A Normal Day at My Rural Repair Shop

all right folks i think today is may 12th and it is absolute chaos around here i've got a parking lot full of trucks and tractors and cars and you name it we've got it if it's broken it's probably here this chipper truck i think it's almost done i'm waiting on a few parts should be out of here by the end of the week gmc acadia it's back needs an alternator this little jeep here don't know what's up with it all i know is that the entire engine bay is covered in coolant and it won't stay running so i'm guessing it blew a head gasket or something probably needs an engine drug that in with the oliver still got the army truck over there it's been here for way too long it needs suspension work got this chevy silverado i think it's an o3 said it has a rattle when it goes down the road in the steering column we'll talk about that later john deere 2630 needs a head gasket and a bunch of other stuff so i guess we better pick something to make a video about well i'll tell you what i think we'll do we'll turn this video into one of those day in the life videos show you guys what it's like here on a normal daily basis well i don't know what happened to this poor jeep but based on the radiator cap and what i'm seeing down inside the radiator i'm gonna say it's probably not good i think i see the problem put a little bit of water in it and it all came right back out radiator or lower hose maybe yeah at the bottom tank of the radiator's blown out see it's kind of that black thing there that arches up so should be able to see daylight all the way across that's not good yeah let's see if it'll run oh yeah she's not happy well the damage is done bad nice looking jeep probably means an engine well i drug the jeep over beside the shop it does run but it's hurting bad i'd say it probably needs an engine and definitely needs a radiator i want to see what's out there it's a 97 it may be hard to find an engine but you know they're not going to want to rebuild the one that's in it be way too expensive it's probably still going to be a 2 000 maybe 2 dollar job to put a radiator and an engine in that jeep we'll see what happens that's gonna be a a long term project i think we'll start with this acadia it's a 2010 gmc acadia this is the one i put the tires on a couple weeks ago brand new hand cooks on the rear it's got falcons on the front they were in pretty good shape this is a front-wheel drive car so having mixed match tires that's not a big deal anyway the battery was spanked when i worked on it told the guy about it he put in a new battery but the charge light comes on so he thinks it needs an alternator he's gone ahead and purchased one off of amazon or somewhere we'll see what that's all about but we need to do some testing because this is a computer controlled charging system i'm pretty sure so it's never never a straightforward process oh where's the blog there we go all right what lights are on no lights voltage is not good oh it is good it's kind of going all over sorry i was reading it backwards it's like 14 something let's get her in the shop get around the obstacle course here dodge a ford dodge a chevy an alignment rack and then we can swing it around and inside at least the shop's pretty clean all things being being equal all right well i'm not sure pico's hooked up we're checking the ripple on the alternator it's it's pretty high like 1.5 volts total peak-to-peak let's put a little load on it and see what it does [Music] i'm not sure i like that too much yeah i'm not sure i like that at all well that's what the output ripple should look like this is my known good the family truckster here this is also a denzel alternator but a smaller version let's give this guy a little bit of a load oh yeah we jumped up to about half half a volt but it looks a lot better than what we have on the other car all right folks i don't like this alternator output i don't like these little squiggly lines here in the peaks i don't like the overall peak to peak height i don't like that it's biased towards the negative i think this alternator is bad even though it seems to work it puts out 14 and a half volts and it seems to handle you know up to 100 amp load just fine i don't like it so we're gonna swap it out and it's kind of a painful job three hours by the book lives down here by the oil filter the problem is they it mounts with these studs i don't know if you can see any of them probably not so on the back side of that bracket right there that's a nut and a stud and in our climate studs through aluminum are a recipe for disaster and you can't get it off the studs because it's going to run into that other air conditioning line so the best way to do is to take the studs out but i don't know if we're going to get away with that so we'll see what happens but take note of this alternator it's got three stud mounts or three bolt mounts in from the side and then the output terminal comes out the rear and this is the altimeter he gave me it's completely wrong so there's no overrunning clutch it has bolts through this way instead of this way the output stud comes out from the top instead of out from the side i think this is probably for a truck but either way it will not work for us so we're at a standstill on this job until we hear from the customer story of my life got the wrong parts well we're stuck on this one until we get an answer from the customer i don't know what he wants me to do i can get an alternator from several sources probably by tomorrow morning but i can't do it without asking him first and yeah it's always challenging people work during the day it's hard to get answers it's a little bit easier now that people have cell phones especially if they can text you a lot of times they can just send you a quick message while they're at work and it isn't a big deal but until we hear from him we're gonna have to move it back outside let's take this old chevy for a ride customer told me it's got a rattling sound coming from the steering like something's not attached right