Octania

Saturn this time
2004 Vue, kid's car.

Tire shop says steering is bad, fine, hold the tires, do the rack-n-pinion. Surprisingly easy job, not too spendy.

I noticed a roar from the aft axle [front wheel drive version]. Maybe bad tires, sounds like wheel bearing to me. No drive components back there, so...

Yesterday I got the steering aligned "close enough to get to the tire place" then jacked up the back and spun the wheels. Aye, left side grumbles, though no excess play is noted. RH side has a brake scrape but spins easily and silently otherwise. Have not been into the rear brakes yet, so, let's take a peek, see what is involved in a wheel bearing and what the brakes need.

Pull the wheels, which no one EVER put grease on, so they are oxidized to the hubs. Glad it is not raining, dark, and on the side of the highway. Drums look aged and crusty. 3lb persuader knocks it loose, commence to prying. Nope, drum ridge has a hold of the shoes. Per usual. No problem, right? Find the rubber plug to get at the self adjuster.

NO HOLE AND NO RUBBER PLUG in the area of the adjuster.
No hole in the drum.
Oh, here is a rubber plug and access hole... AT THE FRONT CENTER of the backing plate. 6" away from the adjuster, and utterly useless....

What were they drinking?

So, out with the giant Snap-on pry bar, pry and curse until the retainers break, the shoes mangle past the seats, and the the adjuster link gets a nice bend. And the wheel cylinder is half open. Sheeeesh. Just to remove the parts and see what might be in order...

Juice on the wheel cylinder rubbers... sigh
Heat and voodoo juice [ATF/Acetone] gets the bleeder loose w/o breaking off - yay! Maybe I can just hone it out, put the pcs bqack in, and not break off the line.... Let's take a look at what the wheel bearing will involve- a wire for ABS, and 4 bolts backside, which come right out no worries. That was easy. Off to the parts store. Wife looks up the wheel bearing, finds one online at $65 or so.

Inquire at store, oh they are $90. sheesh I says only $65 online... well, plus shipping. He says how about 10% off? I says how about 10% off the entire order? I need drums, shoes, hardware, wheel cylinders...

Manager was great to work with, and at the checkout he adjusted the bearing price to $65!

Back home after buying fresh acetone to make the voodoo juice runnier... brake line fitting actually comes loose w/o twisting the line off! At $22 the pair, no point in even messing with old wheel cylinders, right? Clean the line, spread anti-sieze on the line and fitting, ready to re-assemble.

Everything gets anti sieze or grease upon reassembly here. Wheel bearing OD where it might stick? Grease. Lines and bolts? Anti sieze. Bleeders, anti sieze. By the way, if your jar of anti sieze is old and the stuff is not so smooth but stiff and hard to spread... add oil [or, in this case, voodoo juuice] and mix it in. Greatly eases the application process. I took the opportunity to clean the jar opening too so that it doesn't get on everything all the time as soon as you touch the jar.

Re-assembly was pretty smooth, not much to the brake system on this model. Two springs. Pretty obvious how they go. Bent the adjuster actuator back to operable shape. Dismantled, wire wheeled, greased the adjusters. New shoes, new drums, new bearing one side... Aaaaaah! Almost ready for tires now. Applied voodoo juice to the suspension bolts while I was in there, figuring they will have to loosen all of it to align the wheels with new tires.

Removed the dirty old brake fluid from the master cylinder, put in fresh new juice, and did most of the bleeding alone. This was done with the usual clear line into a clear jar [peanut butter jar repurposed], then just BARELY crack the bleeder. Air will get out, causing the pedal to sink rapidly, then when only fluid is coming out, the pedal sinks but much more slowly. 2-3 cycles and the air was almost entirely out. Repeat for other side. With a helper, the final bleeding at higher pedal pressure was done, but little to no additional air was released.

All things considered, a lot of new parts for only a couple hundered $, and it would have been entirely uneventful if not for having to ruin all the existing parts by prying them off the car just because they can't be bothered to make an access hole to back off the adjsuter. Maybe you are supposed to drill your own hole?

Allan R

Hahaha! Laughing with ya Chris, not at ha. Saturn did a lot of things I don't understand. Like for instance when I had to change the idler pulley on our SL1. Only way to get it is to support engine, remove 5 engine mount bolts, remove rs upper mount so the hole to the idler bolt is accessible. All this because the transverse engine is jammed so far to the right and doesn't give any clearance for working on the parts with pulleys! It's dumb but I guess that's what made them a different kind of car company.
If I knew then what I know now, I would never have bought the car.

Koda

The rocket scientist furiously labors to save another vehicle...

