Chevy Trailblazer - No Rear Brakes after DIY Replacement - A/C Compressor, Blower, Axle Seals - P2

howdy folks welcome back we're gonna get to part two of our little series on undoing some diy repairs but spoiler alert there really aren't any mistakes that were made on the on the trailblazer back here it's mostly just here because it had some some large problems that the owner didn't feel comfortable tackling himself so before we get to that i want to say a few things the first video in this series has gotten a lot of attention at this point it has over 200 000 views and i'm getting a lot of views from people who don't normally watch my videos and to that end i've gotten a lot of comments and i've gotten a fair amount of comments from people who felt that i was being disrespectful towards the customer towards the owner of the truck that i was picking on his diy repairs that i was picking on other people who do diy repairs that is not my intention so i'm sorry if it came across that way i don't have any problem with diy repairs if you own something you ought to be able to do whatever you want to it including fixing it but i do want to encourage people to fix things correctly which is sort of the point of this youtube channel so i try always to show you guys how to do things the best way that i know how now i was told once that the difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional knows how to fix his mistakes but i think you have to go one step further which is to acknowledge that a lot of times when you're an amateur you don't even know that you've made a mistake and to that end i actually think that these guys did the right thing which is that they got some help and in my opinion that puts them a step above someone like scotty kilmer who is supposed to know better and when people who do know better point out that he's made a mistake he doesn't correct it or acknowledge it you know he argues with them and bans them from his channel and so on and so forth so if you guys don't know what i'm talking about there was a an infamous video with scotty kilmer where he used compression fittings to fix a leak in a brake line that video has since been removed all traces of it have vanished i will link you to a jalopnik article that they wrote about it it's a it's a pretty good read i think anyway long story short i didn't intend to pick on the young men who worked on that truck or anybody else out there who's doing diy repairs i just wanted to point out that mistakes were made and if you do want to do your own diy repairs do your due diligence and you know get a reliable source of information before you you plow into the job so that's it let's get to work well my hunting dog here is telling me there's got to be a mouse or rat or some other critter underneath this car he's just going bananas he won't leave it alone i bet you up underneath that spare tire or on top of the muffler heat shield or something we're going to find a big old mouse nest because he he's never wrong i'm just making a video [Music] it's not awkward or anything i'm just here talking to myself howdy folks welcome back this is gonna be part two of the i fixed it myself series this is a 2007 chevy trailblazer it's got the 4.2 liter vortec v6 it's got a ton of miles on it 212 000 miles on it i think it's really in pretty decent shape cosmetically it's got a laundry list of problems some of them he's already tried to fix himself some of them are things he didn't want to tackle the blower motor only works on high so it's probably got a bad resistor the engine sounds like a bag of hammers that idle something's clunking up here in the front we got to figure that out he tried to fix the rear brakes they don't work at all i don't know what we're gonna find there he said the u-joints are bad uh the rear axle seals are leaking i don't know i'm sure there's other things too we'll find as we go along let's uh figure out this clunking noise here first there it is so okay he said he thought it was the ac compressor and i i agree sounds like it's either in the clutch or the compressor itself all right pop where's the mouse you ready to find him looks good so far i don't see any little cheddar loving friends maybe he's inside i don't think he's down here you're never wrong are you pup ever that nose doesn't lie right lady people don't think i'm making this stuff up what kind of shirt are we wearing today oh it's a hufflepuff shirt that's odd why how many do you think you own three you can't see it because of the light turn at least three yep hufflepuff [Laughter] why what's so weird about it you're an adult that's a children's book all right we gotta go well first glance i don't see anything really wrong with these breaks looks like uh everything's in the right spot see he's got one of the boots not pulled back over the pin want to fix that the bleeders are on the right you know they're on the top so that's that's all correct the other side looks the same he used new copper washers yeah he had the right idea so i don't know what we're gonna find got the brake pedal held down with the hood prop and yeah i can easily turn the rear wheels so that's interesting to figure out what's going on there i would like to once again point out that you told me that you had a special tool to bleed brakes with that you have yet to use this is still a gm still don't have the right adapter forwards i'm good to go all right jump up in there can i interest anybody in a german shorthaired pointer oh come on what freaking size is that thing yeah good old gm let's use a 7 16 bleed screw [Applause] all right young lady push down light up push down light up push down nothing wrong with that yeah okay push down oh man maybe i just wasn't pushing hard enough all right push down okay let up push down but i'm not really getting anything out of that one let up okay push down there we go i don't know still don't really see any air okay let up now push down all right push down yeah i don't know light up all right back to school i get that master's degree [Applause] so all i did was take my scan tool and go into the bi-directional controls