This time with an old pad in hand to make sure I had the right ones before I left. I got a knowledgeable clerk this time and everyone was extremely apologetic that they gave me the wrong part initially.

Now I was feeling a little pressure, somehow I had only 2 hours now, and still needed to take a shower. I did the driver's side brakes with no problem, and figured the passenger's side would be even faster. Except I couldn't get two of the five lug nuts off. I sprayed them several times with WD40 and then got cleaned up and went to dinner with the friends.

So Sunday morning, I went out there and tried again. The lug nuts wouldn't budge. So I heated them with a propane torch, and they still wouldn't budge. Finally, I decided to use more muscle than I thought I should. And I snapped them both clean off! I would have been pissed if I was on the side of the road, but this was a controlled environment and I was happy to get the wheel off.

So my photoblog begins with this picture.

See the three nice wheel stud bolts and the two broken ones? This will not do. Let's fix it.

First we remove the brake caliper piston assembly thing and hang it by a bent coat hanger from one of the giant springs holding up the car. We're hanging it because the line full of brake fluid is too weak to hold up this big and heavy hunk of metal and I don't want to have to mess with replacing brake fluid and bleeding air out of the system, so I just leave the whole thing attached to the brake fluid lines. But I want it out of the way, so I hang it up.


Next comes the pads. They are old and worn, so I pull them out of the brake mount assembly. I want to save them for now because I'll need to reuse the shims in a bit.



The old pads next to the new ones.

[glatt]

Next I want to take the brake assembly thing off. It's in the way of getting the brake disk (or brake rotor) off. There are two huge bolts in the back that I have to remove to get this off. They were pretty tight, so I got a mallet to bang on the wrench handle to get those bolts out. Off it came. This one we can just set aside.


Now we can remove the brake rotor easily. It just falls right off.


Here's the wheel hub with the two broken studs. I want to pound them out with a hammer, but there's not much sticking out to hit. I need a nail set or something. Also, look at that thin sheet metal splash guard thing behind the wheel hub. It's so close to the hub, the only way I can get a new wheel stud bolt in there is to line each hole up with that little notch.


And after digging through a junk drawer, I found the perfect thing to pound these old broken studs out. An old door hinge pin. It has a nice large head that I can't miss with my hammer blows, and it's nice and strong.


I couldn't take a picture while swinging the hammer, but the broken studs came out easily.

[glatt]

I couldn't rotate the wheel stud to get those holes to line up with the notch in the sheet metal splash guard so I could get the new stud bolts in, so I put the transmission into neutral.

Now I can easily rotate the hub by hand, and lined the first hole up with the notch.


This is one of the new wheel stud bolts. Some guy in a Youtube video said that putting them in the freezer would shrink them very slightly and make it just a little easier to install them. I figured it couldn't hurt, so that was the first thing I had done in the morning. Notice how the bolt gets fatter and is ridged just before you get to the head. The hole is smaller than those ridges, and when you pull or hit the bolt into place it just jams into the hole and is held there by the friction in that ridged area.


And this is the bolt inserted partway into the hole. I still need to get it in another half inch.

[glatt]

I could try to swing a hammer back there and pound the bolt in, but that seemed to lack elegance. So I decided to pull the bolt in instead.

I stacked a bunch of oversized washers and put one of the new lug nut on backwards so the flat part of the lug nut would rub against the washers. This worked great at first, but when I started to apply actual force to the wrench, the whole wheel hub started to rotate.


So I got a long pry bar and slipped it between two wheel stud bolts and against the ground. That locked the wheel hub in place so I could apply some force and pull that new wheel stud bolt into place. It worked beautifully.


Here's the first new stud snug in the hole! The second one was even easier because I knew the routine now.


And I cleaned and sanded the brake rotor a little to get rid of some of the glazing on the surface. There were no deep ridges at all, so I could reuse it without resurfacing it.


