A lot of crap this for this late Friday to late Saturday. Car was stolen and my maintenance schedule was also about to climax when it was stolen. I was going to do this over many weekends instead of one. (Less stress, more time, etc.) Also an oil leak in my car got to the unacceptable point. I've realized now that it was the oil pan gasket, but I also needed a new valve cover gasket because I think the seals for the spark plugs were throwing just the tiniest amount of oil into them.
What I planned for today and tomorrow:
Oil pan gasket (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVadCt-xJTY&hd=1 )
Valve cover gasket (Doesn't even need a video it's so damn simple)
Oil change with filter (Early)
ATF change (drain+fill) (On time to early)
Power steering fluid change (mega-drain, fill;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWm5bTwl38w&hd=1 ) (Overdue)
Go to pick n pull and get a special bracket for the steering column and replace the one in my car. (Mine was damaged during theft of car and has made the steering column very difficult to impossible to adjust)
Remove trunk interior. (There's a smell that the thieves left on it... yay...)
If time, fit carpet better. (Not install, just get the fit down better; it was pretty bad when I left it) Carpet I got is medium beige. My interior is dark grey. (ACC is the worst in terms of photography of their carpets)
I live in Seattle. The garage I work in is down near PDX. This complicates things since I have a busy life.
I had to buy a new air gun today because I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. I broke the old one on replacing disk rotors and never replaced it. I thought I didn't need to do anything with the exhaust and then I got under the car and was like, "Weird. Somehow I forgot that the exhaust is totally blocking the oil pan. Nice... So how should I do this, Internet?" And even with a breaker bar I couldn't get the exhaust bolts to come loose. (I didn't give it my all because I knew if it broke then my hands would slam into something and get busted) So... off to Harbor Freight.
Bought this from Harbor Freight:
http://www.harborfreight.com/air-to...-in-professional-air-impact-wrench-68424.html
Broke a 14mm chrome socket immediately with that on the exhaust coming off the exhaust manifold onto the rest of downpipe. That sucked since it was the only 14mm socket in the entire garage. (There are no metric sockets in the garage; just a few SAE) And, it was 8:00PM by that time. Luckily, Harbor Freight closes at 9:00. Rushed over there and got some supposedly impact sockets (They cost like 1.5-3 times as much as the other impact sockets that are chromes just painted black;scammy,much?) and some replacement chrome sockets that are color-coordinated. (Deep sockets for the impacts; couldn't decide between deep or standard, didn't want to pay for both, honestly. Also, the color chromes feel cheap and are 12 point. (Hate, but no choice) ) Also bought a chrome adapter set. (1/2" to 3/8", 3/8" to 1/4", etc.) They didn't have a true impact adapter set from what I could tell. Their extenders were also just chromes painted black.
EDIT: After realizing they're all chromes. (In a sense. Chrome-vanadium vs chrome-moly) I have to rephrase. They were painting CVs black. It didn't look like the painted black CVs were very much different from the other sockets. (Maybe thicker in construction) From my reading now about what a good impact socket is, CM seems to be the choice since it is less prone to exploding and taking out your eye.
Pic doesn't show it, but it is in the middle of it all. I didn't do as the video did for the oil pan because I didn't want to risk it with my downpipe to cat connection. I felt like the bolts might be so rusty that they'll just never go back on. Similarly, felt like that about any possible gaskets that would be there. Raised the exhaust on that joint (the rusty one...) with the jack and then wiggled off the middle rubber hanger for the full exhaust and moved the exhaust over a bit to give me clearance for the oil pan. There is a lot of flexibility at that joint btw. The downpipe hangs down quite a bit. So, there's quite a bit of movement possible with that connection. Surprisingly so, for me. But I don't know too much about exhausts.
Seemed to work out. I have the oil pan off and I took the valve cover off (Valve cover is too damn easy after that oil pan). Cleaned the oil pan as much as I could, but I might run it down with a pressure washer/hose tomorrow. (My environmental side hates getting any oil out there, but I need that fucker to be clean for the seal; also need to easily track whether or not I have oil leaks; maybe I am doing some harm now but more good in the end?) Same for valve cover.
Any suggestions on brushes to be using for cleaning these, btw? I assume I shouldn't use a steel wire brush.
In the end, I'll probably get the ATF, oil change, oil pan gasket, and the valve cover gasket done by the end of tomorrow. (7-8PM) I'll probably head back to Seattle after that. I would have really liked to gotten a lot more done, but having to take a couple trips to HF and then run into some issues... well, it's taken up a lot more time than I guessed. I did remove the trunk interior actually. It was remarkably easy. It'll get a nice cleaning but I won't put it back in until next weekend. (Doesn't matter, entire car interior is gutted)