Amazon saves my day!

[Phonetek]

I have to say that I never thought much of Amazon but I ordered a ton of auto parts for them the past couple weeks. Wifey's SnailBlazer was a deathtrap. It clunked, clanked, popped and went all over the road. The front end was a total mess. I got under there and it need Upper Control Arms, Upper & Lower Ball Joints, Inner & outer Tie rods, Struts, Sway Bar End Links F&R, Sway Bar Bushings F&R & Rear Shocks....everything completely SHOT! I mean to the point where one pothole would have done it in and probably been certain death.

That's quite a load of parts, I was thinking at least $750-800 for mid-grade or $1400 for MOOG parts. I got on Amazon and found ALL parts minus the struts & shocks for $116, free shipping. Shocks & Struts for $170, free shipping. I was skeptical to say the least figuring it's all import garbage. Due to lack of funds I decided to chance it. To my surprise it showed up the next day and was all Detroit Axle brand. All the parts were EXCELLENT quality and exact fit for my truck. I worked on it all day in the snow and ice but now she's all back together. It was one LONG day!

It drives beautiful! I'm not used to hitting bumps and not bouncing all over the place and grabbing the steering wheel for dear life. Less than 300 bucks, to my door! Of course I had to do it all myself but still. Where were things like this 30 yrs ago?

[boatman37]

Sounds pretty good. Most all steering parts are made by TRW and rebranded for each company. I still prefer Moog but in most cases even the generics are pretty good quality (if they are actually made by TRW)

[bdpeters]

good information to know, thanks for posting. auto issues are one thing that really eats a hole in my stomach.

[djp1080]

I'm happy for you Phonetek. Great price shopping and free shipping. That's hard to beat.
My kids and my wife have shopped on Amazon for a while now.
As for me I've found some pretty good results for various items I was looking for; however, as I see it Amazon either sells it themselves or reps others that have what you're likely look for and they look more like a monopoly than anything.
There are some on line tools to help you pick parts for let's say build a new desktop PC for yourself and I was surprised that most all of the parts (like motherboards, memory, video cards, processors, etc.) were being priced up using the Amazon website. I started looking at some of my old sources for this kind of stuff and found that there were some items at lower prices elsewhere.
I've been surprised that Amazon reps many bowling accessory items as well as bowling balls, bags and shoes. I typically buy just about everything major directly from my local PSO. I buy some items like tapes and sanding pads on line. I found that Amazon reps some of the places that I would go to at decent prices, but now Amazon has some of these items at lower prices as being a rep. Basically Amazon is ripping off the original supplier in my humble opinion and selling stuff at lower prices than was offered before. I'll try to buy things directly from suppliers rather than Amazon or decide I don't need it. Most of the time I just skip it.
Phonetek, my father was an auto mechanic and he could fix practically anything not only on cars and trucks, but most anything in our home. You must have some of the skills he had and you're a pretty sharp cookie. If Amazon helps these little guys survive and help them serve their customers better, that's good. If they're in a position to control the little guy and take over their business, I'm totally against it.
Just sayin'.

[Phonetek]

Phonetek, my father was an auto mechanic and he could fix practically anything not only on cars and trucks, but most anything in our home. You must have some of the skills he had and you're a pretty sharp cookie. If Amazon helps these little guys survive and help them serve their customers better, that's good. If they're in a position to control the little guy and take over their business, I'm totally against it.
Just sayin'.

I appreciate the compliment. I've always been a do it yourselfer. Mainly because I can't afford to pay others to do it for me. LOL It don't always work out the way I'd like but in most cases I come out okay. My grandfather was a tinker'er so maybe I got that from him. I'm just not afraid to tackle things, everything seems to have a common sensible way of coming apart and going back together. Weather it be electronic or mechanical, everything has a method. Sometimes it just takes a little time to analyze it first to figure it out. One secret is to not rush into it and the cardinal rule is....."If you have to force it, you're doing something wrong" at that point if you stop and re-analyze you probably won't break something.

My next project was I yanked out the instrument cluster. It only had 2 out of 8 bulbs that were still working. It was annoying to drive it at night as you can imagine. Plus the digital odometer and gear selectors were so dim you couldn't read them even at night. A little research I found that the solder joints go cold, crack or get loose. In addition, my oil pressure gauge would just flake out and the needle would go haywire.

So I pulled it out since it got too cold to do work on the outside. It took about 8 minutes to get it out of the truck. After carefully taking it apart, I replaced all the gauge stepper motors which were only about a dollar each. 4 solder joints per stepper, they only go in one way so hard to screw up. I un-soldered all the bulbs and in their place I replaced them with purple LED's. The only trick with them is unlike a bulb they are polarity sensitive. To make sure I put them in right I hooked a couple wires to a 9v battery and touched it to the contacts on the circuit board. If the LED lit up, it was in right. If it didn't it was backward. Then I soldered it in. Simple!

