u/Inevitable_Button506

06 zx4, 121k miles.

She's getting new:

Control arms/ball joints

Bearings/hubs

Sway bar end links

Cv axles

Love how easy these cars are to work on. For instance, just did cv axles on my fiances 2011 rav4. The passenger side bearing carrier is one solid piece, so when it inevitably siezes in the carrier your only option is to try to shatter the outer race of the bearing via an access hole on the bottom (this never works). Other then that you have to cut the bearing carrier into 2 pieces to have enough clearance to get around the engine block. $70 for a new carrier, go cry about it I guess.

Focus? 2x13mm bolts and the carrier comes right apart allowing thw axle to come right out like butter. Chefs kiss 🤌

Also just threw in a JBL celebrity 150 head unit, sounds really nice even with the paper oem speakers. I actually ordered the celebrity 100 and they sent the 150, so free come-up. Got some 5x7/6x8 MB quart formula speakers to toss in as well which will give me a sound system i am happy with under a hundred bucks.

Next on the list of fun stuff is timing.

I swear this is metalworking related, but some context. TLDR at end.

Behold, my troph.. I mean, a tool that I made after finally getting the front passenger cv axle out of a 2011 awd rav4. I call her the axle buster. I use it as a giant drift for my drilling hammer. As it were, 2 days after getting our rav4 up and running again the cv axle goes out on our Ford focus. Perfect time to try out my new tool!

Wrong! I mean, kind of. I got the cv out of the passenger side using this no prob, but had some off hammer strikes toward the end due to fatigue and trying to push through. This was made apparent when a shard of it got sent off (2nd pic) the edge. Luckily I was wearing squints and cargo pants as the shard hit my leg and partially went into it. 3rd pic you can see where another fracture started but didn't let the shard fly.

TLDR: Is there any way I can soften the temper of this steel? I want it to mushroom out as opposed to sending shards. I am unsure of the composition of it but I'm assuming it is fairly high carbon, hardened steel. This piece was where the cv axle goes into the front differential. If I shouldn't use this for my intentions, feel free to call me a big dummy. I'm still keeping the trophy.

Thanks all!

Eons ago I spent about half as much $ on a non adjustable radio shack iron, you know the type. Hated soldering cause my gear was crap (didn't know it at the time), didn't understand why unleaded solder sucked and why the F would I need flux? Back to the future is not relevant for my projects. Much has been learned since. I started upgrading piece by piece, and ended up with a decent little station that I could build or do rework on; based around a yihua 936d+.

Got a "Deackimei" iron off ebay that takes Milwaukee batteries as the power source. I mainly got it for quick jobs that didn't have outlets readily available, but almost instantly it has entirely replaced my 936d+ station. It takes standard t12 tips which are slightly more expensive than the tips my 936d+ takes, but is completely worth it IMO. It heats from 0-620 nearly instantly, has a built in voltage monitor for the battery. Also has a "sleep" mode that kicks in after 60s of the iron being immobile where it drops temp to 450 until you pick it up again. It also has another feature i discovered today, where if it is left in sleep mode for some time it will automatically power the station off. As someone who experienced loosing everything in a house fire when i was 7y/o, I really love this safety measure. Might be annoying to some but I can be forgetful at times. 30 minutes of use took my M18 high output 6.0ah battery from 4 to 3 bars of capacity, but I cant say that power usage is accurate as I had used that battery on an angle grinder the day before and hadn't recharged it.

I've had it for over a year now and wanted to put it through some work before I sang any praises. It just works. With my 5.0 batteries, the 6.0 h/o, or with my 8.0 forge. If you've already got cordless tools at home, I highly recommend looking into one of these. I've seen that they have this same kind of setup for dewalt and makita batteries as well. I won't get rid of the 936d+ just yet, two is one and one is none. If this cordless station ever craps the bed I will have a back-up.

Anywho, CHEAP Chinese BT head unit going into the beater car today! It sounds mid at best and has horrible background noise compared to a $30 Jensen from wally world that works when it wants to. Antenna is GONE so no radio, yet I refuse to cruise in silence.

Keep the irons hot and the joints tight gentlemen.