1995 Chevy Tahoe - Brake Lines, Exhaust Leaks, Broken Spring, Rust - Something for Everyone!

another part of a youtube video that i struggle the most with is the intro and the outro let's try this again howdy folks welcome back got another fun little project for us today this is a 1995 chevy tahoe it's got i don't know 160 000 miles on it something like that relatively clean you know on the body not a whole lot of rust but pretty crusty underneath it is here mostly because it has no brakes it also has some wicked loud exhaust and there's kind of a laundry list of other problems that i don't think they're going to want to fix but yeah the brake lines are totally hooped on this thing so that's our project for today well i'll give you a little tour of this fine machine a little touch of the cancer here on the right side but really not too bad on the body for a 25 year old truck in illinois underneath she's pretty rusty i don't know if they undercoated it or something and that caused this this scaly rust everywhere sometimes you see that anyway brake lines are pretty rough and what i'm most concerned about is the bleeders so check out that bleed screw it's still got the rubber cap on it but there's basically no metal left underneath that cap oh boy diff cover it's not leaking yet but it will be soon this shocks totally blown out same story over here on the left side with that bleeder i'll be amazed if we can even find a hex under there see how rotten the brake lines are now somebody's replaced a few of them see this big guy that comes back here to the brake hose that's been replaced and i think the some of the fuel lines have been replaced too so exhaust is pretty rough everywhere although he tells me he just had it fixed so rear axle pinion seal leaking pretty bad well you see here they've spliced in some new fuel lines there's the fuel filter right there and the remnants of whatever used to be here see we got some compression fittings up here going to the flexible lines that's okay the compression fittings you know you can't use those for brake lines but for fuel lines you know i don't have a big problem with it in fact they sell fuel line repair kits that have compression fittings so there's more brake lines that have been replaced but the big thing right now is this doughnut right here coming from the manifold to the y pipe is blown out that's the big source of his exhaust leak and it looks like somebody replaced one of the of the studs here but the other two i think are original and we've got a visitor in the shop it sounds like so on the right side they put a repair flange on so that's probably what we're going to do on the other side be a good way to fix it but check out these brake calipers i mean holy crust and look at that bleeder or what used to be a bleeder so it needs all new brake lines but it's pointless to replace the brake lines if we can't bleed the brakes so i told them to just figure on replacing the calipers and the wheel cylinders if we can't get the bleeders out the calipers for these old gms are really cheap like 25 bucks it's barely worth even trying to get them apart anyway here's the big leak up here so that's all brake fluid there on that cross member the front crossover brake hose brake line is it's rusted through in front of that idler arm there so that's mostly what we're after is brake lines and exhaust leaks so i guess the reason they want to fix this truck instead of just parking it in a fence row is that it's all set up to be pulled behind an rv so you see they got the tow bar mounts there in the front and the wiring is all set up so they can you know have the lights work with all the diodes and stuff so it's kind of costly to transfer that stuff over to a different vehicle and they hardly ever drive it so he just wants to make it a little bit safer but of course they don't want to spend much money so we'll see what we can do well this should be fun i don't even think that thing is hex shaped anymore i wonder what size it was originally 5 16 maybe and there's definitely an aroma under this truck i'm thinking they own a cat or two now this side looks a little bit better than the other side can't even reach it well what do you guys think heat i don't even think we should try it without it well i think what we're going to do we're going to try an old school mechanics trick here this is like my dad's specialty we're going to heat that sucker up until she's glowing red hot and then we're going to quench it with some water you may have to do that a couple of times and hopefully the thermal shock of expanding and contracting will be enough to crack that baby loose now this side should be the easy side it's still got a little bit of a hex lift the other side it's not going to be so much fun there's no room to get you know a drill or an easy out or anything in here that that's the leaf spring right there so rookie let's see what happens with some acetylene motivation here try our best not to get it on fire so so so good thing about heat too it helps kind of burn some of that rust off yeah right like that was actually going to work yeah we just rounded it off let's get a little bit more aggressive here so papers first time running a torch people sorry okay let's go with the fits all now that works about as well as you might expect not at all well using just the right amount of off-camera swearing i got it broken loose boom there it is cool boy it's super crusty inside there one down three to go oh here's the big problem with this truck it sits a lot