so you can hear it on a bumpy road so that'll be fun rattles and squeaks are always always tricky some people are more sensitive than others we just never know of course it's pretty hard to find a bumpy road here in illinois this township road's just glass smooth i mean i do hear something clunking noise there yeah definitely here yeah these roads this road's more patched than it is road yeah there's something loose in there well there's definitely something banging around in there anyway it's snack time so we'll work on that and then i'm going to pull that kick panel off and we'll take a look up underneath the dash well i pulled the knee bolster off but i didn't really need to there's nothing nothing wrong everything's good and tight this little body control module kind of flops around but that's that's not a big deal i think the problem is a classic steering shaft bearing failure pretty common on these chevys try to show you guys where that's at so if you look up underneath of the dash oh boy can i fit this is the bottom of the steering column there's a u-joint and then it passes through the firewall there's a telescoping joint down here but the part we're worried about is up here so watch this you see how this green piece kind of moves inside this tube so that's the lower steering shaft bearing and i think it needs to be replaced pretty common problem i think this one may have been replaced once before i'm pretty sure the original ones are white this looks like the dorman one to me so i'll order one up they're not expensive 30 bucks i think slap that in probably can't get it until tomorrow all right that's back together just like the last one we cannot get parts until tomorrow morning so it's gonna have to go back outside for now it's pretty much the way it goes for me unless it's you know really simple standard parts like brake pads and rotors or i don't know spark plugs or something i basically cannot get it the same day it's the next morning i'm really jealous of people who live in larger you know metropolitan areas where they can get parts the same day it just doesn't happen here well i think since we can't get parts we'll just drag this out into two days and i'm going to spend the rest of the day working on this old ford f700 i'm making a whole series of videos about this so i don't want to overlap that i'll bring you guys back in the morning hopefully with some parts all right folks we're back it's the second half of the normal day video it's already past 10 o'clock i'll start with the good news the alternator for the acadia is here we can go ahead and install that and then the bad news the steering column bearing for the silverado did not show up this morning i called it in before they cut off but for whatever reason it didn't make it on the truck so we're stuck on that until tomorrow but in the meantime this little ford edge came in i worked on it before she wants to put a different grill in it so we gotta pull the front bumper off that'll be fun normally the first thing i do in the morning is clean up the shop and clean off my tool box it's kind of a little life hack you know at the end of the day you're tired and you're just done last thing you want to do is stop and clean up so i leave the mess and then first thing in the morning i come in and clear everything off and you know your attitude's better plus it's kind of uh how would you say it makes you feel better to clean up so first thing in the morning you get that little little bump tada here's our new alternator looks a lot better than the other one in terms of fitting should be 170 amp output can you believe somebody's still using a dot matrix printer in 2021 only in china anyway my guy my electronics wizard he tells me that these are 100 new even though they're sold as reman because i guess denzo has some kind of patent on the stator or something so to get around the patent they just call it a remand but it's actually new i don't know anyway it's got the appropriate overrunning pulley on it alternator decoupling pulley they call it mounting holes look right stud comes out the right end i think we're good to go also in the category of bad news the black flies or gnats as we call them are back came out yesterday might be a little better today because we actually had frost last night that kind of takes the wind out of their sails but we're gonna try this stuff see if it works so as right here repels black flies but i remain skeptical we never used to have those when i was a kid that's a relatively new thing within the last maybe 10 years and what i was reading on the illinois dnr site it's actually because their habitat has been restored so there's more wetlands and more natural waterways where the black flies breed so depending on how you look at it it's a good thing or a bad thing anyway we're going to suit up and get to work and this job sucks right out of the gate i guess because gm hates us the first step would be to disconnect the battery but the battery's not actually here it's inside the car well it's underneath of the floorboards on the passenger side in front of the seat takes a couple of tools to open a cover and get inside there anyway we're going to lift dangerously and we're just going to pull it off here at the junction to the fuse box just use your head or you'll end up with sockets like this and extensions like this i think every mechanic i know has a couple of those get in a hurry and pretty soon sparks are flying now this is the battery cable so don't go jamming that on the frame rail or something just use your head so if you read the service data it's going to tell you to pull the fuse box and this engine mount strut here the washer bottle or the overflow tank for the radiator i don't know a bunch of other stuff and then you kind of scoot the alternator out into this area and pull it up through here but i think well we're gonna try to cheat we'll see what happens [Applause] come on gm here we go and let that sit there now this idler right here is actually attached to the bolt that holds the