High end cedar porch construction: the finale

In the previous blog putting the heavy awkward rafters up by myself was discussed.  The result was beautiful and the structure looked like a pergola.   I pondered should I stop and leave it as is? No way Jose!  Now it was time to put on the planking.  Really the planking  has two functions.  One is to provide the finished ceiling and the other is to provide the roof sheathing to attach the shingles.  Since  I was required to use use roofing nails that were 1.25" to attach the shingles, I had to use  2" inch thick planking otherwise the nails would poke through the ceiling and make an unsightly mess

The 1.25" nails were galvanized which is not a good for cedar since it will make a black stain.  However, I figured (time will tell) that since the nail did not go all the way through the planking and was covered by shingles that I would never see the black marks.

I almost went with a tongue and grove system.  But in the end I decided on using ship lap with a beveled edge.  To make the ship lap I used my harbor freight dado blade on my table saw and cut the lap in in one pass.  It was actually a pretty big cut to take out of the wood all at once but I was impatient.  In fact my saw blade would slow down a lot and the saw would get all choked up with saw dust requiring that I clean the port out when it was running.

Below is a picture of the table saw setup.  Notice I have fence that embeds the dado blade, one feather board to press the board down to the table and two feather boards to keep the board up against the fence.  This assured that the ship lap is consistently and precisely cut every time.  I probably could have used another feather board to press the board to the table on the out feed end.

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In addition to the ship lap joint I used my Milwaukee router to bevel the edges.  Below are 6 ship lap boards after they have been finished with Olympic elite wood land oil.

Installing Planking can have its challenges.  It can be warped and when it is installed it can end up uneven and unsightly.  One thing I had going for me was the top plate or main beam was really close to being parallel to the house and the rafters were all really close to the same length.  So my attention to detail in the beginning meant I was set up for success.

To combat the problem of warped wood, I devised a system to take out the twists and turns making all the planks straight and parallel to each other.  To do this I made use of pipe clamps which pressed the wood together and made the lap joints tight.  In the end this required some long pipe clamps as more and more planks were added and even using multiple pipe clamps to grab on to each other to get the job done.

 

To fasten the planks to the rafters I used 3.5" stainless steel ring shank nails.  I put three nails in per rafter.

During the design phase of this project the designer was very insistent on using diagonal bracing to shore up the cedar porch.  But dad who had structural engineering experience knew it was unnecessary.  We submitted the design without diagonals to the professional engineer and he passed it. When the designer found this out he said, "he bought it" referring to the professional engineer and indicated that the p.e. would sign anything.  I decided to trust my dad on the diagonal brace issue and went to building the the porch.

It was actually quite wobbly in the beginning before I had installed the planks which made me think that maybe some diagonal bracing needed to be done.  But when I finished adding all the planks, the porch was as solid and sturdy as a brick shit house and wasn't going anywhere.  Dad was right!

After the planking, I had a number of finishing tasks for the porch like putting on the fascia and drip edge all along the perimeter.  The end result was beautiful and shown below.

 

 

 

 

In the end I am so glad that I stuck with the cedar porch idea.  But the question is, did I save anything by doing this work myself?  Exactly how much I saved is hard to estimate.   I really doubt that I could find any one in town to do the custom cedar porch that I had made.  Because I did it myself and went through several iterations of design I was able to get in touch with what I really wanted.  In fact I'm sure people have asked a contractor to do work for them and then realize once it is all done that its not what they really wanted and they end up unhappy.  Case in point what I had originally conceived of when I started the porch is totally different then what I ended up with.

But what rate would  a contractor charge?  I know one thing for sure is that every time I asked for a change in the plans, which there were many, the cost would go up a lot and it would be way more than the initial estimate.