Oh, hey. This is a good picture where you can see the piston in the background. It's that silvery looking cup with the rubber gasket surrounding it. It's sticking out pretty far. As the old pads had worn down, it pushed out farther and farther. I'll need to compress it to make room for the new thicker pads to be installed.

[glatt]

Now I put the brake mount assembly back. This thing must have a real name, but I don't know it off the top of my head. It just holds all the brake stuff in place. It was hard to get this off, so I figured I should put it back on just as tightly. So I pounded the handle of the wrench with a mallet a little to snug up those bolts. If I had a torque wrench, I could put it back to the exact specs, but I don't, so I do my best. It's not falling off.


Under the hood is the master brake cylinder. You can see the fluid level is a little low. That's because all that fluid is down in the caliper piston that got extended so far when the brake pads wore down.

I use a clamp to squeeze the piston back into place.

And now look at the fluid level. It's higher. We had been getting an intermittent brake warning light when we went up and down hills, and I think that was caused by the low levels of fluid in master cylinder dipping below the sensor there. Now that the level is higher, I expect that light won't be coming on again.

[glatt]

We're almost there!

I took the shims off the old worn pads and I cleaned them with brake cleaner. Then I lined up the new pads and shims and lubricated them with special high temperature brake lube. This keeps the brakes from squealing. You DON'T lubricate the braking surface of the pads, you lubricate the rear of the pads. Then if they move around a millimeter or two against the caliper when braking, they won't make any noise. So spread that grease around with my finger and then stack the shims onto the backs of the brake pads.


Put the pads in place in the brake mount assembly. There are some clips at the contact points that hold them snugly in place.

Now you can take the hanging caliper part off the coat hanger and put that over the pads and bolt that on. Make sure to remove the coat hanger from the springs. That will make a racket if you drive around with that up in there.

And put the wheel on.


Pump the pedal a few times, and go for a test drive! It stops perfectly and no squeals or anything. Doesn't pull to either side when I brake and no pulsation or vibrations or anything.

[glatt]

This whole project cost around $60 for the new pads, the brake cleaner, the brake pad lube, the two new wheel studs, and two lug nuts.

The shop would have charged about $300 for the brake job and probably $50-$100 for the wheel studs. But they would have resurfaced the rotors on a lathe, so they would have done a little more than I did.

It was more of a pain in the ass than I was expecting with the wrong parts and the broken bolts, but it went ok. Normally it would be easier than this.

[Lamplighter]

I'm very impressed... Good job !

[Undertoad]

kick ass

[xoxoxoBruce]

Good job, you figured out the little out all the little details like the notch in the splash guard, and pulling with the lug nut reversed. I would have put a little NeverSeize on the lugs, (never oil or grease), but that's not critical.

Buy a torque wrench, even a cheap beam type. A cheap one may not be as accurate, but it will mean everything is even. Most people don't realize how important the lug nut torque is. Sure, changing a flat beside the road, get 'em tight and get the hell out of there. But servicing in a safe place, proper and even torquing will prevent bent rims, rotors and hubs, that cause small vibrations you may not notice, but accelerate wear on the tires and driveline.

By the way, you're not fooling me with the gloves. I know they're to disguise your kid's hands in the pictures, so we won't know you were just drinking beer and snapping pictures, while forcing the poor child to labor out in the weather.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I would have put a little NeverSeize on the lugs, (never oil or grease), but that's not critical.

Would that have prevented me breaking those wheel stud bolts in the first place? After a quarter turn, I couldn't budge the lug nuts.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, that's what it's for. Those lug nuts were probably run on with an impact gun, with the combination of speed and metal-to-metal causing them to gall. It would be unusual for it to happen by hand, but I've seen stranger things. It will also help keep rust from building up on the threads making the nuts hard to get off.

I also use a little where the rim fits tightly over the center hub,so rust doesn't bind them together when I'm trying to get the wheel off. Just trying to make my future life easier.

A little tube of silver (I like it better than the copper) NeverSeize will last you the rest of your life... and probably your son's life too. BUT, it's a bitch to clean off your hands and it will NOT wash out of your clothes... ever.