Pontiac Rear Struts

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Any time i had more than 2 people in my car and hit a bump, there was a loud bang from the back. I figured it was time to replace the rear struts.

I wanted to use something called a Quick Strut, which is where the strut and spring come pre-assembled. This would eliminate me having to buy and use a spring compressor. The problem is that i have a 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP Competition Group. Originally the car came with special rear struts that were higher compression than the base Grand Prix or even the GT and i could not find a Quick Strut the same as my GTP. I figured that there wasn't a huge difference installing the standard strut, nothing i would notice while driving.

So i ended up buying the left and right rear Monroe Quick Struts from rockauto.com. They were $120 each, which is about $30 cheaper than places like Sears.


Several months ago i took my car to Katie and John's and John helped me fix the heads-up-display. So again he agreed to help.

The first side was awful and took 3 hours to replace. Here's a time lapse video of us trying to get the strut off.

It took a while trying to figure out how to remove some of the bolts, how high to jack up the car and what order to do things. The biggest problem we had was the sway bar link bolt was really rusted and we ended up snapping it while trying to get the nut off.

So we had to go to the store and get the right metric bolt with the right size threads. When we did finally get the strut off i noticed that the spring was different. The new one looks a lot better then what was on there.

After learning all the steps and tricks we fixed the other side in under 45 minutes. This time we sprayed WD-40 and used a wire brush on the threads of the rusted bolt and it came off much easier.

Here's another time lapse video of us doing the second strut.

For most of the video i was in the trunk messing with these 3 bolts.

The car rides much better now.

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Final Lotus of the Year

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Well as of right now the lotus plants are in the basement for the winter.

I didn't want the roots to freeze so i brought them inside. When it warms up enough in the spring i'll take them back out.
Here's what i have previously written about trying to grow them:
Sprouting Lotus Seeds
Lotus Update
Lotus in the Sun

Anyway going back a few months ... I was down near the Ohio border again for work and saw the lotus fields. Here they are in August, in a channel off of Lake Erie.
A view of all the lotus beds.
There were millions of them.
The view from the causeway.
A view of one of the rivers near a power plant to the north, flowing into Lake Erie.
Here's what the area looks like from above. The water is Lake Erie, the highway is I-75.
Back at my house the hot 90 degree summer days really made them grow big. The sun, heat and humidity outside caused them to take off. Here was one of my first aerial leaves before it opened up.
There were around four aerial leaves per pot.
The lotus effect on the leaf.

Some close-ups.

Back down near Monroe, Michigan i found a place where you can see them up close. It's visible from I-75 but you have to loop around to get there.

The leaves there grew much bigger then the ones in my backyard.
The seed pods which grew from the center of the flower.
By this time a lot of the seed pods had turned brown.
A couple of them broke off their stalks.
But there was a ton of them. If you figure that each seed pod has around 20 seeds on average, you can see how many seeds are here.

Although like i said earlier, seeds aren't the main way that these grow. They spread from the tubers in the mud, like how grass in your yard spreads.
Here they are in September. The leaves are turning brown and starting to go dormant.
The ones in Monroe had already turned brown.
This is right before i cut the leaves off, drained the water and moved them to the basement.
I'm expecting great things next spring. Hopefully all the energy is stored up in the tubers and will cause the plant to shoot up bigger then they grew from a seed this year.

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Random Photos - Lake Erie

Friday, 21 October 2011

These were taken in October, in Monroe, on the shore of Lake Erie. The water level was about 1 foot lower then it typically is. There were several sand bars 100 feet off shore which are usually under water.


Zebra muscles on a rock.
Also it was some sort of Monarch Butterfly migration. Every tree branch and bush on the shore line was covered. There were tens of thousands of butterfly's there.

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Lotus in the Sun

Monday, 20 June 2011

Well i know now what it takes to get them to grow. Abnormally warm Michigan weather. It's been very warm, it was even 90 degrees here for several days and the plants grew great.

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The best thing about having them outside is that the pads don't dry up and turn brown. Growing them outside is definitely the way to go. High heat/humidity and lots of sun. The water in the buckets got up to 80 degrees.
First though, let me go back. I originally learned about the American Lotus when working at the CE Power Plant in Monroe Michigan a year ago.
It has a bay next to the plant, which is part of Lake Erie.
The seeds were everywhere, i picked up a few over the course of 3 days.

This is what the bay looked like last year sometime around July or August. You can see the huge lotus bed.
Early this year. It's foggy there a lot.
A month and a half ago, still no signs of the lotus, but by now they are probably visible. The nets are used to stop plants and dead fish from getting into the turbines.
While i was there last year i saw some weird seed pods and grabbed a couple of seeds that had washed up. I tried growing the plant indoors during the winter, but it didn't go well. Here's what i've learned about trying to grow a lotus, inside, in Michigan, during the winter:

1. High heat - keep between 70-80 degrees, if it's too cold it slows down their growing. Heater, light. Not only for growing but also for starting the seed.

2. High humidity - don't let the leaf dry out once it reaches the surface, for me that meant covering the bowl with Saran wrap.

3. Let the roots start before planting in the mud - i noticed that if i put the seed and stem in the mud too early that the roots never started growing. But if i let the plant grow in a bowl of water the roots started fine. Then i was able to carefully transfer it to the mud.

4. Change the water frequently - i'm not sure if it's bacteria or algae but a white scum develops in the water during the first stages of growing.
Here's what i saw when i finally figured all of that out. If i planted the seed too early it would die. But if i waited till the roots grew an inch or two then planted it in mud it did ok.
I even checked the PH of the water. It's suppose to be between 6 and 8.
The plant will grow just in a bowl of water for several weeks. There's enough energy in the seed for it to develop roots and put up around 4 lilypads.
These were grown in just water.
This is what it looked like in March earlier this year. It was still too cold for the plants to start coming up. Although i could get them to start growing, they would turn brown and soon die.
Early this spring, on the way to the CE plant i got off I-75 at exit 11. There's another power plant on Lake Erie where the lotus plant grows right near the road. You can see last years stems in the water.

I already commented on what i thought about the lotus being protected here in Michigan. In Missouri, Rhode Island and other states it's a nuisance species, you can get fined for planting it. Here in Michigan it's protected, you get fined for taking it out. That's dumb.

Anyway, i found it very difficult to grow them inside during the winter. But since it warmed up and i moved the buckets outside they are doing way better. Outside now there is high humidity and high heat, the two things i was having problems with inside. I'll know by the end of summer how well they grew.

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