RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!

Spent the late afternoon today detailing Bryce’s 2001 Subaru Impreza GC8 that he pretty much built from the wheels up. Don’t know all the specs on it but I think ite got an STI engine from a 2013 STI. Full custom paint job on it. Fun little car to detail.

But had to go on an adventure tonight I definitely did NOT want to go on….. ooi…. Trucks had an odd rattling noise that I thought may have been coming from one of my brakes. It may well have been making noise before I put new pads in last week, I just hadn’t noticed it until the last few days. I re did all the retainer clips in the brakes but didn’t have time to go further. Well I decided to ask Bryce if he’d check it out for me real quick tonight after we had dinner. I sorta felt a bit bad asking because he had to work all day. He’s an A&P mechanic for skywest, definitely works his keister off. But he’s a gearhead through and through and he’s a dang good mechanic. Knows what he’s doing working on cars AND planes. I fully trust him. Anyways we went for a quick ride around the bock and he knew right away that the noise was coming out of my front passenger side wheel. It actually got WAY worse today. I was like “oh crap…. That’s bad…“

Jacked it up, wheel off, brakes are all good…. Buuuuut turns out I had a bad wheel bearing….. like really bad…. Put a mild groove in my rotor from the play in wheel and caliper movement…. D-A-M-M-I-T……. I replaced that wheel hub only two years ago….. and of course the part I’d bought from autozone only had a one year warranty on it…. So we had to put a new wheel bearing in. Sucks cuz I know thats not how Bryce wanted to spend the evening. But he’s a good guy and because I’m heading home tomorrow his exact words were “I’m not letting you drive out of the driveway like this cuz you won’t make it home….” So we ran over to autozone and thankfully they had a new part in stock and he had the job hammered out in like all of an hour…. I’m thankful for friends that look out for me even if I don’t want to put any extra stress on them. Solved the issue and trucks is ready to roll home tomorrow.

Made the trip home today. Left Layton about 8am and had a beautiful drive all the way to St. George. No traffic, 75 degrees all the way with the sunroof open and cruising at 80MPH, clear skies. Listened to the live stream from my home church via YouTube. And then listened to some podcasts. St. George was a bit warmer but totally fine. I was making really great time til I dropped through Vegas. Getting through the strip, south point, and Primm was easy. The backup for state line actually wasn’t too bad at all but the backup of traffic on the other side was horrendous. So many dumb weekend warriors doing stupid things and a huge portion of the drive was bumper to bumper stop and go traffic. It was miserable. It was hot….. 120 degrees in the valleys around baker….. HOLY F*** BALLS!! Truck never once over heated though, trans stayed around 170 which was not bad at all for basically doing 10 miles an hour up several of the grades…. There were quite a few broken down cars on the shoulders from state line up the first grade but there were just so many people that everytime the slow downs happened around those break downs it just haulted traffic for several miles behind. Same thing going into baker. It was not fun doing the last stretch which is supposed to only be a three hour drive from Vegas to big bear. Took closer to 5 for that stretch….. But made it home with no issues. Was paying attention to the trip computer the whole way and didn’t notice til I pulled in the garage that I rolled over 200k right in the last stretch of the drive!! I’m officially part of the 200,000 GMT800 club! Haha.

Oil change interval time. Was gonna push it off til the first of the week because work has me going non stop. But my mom called today in a panic…. Her boat is halfway down the mountain in running springs. Needed a new starter after she forgot to put the plug in before launching near the end of last boating season, and the water came up and killed the starter. I guess the shop in running springs was the only place that had a starter for her boat in stock. They were also able to make a piece of plexiglass to replace the one windshield panel that has been broken since our trip out to lake Mojave in June of 2022. Anyways the starter and the windshield is gonna be finished tomorrow but they can’t store it for her over the weekend since they don’t have any storage space and it needs to be picked up ASAP. But she is doing yards sales the next two days and can’t do it. So of course naturally she calls ole faithful “Chase’s towing service”….. I know I know….. be a good son and be helpful cuz she’s done a lot for me…….. just means I don’t get any down time to take care of myself…. I’m exhausted AF….. and really getting sick and tired of being literally EVERYONE’S problem solver and fix it man….. oil change knocked out after work tonight so I don’t have to stress about it while towing the boat. Tomorrow after a full day of a ceramic coating detail, I gotta get new spark plugs in since I’m at that interval mileage too….. cleaned up my air filter when I handled my water pump before the trip ti Utah but pulled it and cleaned and reoiled it up.

All finished up and reset the oil life monitor. And I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again….. I absolutely hate the god awful location of the oil filter on these engines. It’s the stupidest design ever and such a PIA….. it fights me….. EVERY…. SINGLE…. TIME… I’m over how much effort it takes to get the damn things in and out….. end rant…. lol on a serious note anybody got a good solution to make filters in and out easier?

Finally got time to do spark plugs. I’m not gonna lie…… I swore…. ALOT!!! The drivers side, odd numbered cylinder plugs absolutely sucked. I was constantly slamming my hands into everything in the way on the drivers side. The #8 cylinder on the opposite side of the block was WAY easier than the #1 cylinder….. it was so dang difficult to get my hands in there under the battery fuse and all the other hoses and wire looms running beside the block….. I don’t understand how mechanics do it for a living everyday…. lol

50,000 miles on these plugs. Not terrible I guess but not pretty either haha.

Told the gal at autozone just gimme the most expensive option for plugs you have. Ended up with Bosch plugs. Truck fired right up and tech2 showed no misfires so should be good to go.

so life has been a trip lately. I’ve managed to make good friends with the general manager of our local autozone. It just so happens that he and his wife go to my church. Really cool dude and very knowledgeable. I was asking him for some advice about replacing a torn CV boot, on the drivers side CV axle, and his suggestion to skip the hassle of taking the entire CV axle shaft out just to have to disassemble it and reassemble with a new boot and just grab a new axle shaft to put in with the boots already installed made so much more sense. So I went that route and glad I did. I was thinking since I had to be in there anyways I may as well replace the drivers side wheel bearing as a preemptive maintenance item. The second benefit to buddy buddy up with the GM of my local autozone is that when I was telling him about the plans and being really annoyed that my first wheel bearing replacement only lasted two years, he said “bring me the bad wheel bearing and I’ll refund it with store credit and we’ll use that to get you another wheel bearing.” So that didn’t cost me extra, and he sold me the axle shaft for a discount too. That helped big time. Replaced the axle shaft and the wheel bearing and got both done on my own fairly easily. I was definitely proud of myself for getting it done without having to ask for help or running into problems.

Getting the new axle shaft in wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be which was a nice surprise.

racking up the miles between work and life

Been sitting on 2 quarts of trans fluid to service my transfer case for like 3 weeks now…… transfer case service was WAY overdue….. thanks to a MASSIVE forest fire burning around my mountain right now I had the day off today due to the far west end of the big bear valley being under evacuation orders. Had time to hammer out the transfer case fluid swap and got it handled along with putting fresh chemical resin into my deionized water tanks for my detail setup.
Surprisingly easy to swap fluid in the transfer case out. Got the drain plug back in and filled up. Rolled perfectly fine to the convention center tonight for my dance teach night. The fluid that came out though was pretty icky……