Pontiac Wheel Bearings

Last month, before driving 1,000 miles to Tennessee and back for New Years, i took my car in to have it looked over.  The nice thing was that i took it to a shop where we have all of our work vehicles fixed, so they looked it over and took a test drive for free.  I had just started to notice a faint bumping noise when i made turns to the right and they confirmed that one of the wheel bearings was going bad. When i looked online i saw prices of wheel bearings for my 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP ranging between $40 and $200.  I wasn't sure exactly what i needed or why there was that huge difference in price.

Luckily Teresa at work said that Mike had just replaced the wheel bearings on a friends car a few weeks ago.  He even had the large 32mm socket that i needed to get the nut off.  He said he ordered his wheel bearings through eBay from a company called Detroit Axle.  Also everyone that i spoke to about the job said that i might as well replace both sides.  Once one side goes bad, that usually means that the other side isn't too far behind.  So i ordered 2 for a total of something like $70.  The parts arrived two days after i ordered them, since they were shipped from Detroit.

Thankfully Mike said he'd help me so i went over there one weekend morning.  He also suggested that we put on new brake pads since we would be right there and having to move the brakes to get at the bearings.  I checked SlickDeals and saw that Advance Auto Parts had a deal where if you spend something like $50 you get $15 off.  So i got a nice set of brake pads which only cost $35, rather then the crummy ones you get at a shop.

We took off the wheels and the break calipers, then removed the brake disc to expose the wheel bearing.  That's when we realized that the 32mm socket wouldn't fit the nut on my car.  We measured and the Pontiac Grand Prix ended up needing a 34mm socket instead.  So we took a quick drive up to AutoZone.  The cool thing is that you give them a $20 deposit and you can rent some of their tools.  Then when you're done you bring back the tool and you get all your money back.  I guess they figure that while you're there you'll buy parts.  So here is the impact wrench with the 34mm socket attached.

After we got the nuts off both sides it took some pounding to remove the wheel bearings.  The funny part was that after we removed them, the side that was supposedly good, actually looked worse then the side that was bad.  Here's a picture of the old and new parts.  From left to right is the old brake pads, the new pads, the new wheel bearing and then one of the old wheel bearings on the right side. 

You can see that the inner housing actually came off of the old bearing.  This was pretty common from all of the Youtube video's i watched.  It seemed like in half of them they had this problem.

Here's Mike putting one of the new wheel bearings back on, just past the half way point of the process.  

Probably the toughest part of the whole job was removing the three bolts which attach to the back wheel bearing.  The hard part is that they are always rusted, torqued on pretty hard and on the back side of the wheel.  Luckily we got them all off, but that took the most time.  

Then i remembered from replacing the rear struts on the Grand Prix, that it's always a good idea to use a wire brush and WD-40 on the rusted bolts when putting them back on.  Although these bolts were a lot thicker and less likely to snap then the ones that John and i had to deal with last year.

I brought over some of my tools and lights just in case we needed them.  The lights are always good to help you see what you are doing.  It's bad enough when you are bending over trying to remove an old rusted bolt from an awkward angle, it's even worse when you can't see the parts.  Here's the new wheel bearing on the car with the 3 bolts and large nut screwed into place.

After this we just attached the disc brake, then the caliper with the new brake pads installed in them, then put the wheels on.  

We started around 9AM and were done before noon, that included the trip to AutoZone and back.  It definitely helped that Mike knew what he was doing, i'm not sure if i could have done this on my own.  Maybe i could have, but it most certainly would have taken me more then 3 hours.

All You Need to Paint Like Bob Ross

According to all the Bob Ross shows i've ever watched on PBS, all i need to paint some awesome mountains and happy little trees are this and a metal putty knife.

The big old 2" brush that i saw in a store the other day.

Obviously i would also need the paint, Titanium White and a little Vandyke Brown.

Las Vegas Wedding

Back in December Karrie and I flew to Las Vegas because her cousin EJ was getting married.  We flew there on Spirit Airlines, later we vowed never to fly on Spirit again if we could help it.  They charged fees for everything, checked bags, carry-on bags and to pick our seats.

We stayed in the Hard Rock Hotel which on the map looked like it was just off the main strip.  It really wasn't and let me just say, it isn't walking distance either.  The free shuttle stops for the night around 8PM so our walk to the strip at 9PM took about 40 minutes.  This is the view of the strip from the Hard Rock parking garage. 

EJ and Heidi got married at one of the chapels between the strip and Freemont strip.  It was close to the space needle and also near where the show Pawn Stars is filmed.

Afterwords we all walked around town.  This was when we were walking around the Freemont Street.  It was really cool there, everything was lit up.

Here's Heidi spinning the big wheel.  Unfortunately i didn't win $1000 like last year.  But we all had fun.

The last night we were back on the strip walking around.  First we went to see the Pirate show at Treasure Island.  Unfortunately it was closed for repairs for the month of December.  So we headed south and saw the fire breathing volcano in front of the Mirage.  Then we hurried down to the Bellagio to see the fountain.

This was Karrie sitting on the wall waiting for the fountain to start.

It was pretty cool but it didn't seem to last as long as normal, they were playing Christmas music too.

After the fountain we went drove to the airport and flew home.

It was fun but a little cold at night.  It was around 45 or 50 degrees there in December.  It would have been a lot better if it were sunny and 80 degrees.

Meteor Shower

A couple of weeks ago there was a meteor shower where i live.  Actually it was two small meteor showers which overlapped for a night.  I've taken some pictures of the night sky before with my Canon camera and the CHDK software.  

• Star Pictures
• Up at the Cottage - Taking out the Docks

Using CHDK i usually set the exposure time between 24 and 40 seconds.  Then i run the intervalometer script which repeatedly takes pictures over several hours.  The good news is that i saw a few meteors.  This picture is probably the best one.  Now this is a compressed photo about 20% of the size and quality of the original.  But you can still see the meteor breaking up as little flecks of light are all around the white line.

The bad news is that where i live i don't see a ton of stars.  If i lived in a more rural area i'm sure i would have seen a bunch more meteors.  The other things i had going against me was where to get a clear view of the sky and the fact that it was really cold in December.  I killed two birds with one stone there, i put the camera on a tripod and set it on top of my garage.  That way i could get a view of the sky without any tree interference and also i could stay warm by operating the camera out of the upstairs window.

Here's a combination of all the photos i took that night.  The rotating lines you see aren't meteors, they are are the stars rotating in the sky.  You could almost see the north star which would be in the bottom right corner, but the roof blocks it.

And here's the video created from those pictures.  Although i forgot to "up" the contrast before i created the video, it looked better on my computer at home but now that i see it on Youtube it looks very washed out and the stars aren't very visible.