bottom of the alternator so i want to deal with that next come on okay i know you'll fit through there i know you will [Applause] there we go nothing to it yeah it's already been replaced once before it's got a re-man tag on it i guess that's not surprising like i said it has these studs that go through the top two holes here and it has a seven millimeter hex so i was able to back those out they're not too crusty came out pretty easy probably because it's been replaced before and then this is that idler that also is the bolt for the alternator bottom bolt it's got a mile of threads on it so reach in there with the ratcheting wrench and you can get it no problem not too bad of a job all right the old one came out then the new one surely will go back in plus we've got gravity on our side oh yeah that's why i had that off because it's in the way you got to make sure you install this bolt with the idler through the alternator before you swing it down into place otherwise you won't have room to get that bolt and it hits the frame not sure what happened there so we'll just put a zip tie around it all right we're basically done with the alternator he also wants an oil change i hate doing oil changes on these 3.6 liters so that's the oil filter base right there and it's got this little funnel that comes off of it i made a whole video about this before about how you can outsmart the gm engineers by making yourself a little cardboard tray to run the oil out a couple people commented that the top of the engine mount here is designed like a funnel so that the oil can run out into the drain pan well yeah it kind of does look that way except that the the funnel here for the filter base doesn't actually run over top of the engine mount so i just took this filter off and all the oil ran down the inside of the motor mount instead of going down the little channel like it's supposed to or like they say it's supposed to this is the stupidest oil filter design i've ever seen on any car except for the three the 2.4 liter ecotec where you have to use the special socket because of the the direct inject pump that's over here and in the way that one's also stupid i'm slowly easing my way into bulk oil with these six gallon boxes i was going to do this a long time ago but it it worked out that the court price was cheaper so i was just buying them in quart bottles but i got hooked up with a different supplier and these are are quite a bit cheaper than what i was paying before and if you buy i think it's 12 boxes you get the rack for free so there we go so inside the box there's a plastic bladder and it has a little tap on it all you got to do is crack that guy loose and pour whatever you want this car takes 5w30 we're going to use a synthetic blend all of this oil is dexos approved well i shouldn't say that the 530 and the 020 are dexos approved there is no 520 dexos anymore oop my bad luckily it has this tray that's supposed to catch all the little drips it takes six quarts want to come back and get one more [Applause] [Music] that's more like it much more like it there we go we'll save this as a known good that's all we have to see we're done stupid jams purge valve's just hammering away here [Applause] well i'll tell him about it see what he wants to do i'll just box this guy up and throw it back in the car you can send it back to wherever it came from it ain't gonna work for this thing okay we're done picking on gm for the day let's move on to ford this is a 2017 ford edge and the customer wants to replace the grille with this black grille going for kind of a blacked out look i guess it's got black hubcaps installed already yeah i put a trailer hitch on this car about a week ago that was quite a job there it is the hitch itself isn't a problem it's the freaking wiring so i thought i would be smart and buy the sealed harness from curt instead of chopping the wires uh yeah there's the little pigtail right there for the trailer anyway to install that curt kit you have to take the tail lights out then you got to pop the bumper loose you got to pull this panel out and weasel your arm inside there to a grommet comes with a little converter box that needs power from the battery it took me like three hours to install the trailer wiring and i quoted one hour so i was feeling pretty pretty sorry for myself after that job anyway i guess the next time i'll know don't buy the sealed harness just go underneath and do the snip snip be a lot better off so it looks to me like the whole bumper cover has to come off so we got a bunch of screws in here on the inner fender liner that had to come out the headlights will have to come out this trim piece has to come off the top i don't know about that front fascia i've never done one of these before but i knew it was going to be a job should we take bets now on how much plastic i break i'm gonna bet on some [Applause] i hate these plastic push rivets i'd rather break off a hundred rusty metal screws than deal with one of these plastic push rivets [Applause] come on [Music] [Applause] well sure enough it just unclips that's it [Applause] there we go so i forgot to transfer these little hooks to the new grille are we ready for the montage huh usually it starts by [Music] too itself there's no harness we can make the lights work [Applause] must be an optional accessory does it look cool or aggressive or however it's supposed to work i don't know it's done though well it's about four o'clock so theoretically we have time for one more job before we would normally quit for the day we're back on this little jeep she wants an answer on what it would take to get it fixed up so i figured the easiest thing to do maybe would be to pull the spark plugs out do a quick compression test and see what we see i don't know so i don't know how long it ran without coolant [Applause] all i know is that the bottom tank of the radiator is split and they drove it until it stopped driving so yeah it's got oil in it and it looks pretty good so maybe she'll get lucky but it it just barely runs it won't