I found the solder joints for the gear selector & odo and fixed those. I put it back in and it looks AMAZING. Wifey wanted purple, I just rolled my eyes but I have to admit....with the purple illumination and bright orange needles it really looks slick. Nice and super bright, evenly lit and they work with the dimmer perfectly. That purple really shows off that bright yellow "Check Engine" light! LOL (Next project when it gets warmer) The steppers were all shot. They were all creeky and herky jerky. Now they all move quietly and smooth. Oil pressure gauge is reading as it should. Gear selector and odo are restored to their former glory.

It turned out so well I ordered more LED's and did all the dash and door switches which most of them burned out years ago too. It really looks nice and total cost was about $15 to do everything. I still have to do the climate controls and stereo but it's too cold to go pull them out right now. I'm going to do my Tahoe the same way next. Maybe not in purple but you can get LED's in any color you want. Bottom line is, you shouldn't be afraid to tackle things. Everything on Earth was built by us mere humans and not aliens, things are only as complicated as you make them. All else fails, there is always YouTube.

[J Anderson]

I would say I have to keep my wife from reading this as she loves the color purple, except: one, she doesn’t read stuff here anyway, and two, I don’t think she’d let me start taking her Prius apart:). I don’t even change my own oil anymore due to the hassle of getting rid of the old oil. I do still work on our Model A and our lawn mower, so I will have to figure out where to recycle the old oil after my spring oil changes.

[Phonetek]

Here is a pic of the "Purple" dash. This pic does NOT do it justice, it looks way better in real life. Just like me it doesn't photo well. It also looks like a bright spot on the speedo which simply isn't there and the color looks much more vivid and deeper in person. J, you definitely won't want the wife to see this LOL Hope this photo posts, it's been a while since I uploaded any photos here.

If I had my choice, I'd have probably went with the Green LED's which would match the outside color of the truck perfectly. Oh well, this looks good too. BTW, the actual work involved to fix the gauges, displays and change out the bulbs took about 30 minutes on the bench. Well, kitchen table....I don't have a bench. =( Total time, for the entire cluster from remove, redo and install was a total of an hour.

http://i66.tinypic.com/nnur7c.jpg

[J Anderson]

Here is a pic of the "Purple" dash. This pic does NOT do it justice, it looks way better in real life. Just like me it doesn't photo well. It also looks like a bright spot on the speedo which simply isn't there and the color looks much more vivid and deeper in person. J, you definitely won't want the wife to see this LOL Hope this photo posts, it's been a while since I uploaded any photos here.

If I had my choice, I'd have probably went with the Green LED's which would match the outside color of the truck perfectly. Oh well, this looks good too. BTW, the actual work involved to fix the gauges, displays and change out the bulbs took about 30 minutes on the bench. Well, kitchen table....I don't have a bench. =( Total time, for the entire cluster from remove, redo and install was a total of an hour.

http://i66.tinypic.com/nnur7c.jpg

And how long would it take for me to learn how to solder wire connections properly?????

[djp1080]

Those LEDs worked great! Nice job!
I got some Corsair HD120 PC case fans for Christmas. My daughter and I played around with them while she was home for the holidays. They started up just fine, but then one of the fans LEDs began to mess up. We played around with the controller box and cables, etc. Found that one of the three fans with PWM fans and RGB LEDs didn't function correctly. Got an RMA from Corsair and a month later they finally shipped out a replacement. Glad I didn't get out any tools and soldering iron to try and fix the thing. I'd have burnt a hole in the fan's plastic case and really damaged the thing. I'm just a little disappointed in the customer service time to get a new one back... :(

[Phonetek]

And how long would it take for me to learn how to solder wire connections properly?????

If you NEVER soldered before I wouldn't recommend trying this. Try learning on something you don't care about before you tackle this. LOL You short out the cluster, it can cost you a few hundred+ for a replacement , plus you'd have to know how to properly transfer the eprom chip that holds your vehicles information or your display will just read an error. It's not exactly wire connections per say, merely solder joints. There are really no actual wires in the clusters these days, it's all direct solder, diodes, capacitors, chips blah blah blah.

There are places that will do this type of thing for you if you send them the cluster but if it's your daily driver it's not like you can be without a gauge cluster for a week. I mean, you could, you just better know about how fast your going and how much gas you have and hope you have no mechanical failure while its out. =) They charge $250-350 to do everything I did.

Doing it myself it cost me $6 for the stepper motors and I think $8 for 20 LED's. That did my gauges, the two door switches for the power windows/locks, the 4x4 selector switch, rear wiper switch and rear heater control bypass switch on the console. I already ordered more today to do the climate controls (Dash & rear seat), radio, rear doors window switches, the headlight switch (which I'm waiting on the replacement) and a random switch all the way in the back of the truck to lock the doors. That will cover everything.