and turn the abs pump on a couple of times and then i ran through the first step of the automated abs bleed procedure and it seems to have taken care of our problem so i can still move it but that's just with the hood prop holding the pedal down i don't have anybody here to help me right now so i think that's the issue just the abs pump is got some air in it or something was a little bit stuck so once i have my lovely assistant back here we'll do the whole abs bleed procedure and that should take care of the problem i don't know pup this is getting a little creepy it's like you're hanging out in front of the door to the girl's locker room or something he's not giving up folks so the easiest way to get to that ac clutch i think will be to take the fan and fan shroud out but it's kind of stupid the way gm designed this thing there it is so there's not enough room for the fan shroud to come out because they put the stupid top radiator hose neck in the way so i think what we can do is just lean the whole radiator forward and we're in got this puller set up let's see what happens here okay i could have just got a hammer on it or even a pry bar probably could have just popped it right off without all this nonsense well crap guess we're getting the compressor now [Music] i thought i could get that off there but it just destroyed that thread completely mangled it okay folks our friends at general motors did not make this job easy i ended up taking out the battery the alternator [Music] the idler this idler bracket and then we can finally get to our air conditioning compressor oh maybe yeah there it is lots of fun and here's our replacement this is an ac compressor kit so it comes with an accumulator the appropriate peg oil an orifice tube and the actual compressor now i quoted replacing the compressor before we started on this i just thought we might save a little bit of money by replacing the clutch because the compressor was still working but you don't really save that much money the clutch alone is a hundred and eighty dollars i bought this whole compressor kit for 240 something like that well now the confusing part which is adding oil and this trips everybody up including me mostly because the instructions are super vague so it says here you know oil is important fill on the suction side with half the system oil turning as you fill remaining oil should be installed in the accumulator the problem is these instructions are written for a catastrophic compressor failure you know where you have metal shrapnel everywhere in the system you're replacing the condenser the receiver dryer or the accumulator orifice tube flushing out the evaporator and basically starting over from scratch we don't need to do that because we don't have a huge compressor failure we just have a clutch problem so we're not going to flush the evaporator we are going to replace the accumulator in the orifice tube but we're not going to remove the oil from the condenser or the evaporator there's no reason to do that so it says down here note this ac compressor has been pre-filled with pago oil do not drain add the correct type and amount per your system specifications now what does that mean add to what and how much i have no idea so here's what i do i disregard the instructions this is what we drained from the old compressor i'll pour that into a container but it looks like it's about two ounces here's what i drained from the new compressor and it looks like it's about four maybe five ounces our system holds eight ounces of oil so general rule of thumb just split it in four so two ounces for the compressor two ounces for the receiver dryer or accumulator two ounces for the evaporator two ounces for the condenser and you know depending on what the system was doing when you decommissioned it you know some or all of it may have pooled in certain components so it's kind of hard to figure that out so best thing to do is just drain the component and add the equivalent amount of oil back to the system that you drained out of the old component now there's also additional oil in this compressor in the crankcase so there's oil on the back side and there's oil on the front side we're not going to mess with the crankcase side we're only going to worry about the oil that circulates through the system all right best i can tell there were about four ounces of oil in this new compressor and i only got about two ounces of oil out of the old compressor and the old accumulator together so i think we're going to do is add three ounces to the system so we'll add 1.5 to the compressor 1.5 to the accumulator and we'll go with that so i'll just dump it in the suction side here so i assume they're trying to make this idiot proof they're adding half the oil to the compressor then you add the other half to the accumulator and assuming the system's been flushed out you're good to go but it's always a pain to figure this out when you're only replacing part of the system so anyway i gotta switch this stud over and then i think we're ready to go back on okay the compressor is in the new accumulator is in the system is sealed now so i'm going to go ahead and start the vacuum and then we'll get the rest of this garbage installed i'm not going to replace the orifice tube it's kind of a chore to get to it lives right here so to get that out you got to pull the coolant overflow bottle you got to pull the air box out you got to split this line yank the the orifice tube out and shove the new one in and there's just no reason to do that we didn't have a you know catastrophic failure so there shouldn't be anything you know wrong with the old orifice too we'll just leave well enough alone also you guys may have seen this little orange contraption kicking around the last few videos so i get emails all the time from companies who want me to promote their products form basically sell their stuff for them you know they're gonna give it to me for a review or whatever and i've always said no mostly because the things they want me to review or promote or whatever are totally unrelated to the channel i've had everything from light bars to cell