My estimate is as follows:

For materials cost I spent about $7050.  The complete break down of materials is listed below:

$7.54       dowels

$30.13     gloves

$237.03   nails

$154.41   Simpson connectors, anchors

$17.47     anchors

$12.69     sand

$33.74     ledger anchors

$4329.32 cedar

$14.97     saw dust bags

$326.4     olympic oil

$89.07     sand paper

$70.2        mineral spiits

$26.87     paint brush

$$450      permit/

$450      engineering

$750      drawings

The number of hours I worked was 231.  Keep in mind that these hours are onsite physical labor hours and don't include things like planning and running to the store to get materials.  So I think my recorded hours are conservative and comparable to what a contractor would spend doing the job.  After looking at the site homewyse.com $50 dollar an hour for contractors labor rate seems to be on the low end.  Drywallers make this much and I think that the fine work required by the cedar porch is at a higher skill level and would probably cost more. Anyway based on $50 dollars an hour labor rate a contractor would have charged $11,550 for labor.

The total contractor cost for installing the cedar portion of the porch would be about $18600.

That's means s whopping $11550 or 62% was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr

 

High end cedar porch construction: the rafters

In the last two blogs, the ledger and the main beam (top plate) were discussed.   After having put these two structural members in place it was now time to make and place the rafters.  There were a couple of challenges that I had to  overcome with the making and placing of the rafters.  One of the challenges would be I had to make my first birdsmouth ever on a large beam without any second chances and the other was I had to place these awkward rafters up higher than I could reach.

The porch required 10 4" x 10" rafters.  8 of them were exactly the same.  Each of them had to be cut at an angle at one end so that they would be flush to the house and account for the roof pitch of 12/2.5.  In addition I had to run a router bit down the two edges to make the rafters more appealing to the eye.

Each rafter also had to be drilled at an angle at each end for two countersunk 14" 1/2" lag bolts which secured the rafters to the ledger and main beam.  The lags provide 1000 lbs withdrawal strength and have the nice feature that they are hidden from view.

In addition each end of the rafter needed a birds mouth which allows the rafter to sit nicely on flat surface on the ledger and main beam.   The positioning of the birdsmouth is important.  If you don't get it right then there will be an unsightly gap or it will cause the wall it sits on to become out of plumb..  Also the angles of the heel and seat must be perfect to make it look professional.

To help me with these challenges I made a guide out of 2"x8" lumbers.  I already knew how to position the birdsmouth against the wall of the house.  So I made a birdsmouth in the end of the guide.  But for the other birdsmouth that rests on the main beam I did not know the position.  In fact the position is slightly different depending on what part of the main beam the rafter sits on.  So I left that birdsmouth off the guide.

Once the guide was made I attempted to put it on the ledger and main beam by using brute strength and a ladder.  It didn't take much to cause it to fall to the ground and leave a mark on the ledger.  Time for plan B!

To assist with the placement of  the guide, I built a crane using the cheap harbor freight winch and dock lumber which is shown below. 

This helped stop the guide from falling to the ground and allowed me to mark where the birdsmouth should go at my leisure.  Only there was one problem, if the rafter were to be installed with the crane I had built it would be difficult to get the crane removed from the rafter.  Woops!

The next step was to cut the birdsmouth.  I followed the procedure used in this video for the seat cut in the birds mouth.  I actually had to come at the birdsmouth from both sides of the beam because it was too thick and my circular saw was too shallow.  To make sure the angle was correct I marked it on the rafter and followed the mark with my saw.

For the heel cut I had to tilt the saw to 21.8 degrees and make the saw the appropriate depth.  Since there were a number of birdsmouths to make I took a spare block of cedar and cut it when the saw was adjusted.  The block served as a means to quickly setup the saw when going back and forth between saw adjustments.  I would just put the saw in the block and make the saw match it.  Once adjusted I made the heel cut with one pass.

Since the saw blade is circular the wood was not completely freed from the rafter, I had to use a chisel to knock out the wood from the birdsmouth where it was left attached.  It was easily done but left an undesirable uneven surface so I used my Makita 1/2 sheet sander and smoothed it off.  The end result is shown below.

 

Next I drilled the countersink hole and the shaft hole for lag bolt holes, sanded the rafter and applied Olympic elite woodland oil to finish it off.

