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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Sixty Dollar Mower

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

The house Karrie's renting has a huge yard, probably like a half acre and it would take hours to mow. So i looked on Craigslist for a while and saw a riding mower for $100. The add said it cranks over but won't start. When i showed up the guy turned the key and nothing happened. He fiddled around with it for a while but still nothing. He said how about $60, so i said sure.

What i know is that it's a Lawn Chief riding mower. I think the 11 - 36 means that it's an 11 horse power engine with a 36" wide cutting deck. I have no idea what year it is. The model number is completely worn off.
As always, using what i've learning:
Compression
Spark/Timing
Fuel/Air

I had a checklist
First i washed and cleaned everything
The air filter was full of oil and falling apart
Then i had to see if i could get it to turn over. I used a screw driver to jump the connection across the solenoid. It worked, the engine started to crank. So following the wires back from the solenoid i realized the problem was a loose wire at the starter. I cut it, rewired it and soldered it in place and the problem was fixed.
I checked the compression and it was around 55psi. Good enough
After working on the last mower i made sure i checked to see that the timing pin wasn't sheared. It looked ok. I was going to remove the fly wheel but after an hour of hitting with a hammer and prying i couldn't get it off so i gave up.
The guy i bought it from said that it just wouldn't start one day so he tried messing with the carburetor but it still didn't work. When i took the carburetor apart it was super dry and lots of powdered gas. It's there on the concrete next to the bowl.
I cleaned the carburetor and even soaked the jets in a coffee can full of carb cleaner for 24 hours. My hope was that the engine was fine and all it needed was a good cleaning and some fresh fuel. So i put everything back together, added gas and after about 2 minutes it started up.

The engine ran ok but the carburetor needs to be tweaked a bit so it doesn't stall. After driving it around the yard a couple times it was a lot better. Now it starts just fine.

I oiled and WD-40'd everything, changed the oil, sharpened the blades, wrapped all exposed wires with electrical tape and it was set to go. All 4 tires were flat and i thought i'd have to get at least 1 new inner tube, but when i filled them up with air there were no leaks.

It has 3 gears, all of them slow. The shifter must have broken at some point so the previous owner used a lug nut.

I didn't like it so i made a new wood one from a branch in the yard. I cut a section of it that fit my hand, then stained it and covered it in 4 coats of polyurethane.

I thought i was all done. But i wasn't.

For some reason the mower would move, but only in first gear and only really slowly. It turned out to be the belt and pulley on the transmission were slipping. There wasn't enough tension because a frame bracket broke off. It was only being held on by one side. So i fixed the bracket with a piece of angled steel. Now the frame was actually attached to the transmission with enough tension.

It ran great in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear. Then it broke again...
Very confused I checked everything again and saw that the spark plug wasn't sparking. I had to re-solder an old cracked wire and then bend the tip of the spark plug to decrease the gap.

Finally, all done.

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$30 Mower

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Last week i bought a lawnmower on craigslist for $30. It runs, which means it is already better off than the old Snapper riding mower i bought last year. It can also mulch or attach a bag to collect the grass clippings. The one downside is that it isn't self propelled. That's not a huge deal because i will only be using this to mow in tight corners where i can't get with the riding mower.

So i got it home, cleaned it, sharpened the blade, sprayed it with WD-40 and then oiled everything. The motor is a Briggs & Straton just like the Snapper mower. It's 5hp and seems to run well.

One problem it had was the throttle cable was jammed. Apparently the last owner figured the way to un-jam it was to pull so hard on the handle that it snapped off. So i removed the cable and tried everything to loosen it. After about 30 minutes of bending the cable and twisting the wire it finally freed up.

Now i had to fix the broken throttle handle. First i thought of just cutting a piece of aluminum and bolting it on to where the original had snapped off. But then i noticed an old bicycle tire quick release. I ground off the rivet and the new handle fit perfectly around the broken plastic dial.

One bolt and nut was all it took. Simple and strong.

It almost looks like it was meant to be there.

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