phone reception boosters to diet pills i mean i just have no interest in any of that crap but a few months back a company called gripmat contacted me and this is the first product anyone's ever contacted me about that i actually had an interest in this is just a little silicone tool tray and it's designed to be kind of grippy so it doesn't slide all over it's great for working underneath the hood i can set it right on top of this intake throw all my tools in here and it's you know everything's within arm's reach got a couple little pockets here for nuts and bolts or smaller sockets or whatever i think it's pretty sweet actually i think i'm going to buy a larger one they make a larger size than this so i think i'll go ahead and order that i'll pay for that one and we'll see how that works out and maybe we'll do a little mini review or whatever that gave me some discount codes we can use so stand by for that in a future video and we are back together ready for the moment of truth i'm actually not sure you could get that ac compressor out of there without removing the fan shroud the service information says nothing about it tells you how to remove the alternator but it doesn't say anything about the fan shroud so i don't know if you pull this big honking bracket off here if you can get the thing out of there i really don't know also i think i may have accidentally said this was a v6 engine which obviously it is not this is an inline six cylinder engine it's actually a pretty cool engine i think all right guys i think we're good let's move on to something else i told you guys the dog is never wrong i put a mousetrap under the car last night something set it off and ate all the peanut butter luckily we have redundancy did you know him let's go ahead and change out this blower motor resistor the owner tells me that the the hvac blower motor only works on the highest setting and you know we could test it but let's be honest we know it's the resistor that's what it always is it's not the resistor actually that blows out as someone pointed out in a previous video it's these little thermal fuses so what they do is they stick the blower motor resistor pack in the in the ductwork so that the blower motor actually blows on the resistor pack and if the blower motor ever stalls out it should cause these thermal fuses to overheat and blow and saves you from having a fire or whatever in the hvac blower motor but sometimes they blow out for no reason but usually the problem is that the blower motor bearings are bad or the winding is bad and it's just pulling too many amps so these are pretty cheap we'll throw this guy in see how it sounds so if we hear some you know screeching sounds from the blower motor we'll have to go ahead and change that out so the blower motor resistor always lives near the blower motor and in this case it's in the passenger side foot well you gotta pull this little trim panel down and then there's a whole pile of modules and connectors that's some kind of xm radio module there and connectors and stuff so we'll get that stuff kind of unhooked and see if we can get ourselves up in there oh the actual resistor is up here in the bottom of the dash well i didn't find what i expected to find as far as i can tell these thermal fuses are both good but check out the the pack here it's all bulged out and it's actually broken this epoxy or whatever they dipped it in ceramic material and then look at the the corrosion on that one leg of the resistor pack there so i think it was just moisture from the evaporator that killed this thing okay so there's our new resistor i got it plugged in let's give it a try here put the key on oh yeah sounds good perfect so i guess that's good news for the customer he does not have to buy a blower motor that's kind of an interesting failure mode for that resistor all right moving on let's get to these axle seals this is the right side of the car the passenger side and it's obviously blown out so got oil and goo inside here i've gone ahead and removed the brakes we're gonna have to pull the cover off the differential i think the speed sensor has to come out but it's not too bad of a job [Music] oh [Applause] oh well inside the differential here we've got to pull this cross pin out and the cross pin is going to allow the axle shafts to actually come in a little bit then we can pull the c-clips out then we can pull the axle shafts out towards the outside now this cross pin is held in by this little bolt it's got an eight millimeter or 5 16 head on it it's threaded like right here and then it's just a pin going through the other pin and they can be a bear to get out just to get that loctite moving there we go perfect now this is a wrench that's made for bleeding brakes so it's actually a six point eight millimeter okay now we got to remember that that's hot so don't grab it with your little bare fingers okay i don't think it's necessary for it to come all the way out that's good enough should be able to slide that cross pin yeah we can okay there it is all right so we pull the wheel speed sensor out and then this tone ring actually slides over the axle so we're going to have to pull the axle out of that tone ring it's not me are your ears cold today no it's only like 90 degrees hot fahrenheit he wanted to put a hat on yeah he tells me that about his blanket too he wants to put the blanket on so he can stay cool i don't think he understands thermodynamics or hot versus cold lunchtime well we already ate but he needed a break between eating so he wanted to take his break outside okay [Applause] safety squints of course the left side wasn't leaking but it would be crazy not to replace it while we're already in here [Music] just want to make sure that the spring didn't come off the inside of that seal oh come on hmm we're going to put a little bit more loctite on this [Applause] keeper that's all there is to it well it looks like somebody's been checking the differential oil regularly oh hope for the best oh yeah i think they should all do it like the dodges where they just have a little rubber plug you can pop out okay now these speed sensors