That hole that makes no sense is probably there for datums during manufacture. Sort of like the sheet metal clip washers on drum brake lug studs, according to a man at Bosch, it just holds the drum on after assembly, but before the wheel gets there. I know cars where I work have a lot of holes for bodyweld datums that just get stickers "hole plugs" over them. Not giving you a way to back the drum off is just lazy and indicative of the dying nature of the trend of the consumer working on their own car. Cars now are designed to go to a shop for anything more than an oil change. Step 1 in changing plugs: remove engine.

Allan R

if it wasn't so true it would be funny. Also, techs nowadays also need an IT degree to understand the computer systems, or a P. Eng to understand the new hybrid or electric cars.

z11375ss

Except for the fact most Wyotech Grads aren't taught how to install something as archaic as a distributor. Ask me how I know.

Octania

Right?

So, even if you take the vehicle to a garage, SOMEBODY has to remove that brake drum. HOW? As near as I can tell you have two options. 1) guess where the adjuster is, and drill an access hole in the drum, or 2) pry it apart and suffer the consequences. If it breaks it needed to be replaced anyhow.

I found a couple youtube videos mainly about rear wheel *bearing* and always AWD. None showed removal of a stuck rear drum. None had the level of rust that we have here either.

One guy is using a 16 oz claw hammer to get the wheel bearing out. Sheesh, get a real hammer.

Allan R

Don't you routinely take off the rear drum to check the shoes And blow out the dust? Then you could grind down that rust ridge and it would be a none issue?

Octania

ha ha ha yeah in my spare time
for the entire family's fleet.

No, this used gem was acquired ~2 yrs ago and until now I have not had reason to look into the rear brakes. Besides you would have to do that frequently, for all the drums on the fleet. Ai not anybody got time fo dat.

I would rather "brake" it open once in a while and buy new stuff anyhow.

I would REALLY rather the manufacturer provide an access hole to the snugger like EVERY OTHER DRUM BRAKE I HAVE EVER WORKED ON, you know, the clever way.

My poor neighbor was working on a FWD wheel bearing yesterday, he has almost no tools. No lube. Struggle, struggle, borrow my torch head, etc. He finally got the knuckle out and is trying to figure out how to get the outer race of the bearing out of this rusty POS. I says after I clean up my project being that assembly over and I'll help you with it. I have an anvil and BFH and such. Turns out it needed heat. REAL heat, from Mr. Torch, who has never lost a battle yet. Got him squared away with parts he can re-assemble and explained about not hammering the bearing in by the inner race...

Then I was cleaning up a bit more and got to wondering why he went with a new wheel bearing and new hub for inside it, and ALL THIS LABOR for which he so does not have the tools or skills... he had to remove the assembly anyhow, why not just go the boneyard and get a good used ASSEMBLY for the old car with not much life left anyhow? So I suggested that for next time. The one boneyard will even extract the part for you.

RROLDSX

Weren't those made on a Honda platform?

Allan R

No worries. Up here I have to change tires from summer to winter, so I get a chance to look at the drums 2x a year if I want to. But I'm lucky, that's only 2 cars really, and one of them is 4 wheel disc........

copper128

Not sure about the platform, but the early V6 engines were Honda units

Allan R

Early VUE, or first gen, was GM Theta platform (Honda engine from 2004 -2007). Second gen, 2008-2010 was Opel Antera just rebranded using the GM 3.6 L LY7 V6.

Not as successful a brand as GM hoped it would be. Too bad Olds got phased out before Saturn.

oldcutlass

Saturn had a cult like following, their marketing was genius.

Allan R

?? Not my experience with them. The only marketing they did was introduce a no haggle price on the sticker, and a 30 day no question asked return policy if you didn't like it IIRC.

The first 3 years of ownership (till warranty ran out) was fine. After that? Don't even start me up.....Ironically I'm still waiting for that SL1 of ours to crap out. It developed a head gasket leak (minor oil - no coolant) just shy of 36k miles. It was covered under a 'hidden' warranty that I sourced from the web. GM zone rep refused to honor it. That and the fact that it ate 7 pairs of rotors/pads in less than 90k miles?

I don't think it's that great even though it was touted as one of the safest when I bought it. I gave it to my son and honestly I don't care what happens to it. I did a fair bit of maintenance to it prior to giving it to him so it was safe but it's still only a $700.00 car. In the meantime he's saving $ for a roadtrip to TX, and maybe will splurge next year for a real car.

sammy

Completely agree. I almost bought a Saturn because I wanted to be part of their "get togethers"

Allan R

The annual get togethers were ok for awhile. But often we'd have to travel for 3-4 hours to get there. After the first 2 we just said 'meh' and didn't go. That's NOT why I bought the SL1 though