and i think he said it was sitting for a year before he brought it over here i'm pretty sure when we first looked at this that these brake lines weren't leaking and now it's leaking right here at this bend and it's also leaking right up here around the nut so yeah the second that you start touching these crusty old vehicles they just fall apart well same thing over here on the left side the only difference is there's basically nothing left of this bleeder and we'll just hope we don't cook the seals inside the wheel cylinder i think we'll be okay so now this method works well for taking out seized bolts too this is kind of my dad's specialty he would always weld washers to him and then while they were still red hot from welding quench them with water almost always get them out that way try one of these twist out sockets and see what it does nothing [Music] okay [Music] i don't know about this yeah there it is you got it sweet uh i'm not gonna begin to explain to you why things are pronounced the way they are but it is laundromat not laundry mat yes it is laundry but it is still pronounced londra i don't know like i said i'm not going to pretend to explain it to you it's probably latin or something who knows well the camera just happens to be on you literally turn it on in the middle of the conversation [Laughter] we have a visitor in the shop everyone okay that sounds delicious oh boy there we go we're two for two well these front ones are definitely worse but at least we can get to these to drill them out if we need to [Applause] [Music] [Music] so there we go broke that off don't think this one's gonna play nice i know what you're all saying well how long do you think the power is going to be out about 24 hours the last time [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] so sometimes it's better to be lucky than good awesome three for three well what do you think can we go four for four this one's probably the crustiest one yet let's see what happens oh look at that easiest one yet cool well folks i thought that was going to be a lot more dramatic i thought we were going to be at this half a day and then break off a drill bit break off an easy out throw in the towel buy a remand caliper have it be the wrong one send it back get another one it'll be chinese won't fit quite right we have to modify it you know the usual story but a little bit of heat just came right out all right folks success so a couple of thoughts about this process i guess the heat alone isn't going to do it well usually anyway unless you could heat up the caliper or the wheel cylinder and somehow leave the bleed screw cool you know that would help expand the thread and help the thing come out but since we can't really do that the best thing i think to do is heat up the screw and then quench it and then that rapid contraction is enough usually to shock it loose now if you have to use an easy out which i did here i like these straight flu easy outs because they don't mushroom the threads out as badly the only kind of catch with these is you can't really get them you can't get them out but you know with a normal spiral flute easy out you can turn it the opposite way and it'll back itself right out the other thing too when you're drilling through these bleed screws don't drill through the seat at the bottom so this tapered surface right here is what actually seals inside the caliper you open it up and then the fluid comes out and goes through this hole and like i said worst case scenario you just go buy a remand caliper and they're super cheap for these gms so it's probably almost not worth the trouble we went through well since the torch is already out i guess we might as well deal with this exhaust flange probably just clip those nuts off and chop the flange down we'll deal with the studs later really needs the whole y-pipe replaced but of course he's not going to want to do that because right here where this straight piece of pipe is there used to be a catalytic converter which has long since been deleted and a new one's about i don't know 300 bucks so of course that's out of the question but we'll do what we can i guess yeah that's what i expected well now it says cannot record uh okay it's off yummy got a nice hot piece of metal right in the corner of my eye well we'll turn that off before it completely freaks you out i even have my safety glasses on well getting these studs out of that manifold is about as much fun as you might expect i got one out intact the other two i i rattled and hammered and heated and quenched and they aren't gonna budge okay yeah that was a fight i finally got all three studs out ended up having to chop them off drill them out tap them out the only one i got out was this one but you can see how thin these ears are there's nothing left so we'll have to see how our new studs go in but i think there's enough threads there to do it and the manifold's cracked anyway but these people don't want to replace it so doing the best we can okay it's a new day i've got some parts there's a new donut gasket for our exhaust manifold this is all that was left of the old one [Applause] i got us a new stud spring kit for that same gasket four new bleed screws for the calipers and wheel cylinders and a new flange now i wanted to buy a two-piece flange like the one they have on the other side but the walker catalog is essentially worthless so i ordered one that had listed dimensions that would actually fit and we're to make our own two piece flange i'll just weld a piece of this tubing to