After the beam was ready I redesigned the crane and installed the beam shown below.

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As was said before 8 of the rafters were the same but there were two rafters that were not.  These beams rested on the ledger but not the main beam.  The reason that these different rafters came about was because the way the house sits on the property.  The porch I wanted ends up crossing the set back line.  This required that one corner of the porch to be cut off at an angle in the design.  Well if one corner gets cut off then so does the other to make it nice looking.  Even though the set back line is a pain in the ass, the end result was much more architecturally pleasing cedar porch.  So I'm kind of glad I had the problem to deal with.

Because the 2 different rafters did not sit on the main beam they had to sit on posts.  This called for a more complicated joint.  It required a two oak peg mortise and tenon joint and an embedded lag to secure the rafter to the post.  In addition a birdsmouth is involved.  The mortise was difficult for me to make due to its angle in the wood but I'm happy with the end result.

At this point the cranes broad base made it impractical to use at the end of the porch without wasting a bunch of time to try make it work.   So I placed a call into the cavalry and asked my friend Glen to help me put in the last two rafters.  Nice to have backup when you need it!   The end result is shown below.

  

Now that the rafters were all installed, it was time for the cedar planking.  The planking job came out perfect and after having done it I can see how it is easy to totally screw it up making the job look unprofessional.  In the next blog we will discuss what techniques I used to make the planking come out as good if not better than a professional would have done even though it was my first time.

Happy Building!

The Dr.  

High end cedar porch construction: the main beam

In the previous blog I talked about the ledger which required that I make my first ever lap joint.  This time around I want to focus on the largest piece of wood in the whole cedar porch.  It is the main beam that holds the other end of the rafters.

The beam was a very nice piece of wood.  Its dimensions were 6" x 12" by 20'2".  I actually really needed the extra 2" in the 20' measurement because of the patio slab dimensions and was lucky that 20' beam I ordered came a little longer. It was rough cut western red cedar.  It was gorgeous and smelled wonderful.
 
To start off I decided to plane the beam. Luckily before dad left he helped me plane the beam through my inadequate 6" porter cable thickness planar. It was ridiculous shoving that huge piece of wood through there.  The beam was actually 6.25" wide so we were maxed out with the planar.

One trick I learned through this process was to put Johnson Paste Wax on the the wood bearing surface of the planar which would make the wood slide more easily.  Also I had bolted the planar down to the sturdy shop bench I had made but even so everything was just too small so that the beam never quite aligned right with the planar and so we ended up pushing with all our might to get it through.  We ran it through a couple of times but it was not the best planing job. 

Once the 6" dimension was done it was time to tackle the 12" dimension.  I decided that a joiner would be the way to go.  I have a 6" Joiner from Lowes and there was no way I could run this huge beam on this little joiner which only has a 31" long table.  I had a hard enough time with 8' lumber.  20' lumber would be impossible.  Ever since I owned the joiner I wanted to get a better one I just never could find one for a decent price.  But now I was forced to put in an order for a joiner with a 6' long table for about $1000.   I wasn't sure that this would work but I had to try something.

Luckily, the item was discontinued and I did not get it.  I say luckily because my dad came up with the idea to use the joiner I had upside down.  When I did this I was quite amazed how well it worked.  The joiner even has two convenient bars on the bottom that function well as handles to hold the joiner as I guided it along the wood beam.   Its almost as if the joiner was made to work upside down.  After working so well my opinion of my little joiner had changed from I want to get rid of this piece of shit  to I kinda like this useful tool.  I think I'll keep it.

After planing the 20'2" beam I worked on the post joints.  By this time dad was gone and I had to do the rest of the work myself.  For the post joints Dad and I had designed a mortise and tenon joint with two oak pegs.  The joint was stronger than hurricane ties but also provided the beauty of a natural wood joint.  The mortise was designed to be 5" deep by 2.75" by 5.5".

