Winch

Tow hook protruding through airdam.

I helped Jack reinstall his winch underneath the front bumper of his Suburban this afternoon. It was a bit of a pain. We set the winch on a cart with a light duty hydraulic lift table, wheeled it under the front bumper and raised it up. Now we have to insert two mounting bolts on each side. Each bolt has to go through the winch support, a couple of solid steel spacers, the tow hook and then screw into a hole in the frame. Except. The hole in the frame is not threaded. There is bar of steel sitting loose in the frame that has two threaded holes. It has been rattling around in the frame every since Jack took the winch off for repair which was like a month ago. This bar needs to be positioned so that the threaded holes are directly above the holes in the frame. It took some poking and prodding with a pencil to get it into position. Now the trick is to get a bolt in the hole without dislodging the captive bar. Put the rear bolt in but leave out the spacers and the tow hook, that way there are only three pieces that need to lined up to get the bolt started. Once we had those started it was easy to run the front bolts through the pile of requisite pieces and get it started. Then we pulled out the rear bolt, pivoted the spacers and tow hook into position and reinserted the rear bolt.

Got the winch all bolted up, but we need to get the end of the cable out through the feed hole in the front. The winch repair man said no problem, just cut the retaining strap and pop the end through the hole. We wrestle with it for a bit, but it's not happening. Off comes the winch, but even now we can't get the end through the feed hole. We have to take the winch loose from the mounting bracket. Then we get to go through the whole mounting procedure again. Thanks, Mr. winch repair man.

Go Rhino!

Go Rhino Classic Side Steps

Jack got these installed on his 1999 GMC Suburban when it was new. One had gotten loose so we attempted to re-tighten it this afternoon. If we had stuck to our plan it might have worked out okay, but in order to tighten the loose bolt, we had to remove the bar from the truck. The bar mounts to brackets and the brackets are bolted to the frame of the truck. When the rear bracket is mounted to the frame, the bolt holding the bar in place is inaccessible, so we had to dismount the bar. Once we have the bar off, we are still in disassembly mode and we try to remove the bolts that hold the bar to the bracket and they do NOT want to come out. Well, we're big, fat Americans and ain't something as simple as a bolt gonna tell us no, so out come the hammer and tongs. An hour later we have the brackets off, but the remains of the bolts are still firmly lodged in place inside the bar. Drill and sledge hammer fail to dislodge them. Finally we break out the cutting torch which makes short work of the recalcitrant bits. Of course now we need to weld new nuts onto the tabs inside the tubes.

As well as providing a step to make getting in and out of the vehicle easier, these bars also provide some protection for the body from rocks when out wandering around in the boonies. There were a couple of big dents in the underside of the tubes indicating that they were doing their job. There was also considerable rust on the underside, clear through in some places. Jack admits to going in the water on occasion, which got water inside the tubes where it proceeded to encourage the rust that produced the holes in the bottom and locked up the bolts. The truck is 17 years old, so the bars held up pretty well considering the abuse they suffered. I wonder if a drain hole would have helped.

The Joy of Auto Repair

Suburban Front Disk Brake

Jack asked me to give him a hand doing the brakes on his car today after lunch. It was a simple job, just replacing the front brake pads on his GMC Suburban, something he has done many times before. He only needed help because his shoulder is still recovering from surgery and he didn't want to strain it, and he predicted that he would only need help with getting the wheels back on because they are kind of heavy. He has a hydraulic floor jack and a pneumatic air wrench, so none of the other work should cause him any undo strain. Famous last words.
    The left side was a piece of cake, well, except we had to use the old fashioned lug wrench to break the lug nuts loose because some knucklehead at the garage used an air wrench to put them on. So it was a good thing I was there to break them loose. Finish up the driver's side and go around to the passenger side and it's the same situation. The Harbor Freight air wrench hasn't got enough oomph to break the lug nuts loose, so I have to do it manually again. Okay, no problem, the lug wrench is a good one and I break all six loose and turn it over to Jack to spin them off. Four come off no problem, but the last too are still a little snug, so I have another go at them with the lug wrench. Boy are they tight. And they don't loosen up, every little bit of motion requires full force.
    Eventually one comes off. The interior of the nut is almost completely stripped. The stud doesn't look too bad, not great, but possibly usable. The last one unscrews for a while but then it stops. It goes around easily, but it is not unscrewing. There is maybe only one thread left holding it on, but it will not let go. We attack with hammer and tongs, but no luck. Finally resort to using a Dremel tool with an abrasive cut-off wheel to try and cut through one side of the lug nut. Get maybe 75% of the way through. Attack the cut with a chisel, only succeed in making the cut wider. Nut still won't come off. Finally Jack digs up an old brake adjustment tool and uses it to pry on the lug nut while I turn it with the wrench and it finally comes off.
   So Jack got the new pads installed and the wheels are back on, although the right front one only has four lug nuts holding it. Getting that fixed could be a problem. It might be possible to clean up the threads on the studs and and just put some new lug nuts on. It might be better to replace the studs, but that could be a real pain because, you guessed it, it's four wheel drive, and there's no telling how much of that front wheel assembly will have to come apart in order to be able to get the hub out so you can replace the studs.

Update from Jack: Took the ‘burban to Les Schwab’s.  They replaced the studs without removing the hub.  $50 and 45 minutes!

Update February 2017 fixed broken link.

GMC Suburban Water Pump Replacement - Notes

Update: Part one of this story here.