even you can't drive it 100 psi that's not very good but the big problem is you hear how it cranks over i think she spun a bearing i mean it just barely cranks so number two only made 75 psi well number four was the best about 110 so i got 175 65 110 so i think we can officially put a fork in it she's done that little engine is hurt hurt bad so we'll see i'll find out what's out there for a used engine i guess and uh we'll go from there see the ac compressor has been deleted somebody chopped off the lines so and her first rodeo [Applause] yep it's a jeep thing all right folks i think that's it for today i worked up an estimate on the jeep not easy to find a 2.5 liter engine for a 97 jeep in our area there's not too many of those left running we'll talk about this guy later that's a project we couldn't fix the silverado because we couldn't get parts max is on a mission out there he's got some kind of critter cornered oh boy this john deere tractor is probably coming up next we got the acadia done we got the flex done the ford f700 it's almost done the army truck well it's coming up soon if i live long enough we'll get that done yeah i think that's a wrap he knows he's not there we go there we go all right back down pest okay folks that's it pretty much a typical day semi-organized chaos mostly cars and and pickup trucks today but you never know what it's going to be tractors golf carts lawn mowers go carts you name it we worked on it i'm trying to kind of reign that in i need to focus more on on a smaller group of i need to focus more on the work that i do because it's very difficult to be profitable making you know working on everything anyway that's it believe it or not this desk was clean this morning before three oil filters a scan tool two manuals pile of receipts and invoices a couple new tools from lyle it's for muffler hanger bushings see how that works pretty cool diag on that alternator i think from reading online it looks like it had a shorted stator that's what was causing those large humps when we scoped the ripple i don't know if you could have diagnosed that without a scope i mean i an i have an alternator testing machine that spins the alternator and load tests it i believe it would have passed because it's still putting out it was still putting out 14 something volts and it's whatever 40 amp load no problem but it had we could clearly see the issue with the scope which i think is a cool thing really glad i bought the picoscope it's it's been a handy tool yeah i can't think of anything else to say thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time you're probably wondering what happened to that silverado with the steering column rattle yeah it's going real well things have escalated quickly steering column is out it's on the bench the lower steering shaft bearing is out but it came out the hard way yeah i tried every trick i could think of to get it out without pulling the column and it just was not happening here's the new one uh the reason that it went bad and i think it has been replaced once before but the reason it went bad is because of this intermediate shaft so this is supposed to telescope and [Applause] it's frozen i can barely beat it out with a hammer so it's yeah it's going to be replaced there's down inside here there's a spline that's coated in plastic and what happens is it rusts underneath of the plastic and then it jams up the splines and no bueno the solution is dormant all the way around new lower steering column bearing and this updated intermediate shaft there's the part number so it has a different design instead of having the splines it has a couple of flats and a keyway well that'll take care of it and it slides nice and free all right folks i think that's done let's see if we screwed up here key on ha we did not break the clock spring still run beautiful hey what are you working on looks like we have youtube video inception going on here i'm doing a shop interruption i'm doing a i brought beer oh you're such a good woman i try such a good woman you haven't answered my question though what are you working on we're fixing a steering column bearing in a chevy silverado finishing up our day in the life video oh yeah it's the addendum to the day in the life because it's day two because it's day three actually all right lady i gotta go for a test drive can you uh hold the fort for a little bit yep all right we're back on our test track here sounds pretty good to me man i actually talked to the road commissioner today he told me they're thinking about tearing this road up and putting it back into gravel because it's in such bad shape all right folks this thing is fixed this is a nice truck 2003 it's only got 62 000 miles on it no rust i mean it's a survivor parking lot's clearing out a little bit i got rid of the flex got rid of the acadia they came and picked up the jeep young lady says she doesn't want to fix it right now she's going to look for a vehicle that does that's a little bit warmer in the winter there's the misses spying on me again so this is the plastic coating i was talking about i don't know if you guys can see the rust that's building up underneath of it that would focus panasonic struggles [Applause] anyway i think this truck sat a lot which is why it only has 62 000 miles on it anyway that's the problem this is good content i uh graduated again finally yep she got her master's degree people all right we need to wrap this up it's gone on way too long can you give us an outro something like that's a day in the life folks thanks for watching oh well that was really the day in the life of three days of west's life so glad you could watch them welcome to my my world where nothing gets done in an efficient manner teaching children the entire time yep all right people thanks for watching say bye max

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 172,828

Rating: 4.970449 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: -cZwCgog92U

Length: 40min 36sec (2436 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021