To make a 5" deep mortise, I turned to youtube for instruction.  I found this video which makes use of chisels.   After watching several videos like this I decided to buy the cheapest mortise chisels I could find which are still pretty expensive.  They are Narex mortise chisels from the czech republic found on amazon.com.

I also saw this video of a chain saw mortisor and started drooling.  A chain  saw mortisor would have been so nice for this project but its hefty price tag of $1700 dollars put it out my reach.  I did think of using my drill press with a Forstner bit or mortise attachment on it but the beam height of 12" made it so that it would actually not even fit on the drill press once the bit was in the chuck.

What I actually ended up doing was using my milwaukee router with its plunge base and a 5 inch straight bit.  The five inch bit was the longest I could find.  I really wanted a 6" one, but this is just another example of why its so hard to make anything custom in the world today.  For making such a deep mortise I found that a 1/2" shank bits work best because I actually burnt my router out on a previous project with a 1/4" shank straight bit that bent.  Because the bit was bent, it vibrated the armature and then the router went up in smoke.  Long story short I got a professional to fix it and he screwed up the repair by not torquing it so that it fell apart when I was using it.  Luckily I was not hurt.  I had to buy the expensive tool to fix it and I decided not to ever let that guy repair my tools again

To aid in the making of the mortise I used a wood guide so that the mortise came out accurate.  Unfortunately, the mortise I made was only 4" deep. 

 

To carve out the final inch I resorted to a using a cheap drill guide,  drill extension and a Forstner bit.

The Forcner bit left a pretty rough bottom in the mortise so in the end I used my czech mortise chisels to clean the mortise up.  The end result is shown below.  Luckily the shoulder of the tenon covers up the roughness of the mortise edge so it is not seen

The next step was the tenon.  This was easily done with my harbor freight dado blade on my Dewalt table saw.  I also used a table saw sled that I had made previously from this video so that the shoulder and tenon would be square and accurate.  Shown below is half a tenon cut on the sled.
  

 

Once the tenons were cut it was time to fit them into the mortises.  Because I made the mortise and tenon accurately it was a tight joint.  There was a little clean out of the mortises to get the tenons in all the way and in fact it was necessary to apply Johnson paste wax to the tenon to prevent the tenon from getting stuck.

The next step was to drill the holes in the beam and tenon for oak pegs.  There were two pegs per tenon and I made sure to drill the holes when the tenons were fully engaged in the mortise.  I also made sure not to mix the posts up since each had a custom mortise and tenon joint.

To finish off the beam I ran a router bit down the edge, sanded the whole beam with my Makita half sheet finish sander and put Olympic elite natural woodland oil on all the wood pieces.  

Before I move on here I would just like to say that through this process I was sweating bullets and was stressed.  I feared making a mistake on this beautiful ancient wood and rendering it useless for the project.  What a waste that would be.  This is kind of the way it is for all my wood working projects.  All tasks have to be done with precision which requires great focus.  It pays not to rush things.

Once the wood was dry I was ready to put them in place.  But the question was, how could I possibly do this?  The wood was so large that a helper seemed to be the only way to mange it.  But because of liability concerns with bringing uninsured people over to help I came up with another way. 

To get the wood out of the garage and onto the patio slab in the back yard I made two dollies out of harbor freight caster wheels and some leftover wood.  This allowed me to easily transport the lumber to the porch.

 

Next I assembled the posts and beam and secured them with the oak pegs.  I then installed the ABU66 Simpson brackets on the cement pad which already had the anchor bolts sticking out ready to accept them.  With brackets in place I made use of a harbor freight winch and wood crane to erect the wall.

 

The winches from harbor freight are great for short time use.  When I buy them I use a 20% coupon that I can find online on my phone when I'm in the store.  I actually have owned 5 winches now and had to return 4 of them before the 90 day deadline because they broke.  I actually had to pay for one because it broke after the 90 day period.

Notice from the picture, I took care to protect the wood from the cable by wrapping it in wood and cardboard.  Once the beam wall was up I made sure the posts were plumb and the right distance from the house and nailed the posts into the Simpson brackets.  I left the top secured to the crane because it turns out that you cannot rely on the nailed Simpson post brackets to keep your wall up.  The nails could pull out and the wall can come crashing down.

