VF II SS cabin air filter

[Skylarking]

@RiCeY as a Gold Level Holden Technician, you’d have lots of training/experience and may have a better touch than most occasional home mechanic, But are you saying Holden dealer service departments don’t follow Holden’s own service methods and cut corners? If so, it’s not a comforting thought...

Yes we could always remove unnecessary parts and charge you more labour, good idea.

Hm, the answer is yes... sad...

The attitude in part reminds me of an Air Crash Investigations. An aircraft mechanic used his judgment and years of experience when replacing windscrean bolts rather than use the manual to check the specific part numbers that should be used. The consequence was he saved a little time but installed the wrong bolts and the windscreen soon blew out, partially sucking the pilot out the aircraft. As it turned out the previous mechanic had also installed the wrong bolts but luck was on his side as there was no failure. This time around, the mechanic replaced like for like but he was not so lucky as in this case there was a failure.

And in my specific case, a mechanic replacing an engine pulls bold as part of a Mazda recall didn’t use new high strength air conditioner pull bolts as required by the recall notice but instead used cheap rubbery of the shelf crap bolts. Within a short time, two snapped and one flew off while I was listening to the noise with the bonnet up. Mazda’s solution was for me to drive to the workshop and they’d install the required bolts - they wanted me to drive with one bolt holding on the aircon pulls and didn’t want to truck my car to their dealership. That vehicle never saw a dealer service department again as I bought the full service books for the machine and maintained it at home...

Guess as more and more of the population sees user manuals as a waste of time, that then sets the groundwork for workshop manual service procedures to be ignored and ones judgment inserted in place of the designers and manufacturers of the product. wonder how that will end up in the long term...

Such is life...

Ps: i’d also like to see the latest procedure on how the Cabin Air Filter is installed as defined within Holden’s system. So fess it up

 

[greenacc]

When you grip the edge of the original fly screen mesh with a decent pair of pliers just yank it out. There's was a little tab somewhere on the top left on my VE one and I used those little long nose vice grips to grab that and it came out in 2 seconds.
Worst case you might break the fly screen but who cares if you are making the switch to a pollens filter. Be brave and pull it out bro!

 

[VS 5.0]

So how do i attach photos to the justcommodore site itself to ensure they wont go bye bye. Is it at all possible?

Third party hosting via Imgur works well for me and others.

The culprit with the majority of the invalid links is photobucket. They were recently bought out by some private equity crowd or similar which means maximise profit as quickly as possible. To achieve this they locked all third party links until you pay a ransom of some USD$400. The site is als a real pig now with ads absolutely all over the place.

Pics loaded to direct to JC are the small ones you see from time to time in posts, so it is possible. Can't recall how do that now, esp since the site changed to the new format. IIRC you are limited to the total volume of pics, and they need to be reduced in size as well.

EDIT: Worked it out. The post below is a pic loaded to JC, not Imgur or anywhere else. When you reply to a thread, there is a red "Upload a File" box next to the "Post Reply" box. Click that and choose the location of your pic etc. Then you can choose to show as thumbnail or full pic. Please choose full pic, thumbnails suck. That pic below is some 4.6mb in original size, which was too big for the server to load so needed to be reduced in size to be accepted.

 

[VS 5.0]

 

[Smashfist]

I'm not sure you're one to be critical Skylarking given your reference to "engine pulls bold" and "air conditioner pulls bolt". I assume you mean pulley?

That being said, the service manuals are written so any entry level drongo can carry out repairs start to finish. The Holden Gold level course includes a part on how you can use your expertise and judgement to skip steps in diagnosis and repair to carry them out more effectively and efficiently.

But you sound so experienced I assume you already know that...

 

[Poor old Dad]

That being said, the service manuals are written so any entry level drongo can carry out repairs start to finish. The Holden Gold level course includes a part on how you can use your expertise and judgement to skip steps in diagnosis and repair to carry them out more effectively and efficiently.

Yeah has always been the case.

From my first vehicle (1967) My dad encouraged us to buy workshop manuals (original or aftermarket) for our vehicles.

To do whatever "by the book" was usually overkill by many degrees.

Mid 90's I remember tackling a Verada timing belt replacement.

Was the first fwd car I'd owned and was dismayed at the complexity of the task according to the manual.

In the event it definitely was a prick of a job but nowhere near as difficult or as time consuming as the manual would have it.

 

[Skylarking]

I'm not sure you're one to be critical Skylarking given your reference to "engine pulls bold" and "air conditioner pulls bolt". I assume you mean pulley?

That being said, the service manuals are written so any entry level drongo can carry out repairs start to finish. The Holden Gold level course includes a part on how you can use your expertise and judgement to skip steps in diagnosis and repair to carry them out more effectively and efficiently.

But you sound so experienced I assume you already know that...

Sometimes i use my iPad which auto corrects like crazy and i don't always pick it up. I'm sure others have suffered the same issue at times. If i pick it up, i will edit it but usually not after someone has already replied after my post. If you enjoy being a grammar gastapo, feel free as i will entertain you quite a bit.

As to comments about service manuals, gold level courses and being efficient in service, great. Do share your experiances but don't just blindly say "pull it out" when i've stated it wont budge. Share your vast knowledge as to why doing it the Holden documented way is inappropriate or ineffective. After all isn't that the idea of such forums, to share knowledge?

