Chevy Silverado - Undoing DIY Repairs - Numerous Brake and Suspension Issues - Part 1

howdy folks welcome back got a couple of broken chevrolets for us this time this is a 2003 chevy silverado it's got a laundry list of problems it's like it's also had a laundry list of modifications and in the background over there is a 2007 i think chevy trailblazer it's stuck but it's also got a a pretty long list all right we'll start with the trailblazer here's the list pretty clean car really he said the air conditioning compressors got a pretty bad rattle the blower motor doesn't work on the first four positions only works on high so probably got a bad resistor there the rear axle seal is leaking on the passenger side he says and he attempted a diy brake job on the rear axle [Music] see it's got all new pads and rotors looks like maybe new calipers too and he tells me that the rear brakes do nothing he told me you can push the brake pedal and spin the wheel by hand so he would like me to investigate that so the silverado belongs to his son it's also had some diy repairs that have gone awry see in here it's got a new upper control arm a new half shaft and a new lower ball joint and i can already see they've got the cam the cam's all maxed out on that upper control arm so they must be trying to fix the suspension geometry issues from this trailer park lift kit and the tire on the back there that used to be on the front that's what it's been doing is wearing out the inside of the tires said he only gets about a year out of a set of front tires which is ridiculous he wants me to look at the brakes i could hear him grinding pretty bad when he pulled in i went ahead and ordered a left front caliper he thinks it might be sticking he pulls real bad to the left i guess a lot to figure out whether that's a caliper issue or if it's just this messed up suspension and yeah i don't know what else he really wants to do with it just look it over i guess the truck's pretty rough [Laughter] are you guys ready it's gonna be a good one let's start with the new side the side that's been fixed on so we do have a new lower ball joint looks like we tore the boot already possibly on install possibly because of the ridiculous lift that this truck has so you see we're all the way at the end of the slot on the upper control arm there as far as our adjustment goes got our new half shaft in there but it turns fine i don't think the calipers hung up no worries there that clunking sound you hear is the center cap on the rim well let's take a look at the other side so it would appear that it's got a new sway bar link a new upper ball joint possibly a new lower ball joint because it's got a grease zerk and i don't think these had grease zerks originally check out that half shaft boot's completely gone i cannot even rotate the the wheel here that's as far as i can go then it binds up we can force it past huh oh yeah the whole differential moves over when i do that [Laughter] okie doke brakes are pretty bad here too it's like the tie rod boots are all torn as well just from being at this goofy angle moderate leaks on the engine this is a five three no big deal there now i took it for a little ride it does pull really bad to the left and then the whole left front corner just kind of does this while you're going down the road so i think we're probably gonna have to do some dead reckoning on the suspension get that a little bit closer and then we'll send it out for an alignment i'm not set up to do alignments right now i got a guy that wants to sell me an alignment rack i've been thinking about buying it doesn't want that much money for it fuel lines pretty rusty those probably won't make it a whole lot longer oh no they've already been patched no worries there looks like we got a new brake line these are notorious for the brake lines rusting out well the check engine light is on and we have a service brake system warning on the dash notice we've got some fun stuff going on here on the rear axle it's like on the left side that's the original brake line there that thing's probably going to break the second that we touch it so we might as well plan on replacing that then it looks like somebody has already been here and replaced the left side brake line but that to me looks like a hardware store compression fitting and i think they installed it with some channel locks or vice grips i see it's leaking because that's not an npt thread that they threaded it into got roughly the same thing on the other side going into the brake hose hardware store fitting so we're going to have to fix that just so we're clear it is illegal to use compression fittings on brake lines don't do it so back here on the rear brake calipers what can you guys see is wrong here yeah the bleeders on the wrong side so they put the left side caliper on the right side and vice versa come over here on the right side same deal the bleed screws on the bottom so somebody must put calipers on it at one time and got that backwards so we'll try to fix that too the brake rotors don't look too awful bad back here we might be able to just turn them get away with that so there's our lift kit in the rear they just put a spacer in it okay let's tear into it [Applause] so so do well that's interesting pads are really good really good [Applause] every single caliper on this trucks had different caliper pin hardware okay say we go ahead and take this brake line loose make a new one it's not going to live very long so might as well get that done we'll see how much of this stuff gets broken in the process you see the parking brake shoes are completely gone that's not from where that's