either side and then we'll slit it with a real thin cut off wheel and away we go that'll work that's better than store bought uh oh you gotta be kidding me that has to go in before the stud third time's a charm all right guys we got it i just had to slot this one hole this one over here because when we when we cut the thing in half we moved one hole closer to the other two so yeah no big deal but just kind of tighten here for me to work around the tripod and all that crap anyway it's all all buttoned up i think we're ready to fire this beast up and see if it's any quieter well it sounds better but it's running like crap island at about 300 rpm [Music] there we go it's a doorman 919-222 pre-formed stainless steel brake line kit these are awesome on the pickups i haven't done one on a tahoe so hopefully it fits but paid about 175 bucks for this plus a little bit of shipping we'd probably spend that much in nikop you know and plus all your labor to make all the brake lines so it's kind of a no-brainer i guess we might as well start here at the back what a mess you guys aren't going to believe this i found a little problem while i was working on the brake lines i'm pretty sure there's supposed to be a bushing and yeah the whole top side of that spring where it holds the bushing the whole eyelet is broken off that's crazy i wonder how long it's been broken like that looks like a very long time i guess it's no surprise that that shock is blown out so i better call these people and see what they want to do okay customer says proceed as planned he is going to try to find us a used leaf spring which is fine i guess and when he gets that we'll go ahead and install it i guess [Music] that's be careful we don't punch a hole right through the axle well there's basically nothing left of these little tabs so i think what we'll do we'll just throw some zip ties on here got some extra long ones here i mean the later trucks they actually use a plastic band around the axle more or less like a zip tie all right that's basically the process we're gonna clip the old lines off screw the nuts out throw all that stuff in the scrap bin and install these new stainless steel lines and everything will be honky dory well i think i got all the lines replaced except for the big one that goes along the frame rail so you got two little jumpers there from the master cylinder to the abs unit and then from the abs unit to the front calipers the left side is not too bad see it hooks up right there but then the right side it's got a union and then it's kind of a mess i took the shroud and the fan out see them laying there on the floor i don't believe you can get this front brake line in without taking those out they see it runs down along that front crossmember and then up over top of the idler arm there for the steering and over to the other side so the actual leak was right there by that lower radiator hose all right guys customer has found a used leaf spring so feel free to think whatever you want about that we've gotta come up with a plan to get this old one out of here and gm kindly installed this front bolt from the inside out which it's not a big deal over here on the right side plenty of room to get it out but on the left side we've got a fuel tank in the way and yeah i put a wrench on the bolts on the straps i think it'll come out of there it's been out of there before somebody replaced all the fuel lines so we could take it out of course it's probably completely full because that's how it always works i think the only other option is we could just cut that bolt off and then install a new bolt the other way so put it in from the you know push it in from the outside and then i think there's room behind these parking brake cables maybe we can reach up inside there come on light why don't you work so i think we can reach up inside there with a nut and not have to do all that work because i see somebody's added a ground for the fuel pump and yeah let's just not get into that so i think we're going to start cutting see where we end up we're going to need new u-bolts too so i'll have to get some measurements off of those what do you think there's about a one percent chance that bolt's gonna come out here yeah that's what i thought [Applause] getting pretty good at these rusted out gm spring shackle bolts this is the second one i've done this week i think we got her now see the problem is that you can't get the top bolt out of the shackle to get the spring out without raising the whole thing up so you don't get a whole lot of options so what happens with these spring shackles here is that there's a rubber bushing with a metal sleeve on the inside and the sleeve is kind of loose around the bolt and then you get rust jacking between the bolt and the sleeve and you can't get it out so what i have found best is just come over from the side and pull that just push the rubber back a little bit and then i stick my air hammer in here with a pretty sharp chisel and rattle that metal bushing from the side and that'll bust that rust loose around the bolt and then you can eventually get the bolt out you can't press them you can't heat them it won't do you any good well surprisingly this bracket's pretty solid it's in good shape i'm sure it's original it's got the rivets in it but that's the one that we replaced on that gmc k1500 last week i don't know why but these spring bolts always come out pretty easy i guess just because they're not sitting down in this pocket full of crud all the time okay leaf spring out and some