originally had these torx head screws this one didn't fare too well coming out so we're going to switch it for a regular hex head bolt be a lot better deal well i don't know what this differential cover gasket fits but it certainly isn't this truck it's supposed to look like this and ours is a molded rubber design that's like a six dollar gasket this is a 46 dollar gasket so i don't know probably just put some silicone on it and be fine but we might as well get the right thing we've got time are you showing off now [Music] [Applause] okay folks welcome back this will be instantaneous for you but it's actually been a few days for me we finally have the right gasket i believe for this axle i think it's an eight inch gm axle but this says here it's one of these aam axles or people call them corporate axles it's kind of a chrysler offshoot anyway it's the right gasket for this [Music] application there goes the light now these cover bolts did have loctite on them so i went ahead and put some new loctite on them i'll have to look up the torque spec on these 20 foot pounds 240 inch pounds i'll try to give this diff cover a fighting chance pretty common problem in our area for the covers to rust out down here at the bottom and then you lose all your oil and then pretty soon you got real big problems well wouldn't you know i've got an example of a rusted out rear differential cover right here this is a 1991 you heard that right 91 gmc 1500 pickup truck you see right there right there right there right there so pretty common problem here in northern illinois anything below the belt line just melts away i don't know if you guys can read it but there's an aam logo right there on the bottom of the axle so i guess that narrows it down well i think that takes care of the drive line he wanted me to replace the u-joints but i don't see anything wrong with them these are original 200 and something thousand miles but there's no play at all in the caps so i don't think we're gonna do that this is kind of a classic gm setup they actually inject plastic in the yolk to hold the caps in uh gm's been doing that forever but it's kind of a pain to change these u-joints you got to melt the plastic out with a torch that makes a big mess and then you get a that replacement u-joints usually have a circlip on the inside instead of you know obviously we can't inject plastic into it here in the shop so so by far the best way to bleed the abs valve is to use a scan tool with bi-directional controls this autel max assist 906 will do the job my snap-on ethos will do it a lot of the better you know creators or whatever the advanced code readers can also bleed abs valves so all it's going to do the procedure is a little different for every make and model but on this gm usually what it does it just runs the abs pump for whatever amount of time and it cycles the valves and it's going to do that for each wheel anyway what that's going to do is cycle the valve cycle the pump and work the air out of the valve and then that air is going to go some of it back to the master cylinder and some of it out to the calipers so after it's done you need to go ahead and bleed the calipers like you normally would by pushing the brake pedal and opening the bleed screw now on some cars you have to open the bleed screw while you run through the scan tool procedure it just depends on how it's set up well what do you do if you want to bleed your abs valve but you don't have a big fancy scan tool well make sure your shopkeeper's insurance is up to snuff and find yourself one of these it's a gravel road don't have to look far to find one of these around here all we're going to do is activate the abs [Music] [Music] that's it now even better than a gravel road would be a patch of snow or ice now what do you do if you live somewhere where they don't have gravel roads or snow and ice i don't know have a drink i guess sounds like paradise all right lady push the brakes that's more like it right there okay we're done thank you assistant welcome once again in a hufflepuff shirt no it's i'm hot so i had to wear a tank top all right team hufflepuff team right pup he's pretty friendly he would be a hufflepuff team max is a hufflepuff maybe maybe i know he's he kills a lot of like animals so maybe he's slytherin i'm gonna pretend like i know what that means all right we're all done all right folks i think that's it for the 2007 yeah seven chevy trailblazer sorry it's been a few days since i worked on this thing i think that we replaced the compressor the ac compressor the blower motor resistor the rear axle seals and we bled the abs valve and i think we're going to skip the u-joints because they're still in good shape so that should be everything he wanted done to this truck i think it's ready to go home i'm not 100 sure what happened with the abs valve i suppose he probably either let the master cylinder reservoir run dry while he had the calipers off and it got air in that way or there was some air in the new calipers and he pushed that up into the abs valve i'm not sure but that's a you know a simple thing that could have happened to anybody and you know without the right tools it's it is difficult to bleed that abs valve well i think that's it guys thanks for watching obviously dad's truck's in a lot better shape than his son's truck i think that's to be expected i'm not gonna pass any judgment you should have seen the junk i was driving when i was a kid it wasn't a whole lot worse than the junk i'm driving now howdy folks welcome back this is the same 2007 chevy trailblazer that we did all the work to it's been gone for about a week and now it's back customer tells me he has no low beam headlights and it's not the bulbs

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 119,470

Rating: 4.941546 out of 5

Keywords: mechanic, fix, repair, replace, a/c, compressor, clutch, brakes, caliper, calipers, bleed, abs, diy, resistor, blower, motor, axle seal, wheel seal, differential, aam, trailblazer, chevy, truck, autel, grypmat

Id: Zrr5rZj9Sws

Length: 38min 50sec (2330 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020