This was a real shade tree mechanic type operation. Jack's Suburban was parked on the dirt driveway in front of his house in amongst the two dozen monster trees in his front yard. The ground was covered with tree litter making it a little more difficult to find any parts, like screws, that we dropped. We used a pallet of flagstones that were destined for the patio in the back yard, but being as they are heavy, they haven't made it there yet. It was not the best of tables. If we had dropped any small parts in the cracks between the stones, we would still be shifting the flagstones looking for them.

We were fortunate, the weather was very pleasant and no rain, and we didn't lose any parts into the flagstone labyrinth. The sun was shining and we were working in our shirtsleeves. We also came through relatively unscathed. I jammed my thumb into the pump once, and Jack got a cut on his hand, just big enough to decorate it with a little blood.

The steel strap we used to hold the water pump pulley while we unscrewed the fan clutch was a bar about one inch wide, a quarter inch thick and about 18 inches long. The hole for the screw was about 3/8" in diameter and close to one edge. It was also at the end of the bar. I think it would have been better if the hole had been placed about three inches from the end, that way the bar would work in either direction. As it was it only worked in one direction. In the other direction it would swing around until the square end of the bar was pushing against one of the flats of the hex of the fan clutch and would work against the wrench trying to undo it, so we would have to undo the screw holding it, flip the bar around, and put the screw back in.

It is not necessary, or beneficial, to remove the fan from the fan clutch. Matter of fact, it just makes things worse. You do become dexterous at starting and tightening bolts in the confined space between the fan and the pulley. A 16 penny nail with a right angle bend proved useful in aligning the bolt holes in the pulley to the corresponding holes in the water pump.

It would have behooved us to spread a sheet of plastic under the fan and over the undercarriage to keep dropped screws from crawling into the dark recesses of the frame.

We used a pair of channellocks about 10" long to manipulate the spring clamps securing the water hoses. These pliers were pretty new and the teeth were still pretty sharp, which helped. It sometimes took two or three incremental settings to get the clamp from totally relaxed to open enough to go over the lumps in the hose. For instance one grip would get the clamp open enough to go the over the end of the hose, but then you would have to adjust the pliers and take another grip to get it to open up enough so the hose would slide over the hose bib. Bigger pliers could probably have done it in one grip, but I don't know if you could have gotten them in the confined spaces we were working in.

This vehicle was about a '99 model, and it was about half metric and half American, which is really annoying. I could understand this when they started making the changeover to metric about a zillion years ago, but the fact that they still haven't completely changed over to metric makes me think either they are incompetent or lazy. Professional grade nothing. I suppose there could be some kind of internal civil war going on, or maybe they are just waiting for all the fractional engineers to die off.

GMC doesn't make a Suburban anymore. It's now called a Yukon. At first I couldn't remember what the model name was. After all, it's "Chevy Suburban" I think of right off, not "GMC Suburban", but maybe they used the same model name. But look on GMC's website and there is no Suburban to be found, only the Yukon.

Update. Replacing the water pump did not solve the problem. Turned out to be a bad intake manifold gasket which cost about $500 to have repaired at Master Wrench. They have done a number of repairs for Jack and he has always been satisfied.

Update October 2016 replaced missing pictures.

GMC Suburban Water Pump Replacement

I helped Jack replace the water pump on his Suburban this afternoon. It has been leaking coolant for a while and it was slowly getting worse. He had replaced the water pump once before and it looked like there might be some seepage where the pump bolts to the block. He had already removed the top half of the fan shroud and the serpentine belt.

The next step was to remove the fan clutch from the water pump shaft. Used to be this was done with four small bolts. Now the hub of the fan clutch threads onto the front of the water pump shaft. You need a big wrench to grip the hexagon shaped hub and something to hold the water pump pulley still. He had a piece of steel strap with a hole in one end. Take one of the bolts holding the pulley and use it to attach the strap. The strap will swing around until in contacts one of the other three bolts holding the pulley. Now you can hold the pulley and use the wrench to loosen the hub.

We used a 20" adjustable wrench and the head was so fat it would barely fit in the space between the fan and the pulley. Aside from dropping several bolts into abyss, getting this fan clutch off was the toughest job. A thinner wrench would have made it easier. So would not dropping the bolts.

We had to take off one idler pulley in order to loosen a bracket holding a heater hose because we did not have a 10mm socket. When we pulled the idler pulley off I noticed a bunch of aluminum flakes inside the hole. We blew it out with air and mixed up some epoxy with aluminum powder and put that in the hole before we put the screw back in.

There was one big hose and two small hoses connected to the pump. They were held in place with spring clamps. A small pair of channel-locks worked to undo the clamps and then we used them to twist the hoses to break them loose from the pipes. After that they pushed off easily. Pushed, that is, not pulled. Pulling didn't work. The small hoses were kind of tore up by the pliers so we asked for some new ones at the auto parts store (generic, not the dealer), and surprise! They had them. Since we were going to all this trouble, Jack elected to replace the pump, the serpentine belt and the small, short, heater hoses, but not the big radiator hose.

We recovered all of the dropped bolts except for two screws for the fan shroud, and we found some adequate replacements in the garage. Unfortunately, the only washers we found were the wrong color: silver instead of black. I assured Jack that they wouldn't hurt the motor. Locating the lost screws was complicated by the fact that the vehicle is equipped with a winch that is concealed behind the front bumper.

After we had everything buttoned up and the coolant system topped, Jack fired it up, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. It was very gratifying to be able to do some mechanical work and have it turn out successfully.

Update: Part two of this story here.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.