In addition to the nails I put two through bolts in each post to fasten it to the  Simpson bracket.  The bolts are required because a hurricane could  strike my location and the roof would tend act like a giant sail creating a great force on the posts that could cause them to separate from the foundation. The bolt nail combination provides 2300 pounds of uplift protection through each post.  The porch would eventually have 5 posts.

Now that the main beam wall was up, it was time to start thinking of putting the rafters on.  This of course required more ingenuity on doing the task myself.,  This time the heights involved  were as high as 15', the rafter lumber dimensions were 4" x 10" x 14' long and the rafter weight was about 150 pounds.

In the next blog I will explain how I mastered putting these rafters up by myself.

Happy Building

The Dr.

 

 

High end cedar porch construction: making the ledger.

After a year and half of planning and doing physical construction work, I was making good progress on the new two car garage (which had been expanded from a one car garage), the cedar covered porch and the boat house with a boat lift. I was now at the stage to focus on the cedar covered porch.

The planning of the cedar porch was difficult.  Originally I had asked the designer for a screened in porch.  He came up with a cookie cutter design which was the same as every other generic screened in porch in the town.  Dad saw this design and said, "this is a special house you should build something high end like a cedar covered porch."  He showed me some pictures on the internet he found of some beautiful cedar porch additions.  I was enticed but I hesitated because it meant changing my plans and I was not that construction savvy anyway so I didn't know what would be involved to make it work in Florida with hurricane codes. I wasn't even sure if it was possible.  However the more I thought about it and the more dad alleviated my concerns with his engineer/construction experienced based answers the more I fell for the idea.

Another deciding factor was I had previously made a beautiful cedar BBQ bench.  Because of this, a cedar covered porch was ideal to protect it and to complement it.  See the picture below of the western red cedar BBQ bench.

The next step was to get the designer to draw it up.  So I drew some sketches up in Microsoft Visio, Dad and I ran some engineering calculations and we submitted the drawing to the designer.  Since the designer had little experience with cedar and ignored our request to hide all the fasteners for the joints the result was unacceptable.  It had a bunch of exposed galvanized hurricane ties all over the place and weird half lap joints that were not very strong.   After seeing this I realized that we could not rely on the designer to provide us with a solution to any problems that we encountered on the porch. This was just not his field of expertise.

Dad and I continued refining the design.  We designed in mortise and tenon joints with oak pegs that were stronger than the Simpson hurricane ties that designer suggested.  We also came up with an embedded lag bolt joint which made use of a birds mouth that tied the rafters to the ledger and the main beam.  The bolt was completely hidden from view making the design more pleasing to the eye.  We did leave the exposed ABU66 Simpson brackets that tie the posts to the foundation that the designer came up with.  The alternatives were just too crazy and the brackets look kind of neat anyway.  If I wanted to I could cover them with cedar trim.  We resubmitted the changes to the designer and then to the professional engineer.

When the professional engineer analyzed it, he put his stamp of approval on it as well as a disturbing note.  The note essentially made it impossible for us to build the cedar porch and covered the engineer if a failure should happen. Basically it required the cedar to posses high bending strength which meant that a select structural grade cedar had to be used.  I called around and all I could find was no. 2 cedar.

Due to the large amount of time that had been spent designing the porch,  the cost of the materials, the frustration encountered with designer's defensiveness when we asked questions he did not know the answer to and the building departments crazy code requirements, dad was of the opinion that he was sorry he came up with the cedar porch idea.

However one of my strengths is I know when I have a good idea to pursue.  I can visualize the idea and then latch on to it which then makes me ignore all the reasons people find for me not to do what I'm trying to do and I become unstoppable.   To over come this obstacle I decided to use bigger lumber.  I knew I could get the engineer to remove the note if I did this.  When I told my dad this he said those magical words that I love to hear him say, "the design is over built"  I countered with, "the bigger dimensions make the cedar porch more architecturally pleasing"  With the new dimensions I attempted to contact the designer but he was off on vacation for three weeks.  Luckily he had given me a PDF and I went to editing that drawing in Microsoft paint.  I then was able to convert it back to a PDF and I submitted the 5th iteration of the design to the engineer.  We got his stamp of approval and the building departments approval soon followed.