from the rust so they just rust jacked and completely popped off and i'm positive that he won't want me to fix that because this is an automatic and nobody uses the parking brake around here we don't have any kind of inspection or anything like that so nobody ever wants to fix them even though i think you're supposed to have them hey that actually came loose mallard didn't [Applause] so we'll go ahead and fix that so we'll need a new nut we could possibly drill this one out but it'd be best to replace it so and we'll go ahead and remove this scotty kilmer approved compression fitting here oh yeah all right i made a quick parts run i picked up four new inverted flare tube nuts i picked up one new bleed screw to replace this one that's been chewed up still works but might as well replace it i purchased two new copper washers and i had to order two more for some reason they only had two of them in stock i also bought a new t55 torx bit for these gm caliper slide pins i have no idea where mine is in a pinch an eight millimeter hex will usually get the job done they're not they're not that tight anyway we're gonna make a new brake line to replace this old crusty brake line and this is a regular inverted flare it doesn't use the gm bubble flare so we're going to use some of this nycop nickel copper brake line like this stuff a lot and you should end up with something kind of like that doesn't have to be perfect really as long as you get from point a to point b doesn't matter how you do it so we'll stick our new nuts on here always want to remember to put those on first and today we're going to use this hydraulic flaring tool this thing's pretty sweet this tool is fantastic so all you got to do clamp your line inside the tool with the end flush at the end of the die and we're going to start with our inverted flare just go until it bottoms out now we use the cone and boom there it is and if you can't make good flares with this tool you should stop trying so i like to put a little bit of never seas between the nut and the brake line [Music] so you can put it on the threads too if you want but usually the problem is that the the line rusts inside of the nut well good morning folks it's the following day that's right it's a two day break job talked to the customer last night i think we've got a direction forward trying to catch you guys up on where we're at right now i got the new brake lines bent up and installed they look pretty decent so left side there got to reuse the original clip right side i think i used all the original mounting hardware looks good no compression fittings should work just fine on the rear axle all we're going to do is move the calipers from left to right that's why i ordered those copper crush washers you see this is the right side of the truck and the left side of the truck this one's actually marked with an l so that's supposed to be the left side so we'll just do a switcheroo there no big deal the brake pads on the rear are completely shot they're worn quite a bit more on the inside than the outside here's the here's the inside on the right side so we're going to make sure we get all the rust jacking out of these caliper brackets the pins slide freely so that's not an issue the calipers pistons move freely that's not an issue on the front brakes they're really in pretty good shape you could almost just put new rotors on and put these pads back on they're really pretty good problem is we're missing some hardware you see on the right side bracket there's supposed to be two of these abutment clips on the left side one of them is missing so probably not that big of a deal but he said go ahead and replace the brakes so that's what we're gonna do and one of these has a boot that's loose i think it's this one no it's got to be this one yeah right here so the boots not torn it just came unbonded from the little metal sleeve that presses into the caliper bracket so i ordered a boot kit it should be here this morning that'll take care of that problem on the left front we're going to have to do something with this suspension i cannot get this truck in for an alignment i normally send people to a local body shop they're booked out two weeks on alignments so yeah the only other alignment rack i know is at a dealership we're not going there so we're going to have to figure something out we'll do some dead reckoning or something to try to get the camber even from left to right i'm sure that's why it's pulling so hard to the left is because the camber is actually opposite from left to right it's had a new wheel bearing installed looks like it's got a new one on both sides it was pretty rusty out here on this outside lip i cleaned that up pretty good i think we're going to go ahead and put this side back together now the sway bar links pretty pretty rough over here the other side has been replaced and then this tie rod end doesn't look the greatest either he's got a new one actually and i think we're going to go ahead and let the alignment shop take care of that they can just do all that at the same time on the right side same deal it's had the wheel bearing replaced at one time it's the same brand as the other side that should be okay i think the half shaft's been replaced too but you can see hopefully that boots torn it's been running that way for a while that half shaft is pooched so we're gonna throw a new one in there sway bar link's been replaced on this side at one time the tie rod end looks just as crusty as the other side the boot out here is okay but the inside boot is torn he doesn't want to do anything with that right now so we're going to try to get the suspension freed