Cedar Valley Gearheads

06/06/2026

Good afternoon all! Seems like we are overdue for a post!

In our photos:

The volunteers are investigating the CRV for a vacuum leak. The machine by the hood on the Honda CRV is a Smoke Machine for testing Evaporative Emissions leaks. It makes "cool smoke" that runs through the vehicles system and comes out in areas that have a leak, so the leak is better visualized to a watchful eye. Once located, the leak can be fixed.

On the Red Grand Am, volunteers were working on replacing the steering rack.

The white van was having brake work done! Almost every vehicle that comes in to us requires brake work! 😅

We hope everyone is staying cool and dry! 😃

05/25/2026

Today, we honor the heroes who gave their all for freedom. Land of the free, because of the brave. Remembering with gratitude the sacrifice of those who served. Gone but never forgotten—their courage lives on.
We hope everyone is able to spend this weekend with family and friends, and have a meaningful Memorial Day!

05/05/2026

We're overdue for some more..... ........! 😃

In these photos, volunteers can be seen doing some..........you guessed it, brake inspection, and brake work!
They also worked on the spark plugs and valve cover gaskets on this Caravan!

We had a new volunteer join us last week! We are so excited when other members of our community find time to join us on our volunteer nights!

04/30/2026

Another vehicle left Cedar Valley Gearheads shop on April 27th! Congratulations to Danny who drove off in a 2004 Toyota Highlander! Danny now wants to achieve higher paying employment to save up to purchase a newer vehicle in the future. He said he feels blessed by what he has been given and appreciated the information that was given to him. The Gearheads team wishes Danny the best!

04/25/2026

Today's the day our contest ends!!!!!

Let's see if we can get a few more followers tonight!!!! 😃

We will run the contest until 10 pm tonight, Friday April 24th, 2026!

We are up to 630 followers, only 70 more followers to go, to make it to our goal of reaching 700 followers! Can you help!? 😃😃😃😇😇😇🥰

Click the link to go to our contest post, so you can enter by commenting! 😃

Lets race to the finish line! Ready, set, GO! 📢📢📢



https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18KTY5dDyd/

🎖🏅THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN OUR CONTEST‼️😃 THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED.

🥳‼️🎉 FREE GIVEAWAY🎉‼️🥳 We're giving away a $50 Cedar Falls Downtown gift certificate (good at dozens of local businesses), as a thank-you to everyone of you, for supporting us here at Cedar Valley Gearheads! Help us continue our mission of providing reliable transportation in our community by participating in our GIVEAWAY😃!

How to enter:
✅ Follow our page: Help us reach our goal of 700 PLUS followers! 😍 ➡️AND
✅ Comment below: What’s the most reliable vehicle you’ve ever owned?🚗

💡 Bonus: Tag a friend who loves a reliable ride for an extra entry!😎

🙏Sharing this post helps us reach more people in need! ❤️
The OTHER details 😊-
🔅📢 One winner will be randomly selected and announced here on April 24, 2026! 📢 🔅 🛍Winner must be able to pick up the gift certificate in Cedar Falls, Iowa. 🛍 🔅📸A photo of Winner, with their certificate, will be shared on our page to help celebrate their prize! 🥳 📷

04/18/2026

🎖🏅THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN OUR CONTEST‼️😃 THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED.

🥳‼️🎉 FREE GIVEAWAY🎉‼️🥳 We're giving away a $50 Cedar Falls Downtown gift certificate (good at dozens of local businesses), as a thank-you to everyone of you, for supporting us here at Cedar Valley Gearheads! Help us continue our mission of providing reliable transportation in our community by participating in our GIVEAWAY😃!

How to enter:
✅ Follow our page: Help us reach our goal of 700 PLUS followers! 😍 ➡️AND
✅ Comment below: What’s the most reliable vehicle you’ve ever owned?🚗

💡 Bonus: Tag a friend who loves a reliable ride for an extra entry!😎

🙏Sharing this post helps us reach more people in need! ❤️
The OTHER details 😊-
🔅📢 One winner will be randomly selected and announced here on April 24, 2026! 📢 🔅 🛍Winner must be able to pick up the gift certificate in Cedar Falls, Iowa. 🛍 🔅📸A photo of Winner, with their certificate, will be shared on our page to help celebrate their prize! 🥳 📷

04/10/2026

Good evening! Its time to share some good photo entries for our series, to end this week!

The guys were hard at it this week!

In photos below:

Photo #1:
A volunteer can be seen modifying a spare part on a table top bench vice, to make it work for a replacement that was needed, that we don’t have. Sometimes, especially with older vehicles, replacement parts are no longer made or available, so we have to make do!

