I completed two needed repairs this month: One on the TW200, and one on the battle bus (chevy suburban).
The TW200 has been having some issues with the brakes, so I went ahead and rebuilt the front brakes completely. This included new seals for the caliper, a new brake hose line (braided stainless steel), and a master cylinder rebuild kit. The caliper and brake hose rebuild were fairly straight forward. The master cylinder rebuild was not difficult, though it required a few special tools: snap ring pliers, and some way to bleed the system of air. I normally just use the kit that I used on the battle bus, however I do not have that kit with me, nor do I have access to an air compressor. So I went out and purchased Harbor Freight’s vacuum pump kit. It worked extremely well, and I managed to bleed the whole system in minutes. I also recently watched a video from Revzilla on how to reverse bleed your brakes. This seems logical enough, so if you don’t want to shill out money for a tool, this technique could work as well.
The vacuum pump. You too can do motorcycle maintenance in some shady parking garage, as long as you have the right tools!
For the battle bus, I did a full brake job, including replacing the calipers on both axles, rotors, pads, and a brake fluid flush. I used the tool that I purchased for the TW200 to bleed my brakes out, which I’d recommend, as bleeding the system on a larger vehicle with more complex plumbing requires some tools to do (or a friend to press the brake pedal for you, but I was doing this solo so I needed the tool).
Old rotor and caliper.
New rotor and caliper. I normally don’t care for coated rotors, they’re just a way to sell people more expensive rotors because people don’t like purchasing rotors that are rusty out of the box (The rust is rubbed off instantly when the pads contact the rotor). However, these rotors were on clearance at ROCKAUTO.COM (pls sponsor). Rotors are round pieces of steel. Get them for cheap.
Here’s what the rotors looked like after maybe 5 miles of driving. The coating is almost completely worn off. Don’t waste your money on expensive coated rotors. They’re a round piece of metal that is meant to have a pad pushed into it.
(My old impact wrench vs the new one)
I purchased a new impact wrench also, the extended anvil Hercules 20v impact wrench (man I’m just an advertisement for Harbor Freight. They should give me a sponsorship). An extended anvil impact wrench is a good idea if you’re going to wrench on a lot of vehicles, especially if you have high negative offset wheels (The majority of stock wheels on cars are positive offset. Negative offset just means the center line of the wheel is pushed out in relation to where the hub bolts to the wheel. They’re also known as deep dish wheels, because they look like a deep dish). I wanted this wrench for 2 main reasons:
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My wheels are moderately negative offset. My old impact wrench, this one would have my knuckles fairly close to the wheel, and I’d frequently hit them against the hub cap. Even with longer sockets, I’d hit my knuckles against my wheel. Adding an extension would decrease the amount of torque, and it would take longer for me to break a nut loose. Sometimes it just didn’t have the power if the nut was rusty.
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More torque. My first impact wrench is fine for like 80% of the work that I do. However, sometimes you just need something that you can give the beans, and the beans will be given. There were a couple of nuts and bolts on this project, especially the caliper bracket bolts (which GM loves to use their special yellow threadlocker on), that felt like they were welded on. The smaller impact had trouble taking them off. But the new one broke them loose easily.
This tool is not without tradeoffs. In general, electric tools are heavier than pneumatic tools, as electric tools have to carry a motor and a power source (battery), which is heavy, compared to an impact wrench which has a tiny little spinning hammer inside of it and uses air from an air compressor. This new impact wrench is really heavy, especially with my 8 amp hour battery on it. A larger battery has more amperage, so you’ll have more torque out of a fully charged battery. But that makes the tool really heavy. The tool also has a massive amount of vibrations due to how much torque it’s outputting. You really have to hold on to it. Some tools have balancing weights to help prevent vibrations. Harbor Freight, being a little cheaper, clearly did not use the balancing weights (There goes any chances for a sponsorship I guess). They likely did this for 2 reasons:
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Cost. It’s more expensive to build balancing weights into your motor.
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It takes away some power from your wrench (the motor has to spin the weights, which needs power).
Harbor Freight is trying to use the Hercules line to compete with Milwaukee and DeWalt. They need every ounce of torque in the most cost effective motor they can build, and sell it at a competitive price. I’m not knocking the Harbor Freight tool; I love my Harbor Freight tools (pls gib me a sponsorship), but I want to be upfront about the trade offs you get compared to buying a Milwaukee (which is severely overpriced).
I’m gonna end this rambling. Everyone has opinions on tools. I like my tools because they’re cheap, but they get the job done. I love wrenching, and I need to do it more often. (Harbor Freight pls give me a sponsorship. And you too Rock Auto).