After jumping through all those hoops, the foundation was constructed (which was discussed in a previous blog) and then I ordered the cedar.  I obtained the cedar from Lowes for about $4000.  They actually got it form a lumber yard in Tampa FL.  It was really beautiful western red cedar.  I had obtained some planed  2" thick planks and some rough cut beams the largest of which was 6" x 12" x 20'.  The cedar was appearance grade no. 2 cedar with a few splits in the wood here and there.

Why did we use western red cedar?  Cedar is excellent for its durability in the outdoor environment.  It is rot and bug resistant.  It is also one of the less pricey varieties of specialty lumber and large dimensions are obtainable.  We considered cypress and red wood which are two other woods that can be obtained in large dimensions but it was very difficult to locate anything in the quantity we needed and with a reasonable price.  Besides these woods would not match the BBQ bench.

Western red cedar is aromatic but not as aromatic as eastern red cedar which is typically what cedar chests are made of.  Most likely the cedar I purchased came from the pacific north west.  Check out this link for some more information about north west cedar trees and what they look like.  The western red cedar tree is a large to very large tree, ranging up to 230 ft tall and 13 ft in trunk diameter.  One draw back of the wood is it is about half as strong in bending strength as oak so that larger dimensions of wood are required.  See this link for strength characteristics of common woods.

With the cedar in house the first step was to put the ledger on the house.  The ledger is a beam that holds the rafters up on the house side of the porch.  It has to be secured to the wall very well so strong winds can not rip the roof out from the wall.  I chose L anchor bolts to secure it to the house.  Since I have a cinder block house and the cells are hollow I had to cut holes in the blocks and fill the cells with cement where the anchor bolts are located.

The first step I took was to drill 5/8" holes in the cinder blocks with my harbor freight hammer drill.  Next I cut a passage for the cement to be put in the  hollow cell.  I then stuffed the cell with balled up aluminum foil where the cement was to stop at the bottom.  For the cement I mixed my own by using two parts sand, 1 part cement and water.  I found that the more sand I added the less strength it had so I kept the amount of sand content low.  Since the 5/8" hole is sloppy for the 1/2" anchor bolt I made some wood guides to hold the bolts perfectly perpendicular to the house and I fastened the guides to the house temporarily with tapcons.

Below is a picture of the anchor bolt securing operation I did and if you study the picture you can see that I changed strategies as I proceeded along the wall.  Instead of making two openings per bolt I ended up only using one in the end.  In the picture some of the wood guides are still in place on the left.

After all the bolts were secured in place, the ledger was prepared.  The ledger is made of 4" x 10" cedar and is 22' long.  However I could not obtain a 22' long piece of lumber.  So I used two beams to make it up.  This necessitated the use of a lap joint.  At this point I was faced with the question: how do I make  a lap joint?  I had never made one before.  I immediately checked youtube and found this video.

Before making the lap joint I planed the rough beam with my porter cable thickness planer.  Really for the beams I was dealing with the planer was just to small but we forced it an made work.  Once planed, I invested in a new Dewalt circular saw and a finish blade and started on the half lap joint.  I put a wood plywood guide on the beam so I would not make the half lap joint too long or accidentally cut beyond the final joint line.  Like the video I made several passes about a quarter inch apart at the same depth as shown below.

The next step was to take a hammer and knock out the cut pieces.  They came off so easy and well it was amazing.  As shown below.

To make the half lap joint surface smooth I used my electric finishing sander.  This is not just any ordinary sander.  I knew I was going to have to do a lot of sanding on this project so I invested in a half sheet finishing sander made by Makita shown in this link.  Boy did the sander save a lot of time and it did a beautiful job.  Shown below is the result.