up on this side too see if we can get it moved out a little bit so he doesn't have that tire wearing problem the only thing i can't do is check the caster and you see they adjust the caster by kind of moving one side of the arm in the other side of the a-arm out so we're gonna have to just kind of go go with our best gut feeling on that so anyway new rotors and pads up here and then the calipers are gonna be just fine i'm going to run these caliper brackets through the bead blaster they're pretty crusty underneath the hardware this side especially is bad i don't know if we'll be able to use this one looks like it's got a pretty good ridge worn in it because it was running without that hardware all the pads slap around inside the bracket and then pretty soon you're you're worn out so we may end up having to replace this caliper bracket well it rained last night finally cooled off so some of us are enjoying the nicer weather aren't we pub still tired though all right guys we're gonna go ahead and put the rear brakes together as predicted the customer does not want to fix the parking brakes nobody ever wants to fix those the only people who ever use a parking brake around here are people driving a manual transmission and i'm pretty sure i'm the last guy left driving a manual transmission so yeah they never get fixed part stores don't carry parts for them it's all special order so yeah we're gonna put it back together and not worry about it you know if the customer doesn't want to fix it i can't make them fix it so we'll just note it on the invoice and do as they say so we're gonna put a little bit of this stable rust stopper on the hub like so also if you want to put a little bead of anti-seize right here around this pilot that works pretty well too [Music] i went ahead and cleaned the hub up just using a [Applause] a little whizzy wheel and a wire brush wasn't too bad now these rims come with their own fancy lug nuts takes a special socket which luckily the customer had looks like this fits over those splines okay our caliper bracket is all cleaned up just right here where the pads ride that's the important part now we're gonna go ahead and pull these pins out this one's pretty crusty so we're going to clean it up as best we [Applause] can okay then we'll use some still glide to lube this pin up and yeah you can over lube them but they these ones have a flat on them so they'll never they're not going to hydro lock in the in the bore okay that looks good now the part that confuses everyone i'm going to use some of this purple brake goo and i'm going to put it underneath of the clips the abutment clips here everyone always asks me why i don't put it on the outside of the abutment clips to lubricate where the brake shoes ride and you can do that if you want to but it doesn't really do any good because it just washes off immediately and it's not really necessary because the brake clips the abutment clips are stainless steel and unfortunately we're going to reuse our abutment clips because the new ones that come with the pads are they're too narrow so it's not the best thing to do but they're stainless steel they should be okay these calipers have been replaced at some point positive of that pretty sure gm wouldn't put the calipers on backwards from the factory but i guess it could be possible so before i started using the fancy purple break goo i always just used anti-seize underneath the clips and that works fine too so the big idea with putting the goo underneath the clips is to prevent that rust jacking you saw how nasty these were before we put them in the sandblaster what happens is the rust builds up underneath the clips and then it squeezes on the pads and then pretty soon you get uneven pad wear and you know all kinds of problems uh i'll put a little bit of this purple goo on the ears and on the piston right here a lot of people were freaking out in the last video because we said that the purple goo might not be a hundred percent safe with a hundred percent of rubbers used in the brake caliper so i received a lot of comments about using the purple goo on the caliper piston which has a rubber boot so so do what you want i don't think it's going to hurt anything but that's just me and honestly using the grease on the the caliper that's kind of a holdover from the old days and we just do it here because we have such you know such a bad problem with rust but most brake pads now come with a lining on the back side of the pad that's supposed to prevent any kind of squealing okay and i got us new copper crush washers for the brake hose here if i'd remember to put them on and i've heard you know anecdotally that you can heat these up like with the propane torch and anneal them and reuse them but they're really cheap any place that sells brakes will sell the copper washers too there we go don't worry folks don't worry i am prepared these air hoses are junk can't buy a good one so i just keep extras on the shelf well i think we're done in the back for right now so let's turn our attention to getting this axle shaft out of here it's been a while since i worked on one of these chevys but i think the axle will come out without taking the knuckle apart man to pull this sway bar link loose which that normally involves a torch but this one's been replaced so there might be a chance we'll get it out of there let's just see what happens oh yeah not so much buddy not so much i'll try it here oh yeah um oh boy doesn't get much easier than that cool must be the 2500s i'm thinking of we got to pull the sway bar link use a little more of our rust stopper oh yeah just too much of an angle so okay once