bonus free weight reduction well what do you guys think is it possible for a vehicle to be cursed i'm not a superstitious guy but there's a lot of signs within two hours of looking at this truck we had the most destructive windstorm that i can remember i literally put it on the lift and within an hour we had no power didn't get power back for two days couldn't get parts everything was closed plus it's 25 years old i'm having a really hard time finding things everything has fought me it's so freaking rusty and crusty i just don't know i did manage to get all the brake lines installed see the one along the frame rail here it's not very pretty the way they did it i don't know if it's wrong or if i did it wrong or what the deal is but it doesn't fit quite right and it's exacerbated by the freaking mess that the last guy left us or i think the last two guys i'm pretty sure those fuel lines have been replaced twice at least the return line has you see they got splices and unions and all kinds of garbage going on here i don't know what the deal is and this small rusty line you see right there that's for the evap see that's got to be broken and leaking there well this truck is a 1995. i don't know if it has an evap monitor or not probably not which is a good thing because i'm sure it's going to fail i mean just take a look at that fuel filler neck or what used to be a fuel filler neck the customer is picking up another used spring the first one we tried was out of a suburban or a pickup and it's actually too long for the tahoe i guess the tahoe the yukon and the escalade all take a slightly shorter spring well now the customer decided they want to replace this super sketchy tailpipe and super sketchy muffler which the muffler is not a big deal have that today but this tailpipe's kind of a specialty item again because it's a shorter wheelbase truck so walker makes one i can get it in a couple of days i should just have a pipe bender make one again i'm glad somebody likes this truck anyway it's been here for a week now and i really just want to get it out the door so let's see if we can get the brakes bled and kind of go from there i think you guys can see what i'm seeing inside this master cylinder reservoir it is disgusting so we're going to clean that out the best that we can and then we're going to try pressure bleeding the bricks well if you guys haven't figured it out my wife is a math teacher and today is actually the first day back to school which means for the rest of school year it's going to be very difficult for me to get my lovely assistant to help me bleed brakes so we're going to try this tool here this is an old kd tools pressure brake bleeder it's pretty simple it's really just an air tank and it's split in half in the middle and there's a rubber diaphragm on the bottom side there's a schrader valve and we're going to put air pressure on the bottom and then on the top side there's brake fluid the rubber diaphragm pushes on the brake fluid and it pressurizes the fluid into the master cylinder reservoir and it will bleed the brakes just like you're pushing down the pedal i actually bought this from a local shop that was closing down but they must have lost all the adapters the only adapter that came with it was this one here which is actually for ford cars anyway i bought this mighty vac adapter set for it it comes with all kinds of various caps and attachments and whatnot but it has a different style quick disconnect fitting so i went to mcmaster car and bought the the correct fittings these are true flake fittings but in this big kit we still don't have the right adapter for this truck so i attempted to buy the right adapter kd tools is part of apex and they've more or less phased them out you know kd tools used to be an automotive specialty tool company they used to make a lot of dealer service tools just like lyle or otc or miller industries but i think apex is more or less shut them down anyway i just used a piece of aluminum plate here and glued some rubber on the bottom installed the appropriate fittings and then [Music] i made up a couple of these straps to go over it and yeah i'll show you on the car i haven't used one of these tools in a long time worked in a shop once it had an old brannic pressure bleeder it was huge i think it held like five gallons of of brake fluid we'll see what happens here well that didn't go very well i got about a third of the way through it and my previously sealed master cylinder decided to open up and pretty much got brake fluid everywhere anyway i think the pressure is relieved now we got a pretty good initial bleed well our junkyard spring showed up looks like it's all in one piece and we've got extra bolts so we shouldn't have to worry about that one i torched off [Laughter] oh boy are we seeing a trend here so it's busted exactly the same way as the other one in exactly the same place yeah third time's a charm both ends of this spring look good the whole thing looks like it's in a lot better shape let's not look too closely let's get the thing installed [Music] so well it helps if you hit the record button anyway shackle and bolts installed well we're just living the dream here folks what a freaking mess there's all the old brake lines and fuel lines there's half the car in a pile of rust yeah i think the less we say about this one the better the springs installed bolts are in we'll go ahead and tighten those up once we get it set down on its wheels at ride height brake lines are in they're kind of bled i think we're gonna go