Some mechanics are accused of using a parts cannon to fix a vehicle. This badge of dishonor comes from the habit of a person to do very little work finding the issue with a vehicle and just replace it parts till the problem goes away. Clearly this is not the way to fix a vehicle. My daily driver on the other hand has had a hard life, and by the time I get around to fixing something i end up noticing some other issues that need to be addressed “while I am there”.
This is exactly what happened when I finally got around to replacing the front brakes on my truck. They had started squealing for about a week when i ordered new pads. I had already replaced the pads and rotors a couple of years back. Since I don’t actually keep real close records, it may have been five years ago. Anyway, I let my eldest daughter use it to go to school since the 2006 Tahoe has a CanTBus issue. By the end of the week she was letting me know the brakes were no longer squealing but more of a growl or the sound of two rocks being crushed together. So I ordered two new rotors. I went ahead and upgraded to vented and cross drilled rotors. I figure I should invest since I don’t really want truck payment.
I can only get the front of the truck in the shop but it’s better than nothing. 24 my eldest offered to help with her boyfriend who’s training to be a pilot. I had just purchased a couple of 6 ton jack stands and a new Badlands floor jack designed to work with lifted vehicles. This made things easier. As usual I have everything I need to do the job. The major issue is finding it when I need it. The lock to my lugnuts was reliably sitting in the glovebox, but the hi torque 1/2” battery operated Rigid “Ugga Dugga” tool, was no where near to be found. I ended up finding it buried on the workbench in the garage.
With the wheels removed it became very clear to me that this job was going to require more than pads and rotors. The calipers were not working the same as each other. The kit was almost half the price of a new caliper. So I ordered two new bright red calipers. And it would be dumb to connect them using brake hoses that were 25 years old with 250K miles on them, so I ordered two stainless steel braided hoses. Strangely the only piece that needed to be reused was the banjo bolt that transfers the brake fluid from the brake hose to the caliper. Weird but they were both in good shape so I just cleaned them a replaced the copper washers before installing them.
Feeling good about the brakes I remember that when. I removed the caliper and found the backside of it completely covered in grease. The grease came from the cracked boots on the cv joints on the front half shafts. So… two new half shafts it was. I gave the super ugga dugga tool to 24 and she made short work of removing the 1 1/8“ axle nuts. I had her change out the attachments on the tool to remove the 15 mm bolts holding the cv joints to the front diff. She was a little timid on the first one so I told her to hold it down and it would remove it no matter how rusty it was. A couple of seconds later it was off, but she looked concerned and then she passed me the half bolt that had come out with the tool. I was confused until I noticed that during the attachment change the tool had been bumped and had changed direction and it jammed that damn bolt in until it reached its tensil strength limit at which point I had told her to pull the trigger harder and she ugga dugga’d that thing in half!! She felt terrible. I knew better. It was totally my fault and I let her know since the bolt was accessible from the other end it should not be a problem to get out. We closed up for the night and I planned on getting it out in the morning.
Two days later I had finished drilling out and using an easy out to remove that ba$tard piece of Sh!t. Omg, none of the tools could get in there and it is up off the ground but it is still under a truck. My body doesn’t appreciate laying on concrete anymore. Once it was out I realized that I still could not remove the axle because some engineering genius placed the sway bar bolts and the shock absorber close enough together to not allow the CV joint to pass between them.
While removing the shocks I realized they were shot so I ordered 4 new Bilstein shocks. To get to the top of the shock mount I had to remove the “rubber” skirt between the inner fender well and the frame. The passenger side only had half of the skirt left. The Drivers side was whole but rather brittle. After looking them up and finding they were more expensive than the calipers I decided to use some rubber floor mat material and copy the good one to use on the passenger side. 23 came back out and punched holes in the rubber mat material with a short piece of brake line and a hammer. I had new plastic tree connectors and it worked very well.
While it ended up being significantly more expensive than a brake job, the front end it damn near new. I checked the hubs the ball joints and the sway bar bushings they were all solid and didn’t need replacing. I would gladly have done it at the time, but I guess I will just have to check it again in a year or so. The master cylinder has very dark colored brake fluid in it, but I have a replacement for it with a newer version and I need to replace the rear brakes. To be more specific I need to upgrade them to disks. But for now I am done. There is definitely air in the lines and the pedal barely stops before the floor, but I don’t really drive too much and it does stop. I will get on the next project soon, I swear!