we get the rotor and everything back on we can torque that to whatever specification it requires i'll have to look it up there we go pretty simple job i think we're going to back off those torsion bar keys drop the front end of this truck down a little bit if he doesn't like it he can change it after it leaves here let's install these new boots so pull our pins out here these ones look pretty clean these ones are actually pretty decent but we got new ones so we might as well put them in right one side falling out the other side won't come out with a sledgehammer there simple right so oh the wind's probably blowing the audio now down inside here is a little rubber sleeve there it is like so [Music] so so our boot kit comes with the new rubber sleeves just push those in with the i'm using a seven millimeter socket that's it [Laughter] have i mentioned this truck is rusty this caliper bracket was actually so rusted and built up with scale that the caliper hardware wouldn't fit over the bracket itself and to chip all that stuff off before this abutment clip would even fit on there so she's getting a little rusty don't get it on the boot will be instantly destroyed now this is the caliper bracket that had the wear because they didn't have a clip here so what i think we're going to do an effort to save this guy some money we're just going to swap the caliper brackets from side to side they're the same i mean the brackets themselves are identical so i think what we'll do we'll just take this one and make it into the right side and this one the left side so that the brake shoes are putting you know their bearing on this surface on the opposite side of the bracket that isn't worn well our plan is not going to work i knocked some more rust off this caliper bracket and there is a difference between the two it's this little feature here it's on this side versus this side and then this little nub here is slightly off of center too so i don't want to start grinding pieces off the caliper bracket because i don't know if it's important so i think we're just going to put it back like it was and we'll live with that small amount of wear on the caliper bracket well torque spec is 55 foot-pounds on the flange bolts here [Applause] 177 foot pounds pretty dang close [Applause] well here's the adjuster for the torsion bar key and you see they've got it cranked all the way up as high as it'll go so what we're going to do is back this off a little bit we'll try that for now you know this was a good idea by gm to make this adjustable if you put a plow or something on the front of this thing you know you can raise the front of the truck back up and compensate for that but the problem is it leaves it open to abuse hello assistant hello ready to be breaks uh well i like to kindly remind everybody that you bought a thing to replace me and yet this is the second time you've requested me to believe breaks since then i think it's been a lot more than two times uh the problem is i don't have the right adapter for this truck you're gonna be my adapter great i didn't even move and you got me dirty tragedy in the shop folks like seriously i haven't even been dressed for 10 minutes tragedy dirty i i have things to do today and places to go this is ridiculous sorry guys are you kidding me [Music] clearly i need to wear protective gear when i come out to the shop can't that's why you can't have nice things she needs a uniform kiddo yes one all right can we bleed the brakes or you got to go to wardrobe right now you can see though i don't even make you climb a ladder this is uh this is accommodation don't step on that kiddo that's dangerous why it's not a skateboard okay well somebody please give me a 10 millimeter wrench i forgot that this is in the wrong spot i use my regular fancy bleeder bleeder wrench it's a big blue thing it's a tool box oh second drawer down left hand side or ten centimeters no i need i need the one that's open on the end it'll be close to the front [Music] this one actually says 10 millimeters fails yeah that's it thank you [Music] push down now light up push down let up push down that's good we got it pretty good with the gravity okay three more times all right thank you assistant you're welcome add the uh cleaning cost to my bill uh-huh just wait i'm going shopping today so yeah you'll get that bill yeah send me a bill for uh cleaning the shirt not buying a new one no no well when i read the codes out of this truck one of the codes stored in the pcm was a p04449 which is a canister vent valve control circuit code and it doesn't appear to be a problem with the canister vent valve so we got 18 oh 18 mega ohms well maybe it is a problem with the canister vent valve oh boy 14.8 mega ohms right that's what that means so that can't be right i'll go ahead and order us a canister vent valve it's a kind of a big problem on these chevy trucks i put it right here at the front of the corner of the box on the outside of the frame rail they just take a pounding all right we're having a look at the suspension and i see problems already well we knew there were problems but i found kind of an obvious one so this bolt is loose it looks like it's tight if you put a wrench on this nut you can't turn it but it is in fact loose and i can move the the cams around quite easily so that's not good so i'm going to put an impact on that see if i can tighten that up i'm just going to put the cams in the middle of their range and we'll take some measurements and see how it looks this is my redneck camber gauge all it is is a piece of aluminum bar stock i had that just happens to be the right length to fit across the rim and then