for a ride [Music] well we got brakes see the abs light is on [Music] but i don't think on these old obd1 trucks you can actually pull codes out of the abs oh maybe that's wrong you can get codes but they don't store codes something like that there's no history codes i don't know whatever it runs it drives it stops and it's a little bit quieter all right folks we're getting there slowly let me catch you up i took the truck for a test drive it had brakes they weren't spectacular the pedal was kind of mushy anyway i couldn't get the abs to activate at all that's a whole other story i brought it back in the shop put the pressure bleeder back up and i bled the brakes again i now have a nice firm pedal so i'm happy with that now the service manual says you need to hook up a special tool to this little fitting on the combination valve to hold this brass plunger down while you pressure bleed it i haven't found that to be the case the little brass plunger doesn't pop out at all so i hope that doesn't mean there's a big problem with the abs pump i don't know a whole lot about these old kelsey haze units anyway on the pressure bleeder what i have learned it works well but you have to keep the pressure down so anything above about 15 or even 20 psi it just causes the brake fluid to leak out around the top of the master cylinder reservoir underneath this adapter so once i figured out to keep the pressure low i was able to avoid spilling brake fluid all over the floor well the other thing these stainless steel brake lines are great but you kind of have to tighten the fittings tighter than you would normally have to tighten a knife or a steel brake line i don't know if it's something with the way they make the flares or if it's just because the the tubing is so much stiffer but you kind of got a really wrench on those to to seal them up so anyway i'm happy with that however the abs light is on and i could not get the abs to work at all i jumpered the connector inside pulled a bunch of codes out of the abs 37 14 26 25 i think the 14 means it's a four wheel drive i'm not worried about that the 26 and 25 both point to a left front wheel speed sensor issue so i just hooked into the left front wheel speed sensor with my oscilloscope and it's working sounds like mama's home all right we're checking it right at the abs module [Music] yeah it seems to be fine well i think there's something wrong with this abs module let me show you what it does so i'm back probed into the connector here this these wires run directly down to the left front wheel speed sensor all right watch the signal with the connector plugged in please see just a very very faint wave now i'm going to disconnect the connector from the abs module maybe come on there we go okay let's try that again so that's a pretty distinct difference so i'm saying that there's a problem in the module just for funsies let me switch it over to the other side the the right front okay now let me plug it back in so that's a problem well i was going to adjust the rear axle brakes but you see down here this is where the adjusters are it still has the original knockouts so you got to punch these two windows out in order to access the adjusters and the problem is once you do that you got to take the brake drum off in order to fish those pieces of metal out otherwise they're rattling around inside there so i don't think we want to get into all that they should be self-adjusting but they adjust when you're in reverse so if you hit your brakes while you're in reverse you're supposed to reset the adjustment on the brakes looking through the inspection window they don't look like they're too far off now there's supposed to be a cover over this inspection window those are missing and then once you punch these knockouts out you're supposed to put a cover over the these windows now you're probably wondering why would they use a knockout instead of just giving you the little cover for this slot if you find an answer please let me know it's just who knows but probably a good indication that this thing's never had rear rear brakes installed anyway moving on i got the new tailpipe in muffler so with a very small amount of cut off wheel action we removed the crusty old one and we've got a small problem to fix this intermediate pipe here where the muffler hooks up it's all rotted out here on the bottom so i bought a length of two and three quarter inch pipe i think we'll just we'll just zip it off here somewhere and weld a short length onto it shouldn't be a big deal the pipe's in relatively good shape i'll use the old pipe fitters trick here to get ourselves a clean cut that's the wrong side try the one with a straight edge bella [Music] [Applause] so okay that'll work just fine probably would have been better to take the whole intermediate pipe out but yeah you know how that goes all right out with the old and then with the new tailpipes installed i was able to reuse the hangers no problem there got the clamps put on and i like to put a little bit of attack weld on those just so that things don't you know rattle around until it finds its happy place eventually the road salt will permanently secure it for us but the tack wall to hold it until then and actually my dad when he does exhaust on trucks he doesn't even use clamps he just welds them all oh there's our muffler and our little jumper that we installed got a spot weld on that one too looks good the intermediate pipe will live of course the catalytic converter is long gone there's the previous repair that was