Ness' Outpost

The Vibe and Outlander got their winter tires rotated on today from the basement.

It’s so much faster in a garage with a lift and all four corners off the ground. Using the scissor jack and cranking them up one at a time sure does slow things down. The lock nuts on my rims were on way tighter than the lugs. The electric impact gun couldn’t get them off so I had to go and get the 2′ breaker bar and break them by hand. All the brake pads look good. I didn’t get into the drums on the Vibe – they should probably be looked at for Lauren’s next oil change. I have a feeling her drums are going to be my next job.

Canadian Tire just recently had a tool commercial with this Stanley FatMax impact gun connected to a dinky recoil spring air hose. I was about to get upset that they were misleading people that they could use their crappy little portable compressor with such a tool but according to the spec’s it looks like it should work with my compressor. Needs 3.3 CFM@90PSI mine puts out 4.1.

It is listed at $170 and out of stock for something I already have an electric tool for. Kind of hard to justify the purchase even if it means one less thing to lug upstairs.

The Vibe came due for another oil change this week. I was out early to do the job armed with the right tools this time.

Luckily I had an extra crush ring on hand since the old one didn’t come off with the drain plug from the oil pan. It just stuck seized to the opening – or so I thought. When I went to put the plug back in after draining it was gone and had fallen into the oil pan with all the used oil. I put a new one on and fished out the old one when the used oil was poured into the jug for recycling.

There seem to be a lot of searches for oil change photos so I took a few locating the parts.
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I got out the tools to do an oil change on the Vibe tonight before it rains. 14mm box wrench, oil filter and filter wrench, 3/8″ ratchet and extension. The brand spanking new rino ramps were cut free from their packaging and I was all set to go.

The Vibe is a standard and I drive an automatic every day. I can drive standard — it just isn’t pretty. The rino ramps aren’t that high, only about 8 inches or so but became obstacle number one. I couldn’t get the vehicle up on them since our driveway is sloped too that extra slope made it really hard to get her up on the ramps. Lauren put the car up on them no problem for me.
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Lauren’s 2006 Pontiac Vibe (aka Matrix in sheeps clothing) has a pretty standard breaking system. The front are discs and the rears are drums.

Today Kevin and I did a front break job. New pads, rotors and fluids. It was a pretty standard job and is really well explained over at Generation Vibe in this post. They don’t talk about bleeding the brakes — and you probably don’t have to do this if your fluid is regularly changed anyway. We did bleed the brakes when we were done, but that isn’t included in the post above.

The only thing to add is that I used a 19mm socket to push the slide pin rubber boots back into place after removing them to clean and grease them.

Parts came from Napa and cost about $175 for rotors, ceramic pads and some brake grease. Be sure to have lots of brake cleaner on hand since the rotors were oiled and bagged. They need to be cleaned off before they can be installed – I do this anyway even for dry rotors. I tend to get greasy fingers all over them.

I did some work on Lo’s Vibe this weekend. Kevin kindly invited me over to his dads to enjoy the comfort of a two car garage even though it was pretty warm around here for January.

We did an oil change and replaced the spark plugs. She had 120k km on the vehicle and it was a little early for the plugs but it made sense to do since Lo was concerned about a drop in fuel mileage.

I should also replace her air filter and clean the MAF sensor but I’ll leave those jobs for warmer days it’s now dipped back down into the negatives.
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