 

I sanded the rest of the beam and ran a router bit down the two prominent corners to make the wood more appealing to the eye.  I prepared the second beam the same way.

The next part was to drill the holes in the ledger so that it could go on the anchor bolts in the house.  To do this I made a plywood guide by placing a strip of the plywood on the bolts on the house, marking the bolt locations on the plywood and then drilling the holes in the plywood.  I then secured this guide on the beams and used my drill press from Harbor Freight to make perfectly straight holes in the wood.  I oversized the holes slightly to help the installation of the ledger onto the bolts.  This procedure is tricky and must be accurate but my attention to detail and patience paid off as the ledger went right on without trouble.

The lap joint ended up being architecturally pleasing too.  It is not perfectly tight but its pretty good for my first lap joint.

 

Because I had read that galvanized metal leaves black marks on cedar, I used stainless washers and nuts to fasten the ledger to the wall.  After the ledger was installed I put the finish on.  For the finish I chose Olympic Elite Woodland Oil natural variety which is illustrated in this link.  This is basically modern day linseed oil with UV protection, mildew/algae resistance and water proofing.  It is also self leveling so that means no runs and is supper easy and quick to apply.  I used a foam brush to apply it.

With the ledger installed, I was well on my way to constructing my high end cedar porch.  There was only one problem.  Dad was leaving.  He had stayed for about 4 months and his help was invaluable but it was time to go.  I would be doing this project on my own now.   As dad packed up and left I wondered how would I do the next step all by myself which was to put the 300 lb 20' beam up so that the rafters could be supported?

Find out how I did this on my own in my next blog..

Happy Building

The Dr.

Auto repairs: why the car dealer loves you and why you should not reciprocate

Disclaimer:  This is not a instructional blog nor does it give advice.  Repairing cars can be dangerous.  Make repairs at your own risk.

For this blog I will deviate from the topic of home construction and talk about something that often happens during a renovation project.  The vehicle that you depend on to transport your building supplies breaks down.  This happened to me recently and its not like I have a ton of time on my hands to deal with this nonsense.  I have a full time job and almost all the rest of my time is spent working on renovating my house.  It was not surprising that when I was jacking up my car out in the street because my driveway was torn up due to the construction that my neighbor said, "you know its not like you don't already have enough to do"  And I said to him, "ya that's why I'm taking it to the dealer"

The car I have is a 2005 4WD Tahoe and I love it so much.  It can haul a lot, pull my boat and provides comfortable ride.  The car does get only about 15 miles per gallon but it is a big vehicle and which makes it more likely to be the winner in a crash thus being safer to drive on the road.  That's what I call real insurance.

What was ailing the car?  Two things: 1) the airbags were out and 2) a strange unidentified noise was coming from the drive train.

Once the car was jacked up I shook the wheel from top to bottom.  It was very loose.  It was then that I realized that I probably shouldn't drive the vehicle to the dealer to get repaired because the wheel might fall off. Yes wheels fall off!  My sister will attest to that fact which happened to here twice.   She had been in a car accident but the car seemed ok after the accident.  Unknowingly to us the axle was bent.   After a week of driving a part broke in the differential allowing the wheel to walk its way out luckily hitting the fender which stopped it from completely dislodging itself form the vehicle.  I replaced the parts in the axle and it happened again and then we got the mechanic to replace the axle.  See this Video for a car driving with wheel about to fall off.

I considered calling a tow truck to take the Tahoe to the dealer but after talking to dad who does all his auto repairs him self and after watching youtube videos, I became more interested in fixing it myself.  It looked pretty simple.  But since my driveway was torn up where would I work on my vehicle?

For my home renovation I had expanded my single car garage into an oversized two car garage.  It was not obvious to me that I should put my car in there and work on it.  I have always worked on my car in the driveway and not only that there is quite a big step between the dirt driveway and the concrete pad so getting the car in and out was not practical on a daily basis.  But the issue with the vehicle necessitated that I test my garage out for the very first time.