All the switches are held together by clips that you push in with a flat head screwdriver, they pop right apart. Key is to do it gently so as not to break the clips. After that they just snap together, as does the gauge cluster, no screws at all.

[Phonetek]

Those LEDs worked great! Nice job!
I got some Corsair HD120 PC case fans for Christmas. My daughter and I played around with them while she was home for the holidays. They started up just fine, but then one of the fans LEDs began to mess up. We played around with the controller box and cables, etc. Found that one of the three fans with PWM fans and RGB LEDs didn't function correctly. Got an RMA from Corsair and a month later they finally shipped out a replacement. Glad I didn't get out any tools and soldering iron to try and fix the thing. I'd have burnt a hole in the fan's plastic case and really damaged the thing. I'm just a little disappointed in the customer service time to get a new one back... :(

Yeah, I'd probably have torn it apart LOL At least you got a replacement. That's the one thing that does scare me about Amazon. You are dealing with them, not the company direct. I did have only one issue, I ordered brakes for my Tahoe and didn't realize until I tore it apart I had dual piston calipers in the rear vs. single piston. The rotors were fine, the pads were wrong. Since I ordered the wrong ones the company didn't want to swap which was fine. That was on me not them, they sent what I ordered. I had to go local to get pads but it was a negligible expense plus I had to eat a set of pads. I just gave them to a friend who works on cars, maybe they will fit on someone's car he'll work on.

One thing worth mentioning that really helps when you solder which I picked up. I got these glasses with a snap in lens and a nice bright LED light, GREAT for working up close. It came with 5 different lenses of different strengths. WAY better than holding a magnifying glass! Plus they are strong enough you can damn near see the DNA in your fingers. The second thing is a solder sucker that attaches to a soldering iron, it melts the solder and you just squeeze the bulb and poof! all the solder is gone! Such a godsend vs. messing around with solder wick. I get tired of burning my fingers working with that stuff.

[boatman37]

Those solder suckers are nice. I have one and have replaced capacitors, diodes, etc on circuit boards. Not my area of expertise but Google and Youtube help make me look smarter than I am...lol

[Phonetek]

I took it in to have the front end alignment done now that I did all that work. What a difference! Now that all that is complete I can take care of the headlight circuit. These Trailblazers are notorious for melting the headlight connectors. Every 6 months or so for many years now it gets a black eye. It's always a melted connector. You'd think GM would have done a recall about it but apparently not enough deaths have resulted yet from vehicle fires. The problem has been traced all the way back to the headlight switch causing it.

My next order is going to be a new switch, both new complete headlight assemblies, fuse links and I already bought some ceramic pigtails that plug into the headlights themselves that cannot melt. I need all this stuff due to the damage caused. The connector melting caused so much heat it actually melted the headlight assembly to where you can't secure the bulb so it points every way but straight. The assemblies have a ton of sun fade, they are cloudy and they don't diffuse the light anyway.

The fuse links are to bypass the fuse box because that got so hot it melted too so now the fuse won't make contact. Currently I have the wiring for the high beams being used in the low beam sockets as a temporary work around. Needless to say I have no high beams but the switch is always on and because of it I cannot use my driving/fog lights either because they don't come on at the same time as the high beams. This has probably been the biggest headache with this vehicle of all, glad I'm finally able to do a permanent and fairly inexpensive fix. I was shocked to find on Amazon that I can get both headlight assemblies including headlights, high beams, parking lights, turn signals all included in addition to all new internal wiring for a mere 75 bucks for everything. The bulbs alone would cost more if I had to buy them all separately.

[rkj4243]

Agree with you that Amazon sometimes has an item priced lower than you can find on the original vendor's site, even when it comes from the original vendor selling it though Amazon.

Also when I find that it typically is also related to automotive tools, parts and supplies, haven't really checked that out for other items though.

Glad to hear you are getting the vehicle all sorted out, and safe to operate on the roadways.

[Phonetek]

Yeah it definitely wasn't anything close to safe. Most of it was stuff that should have been replaced at one time or another before. Unfortunately, finances the way they have been it wasn't possible until now. For a while there I was doing the sign of the cross every time I got in it praying it would make it to the next place. Luck was surely on our side. After the headlights the next and last phase will be to tackle the check engine light. I have emissions coming up this year.

It's got quite a list of codes, most don't require replacing anything. For example, the TPS (Throttle Position Sensor) code isn't a bad TPS, it's merely the throttle body needs a good cleaning. Carbon deposits build up around the flap keeping it from closing where it needs to causing the code. 10 minute job with a rag and parts cleaner and poof, no more code. Sometimes it's those little tricks is all it takes rather than throwing parts at it. Evap system codes are usually fixed by replacing the gas cap. LOL Silly but a cheap fix. Minor repairs is all it needs, a good tune up and some TLC and it will be good to go for several more years of faithful service.

[Blomer]

A,Avon has always been good to me!