i've got this stairette protractor set it at 90 degrees and it's got a little level vial right here i just zip tied the two together i can stick it across the rim here and if i pull this out until the level vial is right in the middle see we've got just a hair of positive camber the spec on this truck is 0.25 degrees positive camber plus or minus half a degree so it's pretty generous really on the camber but i think we're pretty close to our target so same deal on the other side right there is level or just off the bottom of the rim so we've got just a hair of positive camber all right last step i want to try to set the toe on this truck we have a lot of distractions in the shop today i'm told this is what happens when you work on a sundae yeah you get distractions yeah distractions [Music] so here's the setup string between the front axle and the rear axle steering wheel set at zero actually it's supposed to be set at one degree but whatever set it at zero and then we're gonna check the toe with the string now the spec is plus point one plus or minus point two degrees so again pretty generous on the toe [Music] what i think we're gonna do is we'll see if the the tie rod links will come loose if they will we'll move it out until it contacts the string on both sides of the you know the tire here typically on trucks the rear axle is actually narrower than the front axle so if we just set it for contact that should be pretty close to our 0.1 degrees of toe out but on this truck because it's been we want to say modified i don't know that that's actually true the front might actually be narrower than the rear so i'm not sure where we're going to end up but we've got to be better than what we have right now which is [Music] pretty substantial toe in on this side and pretty substantial toe out on this side so it's pulling real bad to one side all right i'm tired of this truck let's go for a little ride and if it looks halfway decent we're gonna ship it ooh baby we got some aftermarket exhaust going on here so i'll go ahead and replace that vent valve off camera you guys don't need to see that should take care of our issue she runs a little rough when you first start it up especially after it's been sitting but i don't really feel where it's got a dead it does have a p0300 code stored so obviously there are some misfires at some time i don't know how much longer this thing's really going to last i see we no longer have a service brake system light or warning on the dash i'm not sure what the criteria is for that i think there's some kind of a differential pressure switch so if it sees more pressure in the front than the rear or something like that it flips the switch on well i don't know it's not too bad for a hillbilly alignment that's uh no hands on the wheel of course it's still all over the road it's got these great big tires on it but it doesn't pull like it used to oh yeah we got all kinds of brakes [Music] here no hands on the wheel right now going right down the road certainly good enough to get him by until he can get in for a real alignment all right folks that's going to be it for the 2003 chevy silverado i'll get that canister vent valve installed on monday we'll clear the codes up and then we'll probably ship it out of here it needs some more work the left rear tire is worn down to the cords it needs to be replaced and then the pitman arm like all these chevys is pretty pretty worn out it you know it wanders all over the road so probably i'll let them do that when they do the alignment and they can do all that at the same time i may throw a tire on for him we'll see what he wants to do there but we'll split it here i think as the end of part one and we'll go out to that trailblazer in part two i think there's going to be some more diy repairs we're going to undo on that guy so be curious to see what the comments are like on this video a lot of people just don't understand what we go through up here as far as the rust and salt and corrosion and there are no inspections here in illinois for vehicles under four tons and the inspections that we do have for commercial vehicles over four tons they're a joke all those rusted out plow trucks you've seen me work on those all go through a semi-annual safety inspection here in illinois you know the frame can be rusted in half the engine's ready to fall out oil leaks everywhere abs light on and they'll pass inspection all they check is that the lights work and the brakes work and that's it so it's really a joke and the problem that we run into is that people run their vehicles well beyond where it's safe or even practical to keep them on the road and there's nothing really that you can do about it you know other than try to encourage people to fix their vehicles but you know this is the kind of stuff that's out there coming down the road at you at 80 miles an hour so think about that the next time you pay your insurance premiums anyway thanks guys for watching and i'll hopefully see you back here for part two i don't know what's going on i'm just swamped with work right now i'm busier than i've ever been so we'll try to get the a few more videos cranked out but i got to get some work done

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 636,341

Keywords: chevy, silervado, 1500, 2003, lift, lifter, suspension, brakes, brake lines, compression fitting, caliper, wrong, backward, diy, redo, undo, fix, repair, mechanic, p0449, service brake system, bleed, control arm, axle, shaft, cv, disk, rotor, kid, kids, rust, crust, salt, inspection

Id: gH0Xxwx5hrk

Length: 48min 13sec (2893 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020