As to my cabin filter, it's all done and the filter is well seated. Once i got a puller to remove the wipers, it was easy peasy with the following proviso:

• driver side air inlet grille panel is rather awkward to get out and put back in. Holden also plastic welded some dicky wiper arm seals on the grille itself which can tear rather easily, especially the driver side wiper shaft seal. Don't know if the seals are replaceable or Holden expects on to buy the whole driver grille panel but it's no biggie. Black mastic should seal it up if it tears (partially in my case).
  
• The grill support panel has double sided foam bonded underneath but it comes away rather easily when lifting it slowly from the front and holding it up for a while. Surprised its not mentioned within the mservice manual as needing to be replaced. In any case, it came off clean, i wiped the metal lip on teh sidewall and back she went. All good.
  
• the air inlet housing cover is simple to remove and replace, in theory. The housing cover tabs are finicky to unclip but you have S O M U C H S P A C E for your hands. Take it off, pull old screen up, drop new filter in, replace housing cover making sure clips are engaged.
• ensure driver and passenger side grille panels are under the windscrean side seals as it's easy to get wrong.

Other than above, it's a no brainer and simple to do. Does take longer than what others have done.

Now if someone highlighted the wiper shaft seal issue or the support panel foam as being potential issues repquiring new parts, maybe i'd have done it differently. Likley i'd still want to have followed the 'correct documented process', atleast once. You know, to learn myself.

 

[tml678]

Likley i'd still want to have followed the 'correct documented process', atleast once. You know, to learn myself.

I'm all for following correct procedure for mechanical repairs/servicing etc. But seriously mate, you've gone to timbuktu and back with this one. It's your car and by all means do with it as you wish, but you were given some solid advice by numerous people on how to perform a really simple job with a minimum of fuss. I honestly for the life of me can't see why you decided to make it 1000x harder than it needed to be, not to mention you damaged a part of your car in the process it seems?

I'm not saying my way (or that of anyone else) is correct, but I certainly didn't have any issues with tearing seals or removing wipers or pulling foam off etc.. Unclipped five scrivets, arm in, screen out, arm back in, filter installed, scrivets popped back in. Truly a 10min job.

This from Ricey really should have been enough:

No idea why you are removing the whole plenum when simply removing the pass side section allows more than enough access. It literally takes 5 minutes to remove the leaf screen and fit a pollen filter.

Anyway, as long as you're happy with the result I guess that's all that matters.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Hm, the answer is yes... sad...

The attitude in part reminds me of an Air Crash Investigations. An aircraft mechanic used his judgment and years of experience when replacing windscrean bolts rather than use the manual to check the specific part numbers that should be used. The consequence was he saved a little time but installed the wrong bolts and the windscreen soon blew out, partially sucking the pilot out the aircraft. As it turned out the previous mechanic had also installed the wrong bolts but luck was on his side as there was no failure. This time around, the mechanic replaced like for like but he was not so lucky as in this case there was a failure.

And in my specific case, a mechanic replacing an engine pulls bold as part of a Mazda recall didn’t use new high strength air conditioner pull bolts as required by the recall notice but instead used cheap rubbery of the shelf crap bolts. Within a short time, two snapped and one flew off while I was listening to the noise with the bonnet up. Mazda’s solution was for me to drive to the workshop and they’d install the required bolts - they wanted me to drive with one bolt holding on the aircon pulls and didn’t want to truck my car to their dealership. That vehicle never saw a dealer service department again as I bought the full service books for the machine and maintained it at home...

Guess as more and more of the population sees user manuals as a waste of time, that then sets the groundwork for workshop manual service procedures to be ignored and ones judgment inserted in place of the designers and manufacturers of the product. wonder how that will end up in the long term...

Such is life...

Ps: i’d also like to see the latest procedure on how the Cabin Air Filter is installed as defined within Holden’s system. So fess it up

If you wanna make comparisons compare apples with apples bruv

Air filter will hardly cause catastrophic accident with the driver sucked out of the cabin at 30000 meters in the sky

 

[Skylarking]

I’ve had people state to just pull the screen as they did on their VE or VF or possibly even VF series 2. Lots of videos on the web related to VE cabin filter changes but absolutely nothing for VF series 2. Nothing.

Problem was that in my VF series 2, the bloody screen didn’t want to come out. No idea why, it just didn’t want to move. I tried pulling it out using pliers but I didn’t want to move at all. And I didn’t want to break anything.

Once I had unfitted access, the air inlet hood cover which was rather tight but once removed could I move the screen filter. Initially it seemed stuck but once it moved, it could easily slide straight up.

And as I’ve never personally met anyone from this site, I have no idea who they really are. If something did break (other than the screen filter) I’d be on my own as those that advised would be nowhere to be seen... and I understand that.

So my preference is to do the task as Holden designed it. Doing so reminded me that modern vehicles are designed with little concern to simple servicing. Holden service manuals also seem to be crap...

But it’s easier for all to bag me for wanting to ensure I did it the ‘official way’.

All in all, it wouldn’t take much longer than the ‘grunt’ method, maybe an extra 20 minutes once you know how.

For some odd reason, others seem offended at their ‘grunt mechanics’ advise of not yanking harder not being taken.

In this process I didn’t go to Timbuktu and back I unclipes was 3 more scriverts and 8 bolts and pulled off two more parts than some others have done. But it seems to have hit some raw nerve.

How dare I follow what I think is the correct Holden procedure... when someone on the web knows better.