I stacked a bunch of cutoff two by fours next to the lip of the garage pad and drove the vehicle into the garage.  The vehicle fit!  Wohoo!  I was very happy.  I even got a comment from my neighbor who has been watching the agonizingly slow paced construction going on at my house.  He said, "wow that was amazing, you almost got your whole car in the garage".  When he said almost he was referring to the bumper hanging out the entrance.  There was table blocking me from pulling the car fully into the garage.

With the car in the garage I proceed to repair the car.  To repair it, I assumed it was the cv axle that was bad.  What is a CV axle?  CV axle stands for constant velocity axle and it is needed to transfer the torque from the transmission to the drive wheels at a constant speed, while accommodating the up-and-down motion of the suspension.  See this Link for more information on CV joints and how to tell if they are bad.  I was able to purchase one from the autozone.

Once I got into the repair I realized that the wheel bearing was bad.  Why did I not think it was that in the first place?  A loose wheel is a typical symptom of a bad wheel bearing.  The reason was because on all the videos I had watched I had not seen one where I could see that the car had one.  The explanation for this is that it is hidden in an assembly. The wheel bearing itself was not replaceable but the assembly is and I was able to get one at autozone.  When I was buying it the guy at autozone said, "you might was well as replace the cv axle too while your at it."   I said, "I've already got one"

Below is a picture of the old CV axle.  Notice that I have got it out without having to take the caliper, rotor and wheel bearing assembly off.



 


Below is photo of the old and new wheel bearing assembly






Probably the hardest part of the repair is getting the bolts off that hold the calipers on.  I see videos of people using long cheater  bars to get these bolts off.  And after breaking bolts off with this method I try to avoid it and use the pneumatic impact wrench.  These bolts will still give you trouble with the impact wrench and in this case they did.  So I cranked the compressor up and that did the trick. (You run the risk of blowing out your air tool if you exceed the max pressure for the tool)  If that doesn't work then heat from a torch is often used which if your not careful you ruin some parts.

Here is video of a wheel bearing assembly repair that is similar to what I did.  For the CV axle this video shows how the CV axle is replaced.

Once I had finished the repair I could now take the car to the dealer to get the air bags fixed.  I thought about repairing the air bags myself but I felt that this was one area of repair that I would be better off to get the dealer to do since they are so dangerous.  One typical accident that occurs is the mechanic is using tools like a screw driver near the air bags and the airbag accidentally deploys sending the tool into the mechanic and killing him

Once the dealer had looked at the car, he told me that the sensor in the front of the vehicle was bad.  Replacement cost $450.   He also said the rear main seal and oil pan is leaking and that he could give me estimate on that repair.   I was incredulous.  I usually go 5000 miles without adding oil to the car and I hadn't seen any oil on the pavement or driveway.   I couldn't help to think that this was a pretty nice scam they are running at this dealership taking advantage of peoples lack of knowledgeable about car repair to relieve them of their pocket book.  I decided not to go with the seal and pan repair but I did let them do the air bags.

When I picked the car up I asked the dealer to show me the leak on the seal which he had offered to do when I had talked to him on the phone.  But now there was no lift available.  He did say that as long as there is oil in the vehicle it would continue to run.

So the question is after having taken my car to the dealer for the air bag repair and almost having lost a hefty chunk of hard earned savings for an unnecessary rear main seal repair, how much did I save by doing the cv axle/wheel bearing repair myself?  Here is the break down.

Dealer Cost
CV Axle                                                         $578
Wheel Bearing Assembly                            $426
Labor                                                              $350
Total                                                               $1354


My cost
CV axle                                                               $70
Wheel bearing assembly                                    $110
Labor 6 hours  (2 hours with experience)      No charge
Total                                                                     $180


A whopping $1174 or 87% was saved.  And now you know why the dealer loves you when you bring your car to the dealership. Why not do the repair yourself and then spend the money you saved on a cruise?  If you don't the dealer will.  Cue the cash register sound.


Happy Building!

The Dr