I saved $1,600 in 3 hours yesterday doing car repairs myself! AMA!
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Anonymous
The torque specs are all available online and in enthusiast forums. I use a Snap On adjustable torque wrench, but honestly, I don't think it's super critical. I've been working on stuff a long time, and I've found that torque specs on most bolts in the 12-14 mm range are all about 22-28 ft/lbs. the axle nut is like 177 ft/lbs. big difference! And it has to be staked, too. |
Anonymous
No, I didn't do just the boots, I pulled the shafts out completely and replaced them completely. My old CV's were trashed. New boots weren't gonna cut it |
Anonymous
No time, no interest in that. I just fix my own stuff. No desire to work on other people's stuff. |
Anonymous
| That's amazing. I know minimal about cars except how to drive them so could never do any repairs myself. |
Anonymous
Don't sell yourself short. Really. Start with simple things, and go from there. As you build familiarity and confidence you'll tackle harder stuff. Watch the instructional videos, start with small stuff. I can't do huge stuff like engines or transmissions, but that's because I lack the specialized tooling and lifting gear and a garage. But you'd surprise yourself with what you could do, I'd bet. |
Anonymous
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Did you have all the tools? Did you need to buy any new tools?
Very awesome of you to do this yourself. It's a great feeling! |
Anonymous
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pickle fork to pop the axle from the trany?
did you have to drain the tranny? ball joint remover tool or sledge on the knuckle? what car? |
Anonymous
| My son does mine. We have saved a fortune over the years. He was a tanker in the military before he went to OCS. That kid can fix literally anything. |
Anonymous
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OP, are you sure you really saved $1000-$1600?
The reason I ask is that often if you don't have training and do these things all the time and just feel your way through them, you end up with a half-@$$ job that needs to be replaced early and/or alters some other part that needs to be replaced early. I'm sure you saved something but I doubt it is as much as you think. We have a mechanic that will use used parts where it is applicable. That saves money too but you have to know when it is a good idea and when it isn't. That comes with experience. As another example, I often do stuff around the house and "save" money but I know when I try to sell my house a "home inspector" with no more experience than me is going to come in and see all the Home Depot and Lowes parts. They are then going to make a list of all the things that don't "look professionally done" or "meet code" or "where done with inferior parts" and the buyer's real estate agent is going to try to negotiate down the price. I suspect the same thing happens at car dealers and CarMax. |
Anonymous
Another shade tree mechanic here weighing in for the first time. If anyone doesn't recognize that reference, it's slang for someone who works on their own or others' cars outside a traditional automotive shop (ie. on jack stands in a parking lot under the shade of a tree). I'll mark my future posts as I work backwards through the thread, but I've been doing this a long time (I'm a late 30's male and have been working on my cars for probably 15 years). To the quoted poster, I'm sure there are DIYers that do half-@$$ jobs, but I bet that's actually the minority. The rise of technologies like Youtube and online forums (such as this one) are game changing for DIY mechanics. In the past, you had to either buy an expensive third party service manual for your specific make, model, and year vehicle, and then try to follow written directions with a few diagrams. OR, you could get someone to teach you in person. OR, maybe, you could buy a DVD or VHS tape of the work being done. I'm speculating on that last bit. Today, if you search youtube, you can find pretty decent DIYs for many common service tasks across a wide range of vehicles. If you just search for forums dedicating to your manufacturer, you'll find a wealth of knowledge and links to DIYs, both written and video. The free information is amazing. The flip side is that it will take you probably much longer than a pro mechanic to complete a task, but if the alternative is watching sports while drinking beer, that might be ok. Pro mechanics run high volume operations, and it's all about the speed they do things. As the person actually owning and driving the vehicle, you have a vested interest in taking your time and doing the absolute best job possible. No one is going to care more about the quality of the work done than you. The same thing goes for parts. As the owner, I'm extremely picky about what parts I put in my car, and can take my time to shop both for price and quality. I'll get into some of the details in future posts. In summary, I would put the quality of the work I do up against any mechanic for almost any job I do. There is very little "art" to wrenching. For someone with an engineer's mind, it comes naturally. To be honest, I see all kinds of hack jobs constantly done by pros to save time. I can post some details in a future post if anyone is curious. I can also post some of the frequent mistakes I see beginners / DIYers make. |
Anonymous
12:46 here (not the OP). I would avoid using a pickle fork to pop the axle from the trany (via the inner ball joint). That's a lot of abuse being transmitted through. I love ball joint remover tools, and have several. I will never go back to using pickle forks on steering knuckles. I work exclusively on German cars (VAG and BMWs) these days, but have worked on domestic and Japanese cars in the past. |
Anonymous
12:46 here. Not the OP, but I've done the same job. That job generally uses standard tools, but you might not have: - A big freaking torque wrench for the axle nut (torque specs are very high). - Various ball joint tools to make separating the joints much easier. - When I did it, VAG vehicles have some kind of really weird triple-square bolts holding the inner ball joint to the transmission. I had to special order sockets for that online. - I also used an air wrench for many of the larger bolts, but it could be done with a breaker bar. |
Anonymous
12:46. Most people think that. I say if you can build ikea furniture, you can do many common automotive service items. The tools can be an investment, though. |
Anonymous
So you replaced the whole thing as an assembly, with CV joints, CV boots, and the axles, right? Did you use remanufactured OE axles? I've heard a lot of nightmares about using chinese axles. Last time I did this, I wound up using new CV joints and boots, but reusing the axle. It added time and was super messy (my boots had ripped so there was grease everywhere. If anyone is clamping boots, I recommend getting a boot clamp tool that has a built in torque limiter (to keep from over tightening the clamps). All that said, I know people that have just used zip ties without issue. In my case, the joint had not run dry, so I considered reusing my CV joints and just repacking them, but you can get quality European CV joints from brands like Meyle for pretty cheap these days. |
Anonymous
12:46. What do you mean staked? I'm OCD about using torque specs, and about properly replacing bolts that are one-time use (like axle bolts). The threads deform when properly torqued and shouldn't be reused. The hardest ones for me is when I have to use crows feet and perform torque calculations to convert listed specs. |