made with a split flange here's our new repair with the split flange looks pretty good all right guys i think we're going to call it good enough on the brakes they work it stops it'll lock up all four wheels so that's probably good enough the problem is i cannot bleed the abs valve the abs unit here because it has a code for the left side wheel speed sensor that code 25. if i clear the code it comes back immediately if i unplug the sensor it comes back immediately so you can't go through the automated bleeding procedure when there's a code set and for whatever reason it doesn't seem like the abs unit works at all when there's a code set so i don't know if that's a strategy on these kelsey hayes units if it if it has a code it just shuts the whole thing down i don't know enough about it but it doesn't seem to be a deal breaker like i said it it'll stop it's just i mean there's all kinds of problems looks like maybe the master cylinder is leaking here where it goes into the booster so i don't know i think we're going to give it back to him and they can try it out if they want to spend more money on it at some point then so be it but for now i think it's good enough yeah i gave the truck back to the customer told him to try it out he tried it out and he didn't like it said the pedal felt weird so it's back and we're going to adjust the brakes but that's going about as well as you might expect managed to get the drums off even though both adjusters were seized that side over yonder she was pretty loose this side i don't think was too bad and then uh we use a little bit of the acetylene rust penetrant to free up this adjuster so it was seized up out here this little pivot the threads weren't the problem so anyway i'm gonna slather that with some anti-seize and we're gonna put it back together and do one of these so yeah should be able to adjust it now i don't know if it's going to stay adjusted these automatic drum brake adjusters they barely worked when they were new and this thing's pretty far from that all right i got the brakes adjusted everything put back together nothing really exciting about that the service information says to tighten the adjusters until you can just turn the drum by hand and then back it off 30 clicks that's a little bit fussy for me what i usually do is just tighten the adjuster until i cannot turn the drum by hand that means the shoes are fully seated and then i back it off until i can just hear a little bit of a scratch between the drum and the shoe as i'm spinning it by hand you don't want any drag but you do want to be able to hear just a little bit of of something going on in there it's kind of a tricky deal to find a balance between too much drag and the shoes being you know just flopping around in there so yeah once you do it a few times it's no big deal you don't need that much no i just got enough all right just where the no over here where the oil is right there uh yeah okay that's good great [Laughter] oh that's some solid b-roll footage right there are you gonna make me a video what kind of video do you need to post on my web or on my youtube account well the problem is i have all these clips but it's not really like a coherent you know project it's just little snippets of me helping you mostly people want footage of you dropping stuff oh well there's plenty of that you shouldn't be freaked out because this vehicle is so structurally sound that there's no way it could ever fall oh i hear the sarcasm you assistant i'm reading a fan theory about neville longbottom it's pretty heartwarming uh okay i was going to reassure you that you have not been replaced by a machine it did pretty good the problem with the pressure bleeder is that i had to turn the pressure down so low to get the keep the adapter from leaking here on the master cylinder that it was i was barely getting a dribble out of the rear brake bleeders the rear wheel cylinders so have my lovely assistant help me took care of that problem all right hey everybody dinner time your kid wants milk i don't have a plan for dinner sounds like we're ordering pizza back to school a week you don't really know what's going on okay we'll figure it out all right folks i've got to re-torque the rear wheels and then we're going to ship this thing out of here and hope it stays gone i did end up bench bleeding the master cylinder i've got some adapters i made these are just old brake lines i cut off and put some hose on them works pretty good normally you don't need to do that when you're replacing a brake line and especially if you're using the pressure bleeder that's kind of one of the advantages of that tool but whatever i think it helped a little bit and then i also went through and bled the brakes again using the old school two-man method and that also helped a little bit but the big thing was the brake adjustment and you know i just couldn't convince him to do that when we had it in here originally but yeah he figured out it was necessary pretty soon after yeah thanks guys for watching and yeah we'll get into something else next time

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 267,289

Keywords: chevy, tahoe, 1995, gm, tbi, brake line, dorman, stainless, repair, replace, rebuild, brakes, bleed, exhaust, manifold, stud, donut, gasket, muffler, tailpipe, weld, welding, bleeder, rust, crust, salt, corrosion, seized, siezed, torch, heat, trick, mechanic, skill, old school, abs, scope, sensor

Id: 1zpO8vLAIIg

Length: 56min 34sec (3394 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020