Photo #2:
A volunteer can be seen riviting a new license plate holder onto a front bumper.

Photo #3:
Two volunteers worked on identifying several codes that will need resolved on a vehicle using a "Scan Tool".

Photo #4:
You can see volunteers bleeding brakes on the CRV. As with many higher miliage and Iowa winter driven vehicles, the CRV had some crummy parts that had gotten brittle. Unfortunately this meant that one caliper bleeder screw was broken in the dismantling process 😔. So.........parts are on order.

Photos # 5-7:
This week volunteers replaced the rear driveline on the Highlander! No more vibration!😃🥳 Notice in the photos, volunteers were using a jack to help drop the gas tank down, so they could access the drive shaft to fix it! So many times, you have to remove irrelevant parts, just to get to the parts that need repairs! This is why a "simple job", may take several hours!

Hope you enjoyed this week's 😃

04/05/2026

On April 3, 2026, Good Friday, Cedar Valley Gearheads was able to make it a great day for Joanna as she was able to drive away with a donation of a 2005 Jeep Liberty! Congratulations and may this assist in making you more self sufficient!
A big thank you to all the volunteers and vehicle donors that make this happen!

03/25/2026

Last week, we shared a post with you all describing what it is that we do with donated vehicles, and we introduced our new feature!

We shared we are hoping to post fairly often, so you all get an idea of what our organization- our volunteers, work on every week to get these vehicles ready for new homes! We hope you all are excited about the idea of sharing some behind the scenes features, because we sure are! So without further ado, check out these photos of ONE OF THE MOST COMMON repairs done here at Gearheads!

Any guesses? IT'S BRAKE WORK FOR THE WIN!

Our salty Iowa winters, combined with age, regular use, and sometimes lack of regular maintenance, most of the vehicles we get, we have to plan on doing minimal to extensive brake work. This can entail turning rotors/drums, and installing new brake pads/shoes, or, often more in depth brake system repairs.

Sometimes, as in these photos, the rotors or drums are too far gone, and the safest solution is installing new parts! Look at that shine! 😃😁 As we just mentioned, It's often possible that our brake system repairs can require even more in depth repairs and parts replacement. This includes replair or replacement of brake lines, calipers, wheel cylinders, brake fluid top off or flush, system bleeding, leak remediation, and more!

Here at Gearheads, brake system inspection and repair is one of our first inspection points performed, and one of the most important for the safety of future owners. It's important to have your brakes inspected regularly to keep you and others safe on the road, and also to extend the life of your braking system!

P.S. Our volunteer team in the shop also took advantage of the beautiful weather we had over the weekend, and deep cleaned the shop! Look how shiny and clean it is!🤩

Hope you enjoyed this week's ! Stay tuned for more!

03/19/2026

Good evening!
Wednesday night thoughts........in the past, we've been asked, what is it we actually do with vehicles once they get donated to us? We thought we could share a quick 🤪, explanation of the process and introduce our new series of posts we are hoping to share with you all from time to time.
We want to show you all some of the heart of our organization, the time and knowledge our volunteers pour into these vehicles!

So, to answer that big question- what do we do with the vehicles that get donated to us, we fix them up of course! However its not always as easy as that, in fact, some vehicles require a decent amount of work, before they are ready for their new homes.

All vehicles that are donated to Gearheads, begin their journey with a multi-point inspection and evaluation by our knowledgable volunteer experts. After the inspection, a personalized action plan is made for each individual vehicle, a "to do list", of what's required to get them back on the road. Occasionally we encounter a vehicle that would require more resources than what we could invest. When that happens, a vehicle fails its inspection and is unfixable, Gearheads will then evaluate what that vehicle can contribute to the organization via usable parts or scrap funding. Those resources from the unfixable vehicle will then be used towards other vehicle repairs. For the vehicles that have met the second chance at life criteria (they passed inspection), the repairs take place, right in our shop! Some vehicles take more time, energy, money, parts, and expertise than others, so not all vehicles are repaired in the same amount of time. After a vehicle is "all fixed up", they undergo a final inspection. Once the vehicles pass their final inspection, the recipients are notified, and they are off to their new home!

You've probably seen our posts of when a recipient gets the keys to their new opportunities! I mean cars! ☺️ We get excited about the opportunities these vehicles offer their recipients! Gearheads, with the help of our volunteers, donors, and members of our community, are helping someone in our community overcome transportation barriers, by donating time, knowledge, energy, vehicles, supplies, and funding!

In the Photos..... :
In our pictures below, our experts and volunteers are seen working on a few different vehicles. Repairs worked on this week consist of replacing rear axle seals, performing a transmission service, and performing a vehicle inspection on the red Tahoe. 😀