2020-04-14 — Everyday is a good day… right?

So… Technically it’s the 15th right now, but since I haven’t gone to bed, I’m still going to count this journal entry for the 14th 😁.

As I’m writing this, it’s currently 12:27 a.m., and I’m just heading home from my last job of the evening. 😬 It’s been a very long day. I’ve made a decent amount of money, but it’s been a very long, hard day.

I got up early to get everything situated for the day. It was going to be a pretty busy day already, and then I had somebody call saying their belt came off and needed to be put back on, and they couldn’t figure out how to get it on and wanted help.

(this is voice to text on the way home again, by the way 😬)

Anyway, just FYI, if you didn’t already know… belts don’t just come off of cars without something causing them to come off. I suppose it’s possible for a belt to get stretched so much that it can come off, but I’ve never seen it happen. There’s always some sort of precipitating cause. Perhaps the belt tensioner spring is not keeping enough tension on the belt anymore. Perhaps one of the pulleys is falling off. Probably the most common thing that I see is it the water pump has gone bad, the bearing completely shot, and the pulley starts to wobble, dumping the belt off in the process.

Such was the case with my first job today. I got there, and about 30 seconds into it, or less, it was obvious that the water pump pulley was completely blown. So I spent well over the first half of the day getting that truck taken care of, and while I was doing that one, David did a fuel pump job for me.

Then I met him at another job, doing a power steering pump for a 2003 Chevy Silverado 5.3. We ran into a bunch of issues with that one. Namely, we replaced the pump with a factory pump from the dealer ($290, plus tax 😬😬😬), only to find out that the new power steering pressure line we had put on it a month ago was cracked! I was thinking that the fluid was gushing out because the pump itself was damaged (perhaps the seating surface of the line) but apparently, that wasn’t the case. The fitting was cracked inside the pump, so you couldn’t see the crack.

That left me with a moral dilemma that I still haven’t figured out:

What I thought was a leaking pump, was just a leaking line, one that we had just replaced a month before. The question is whether or not the pump was also bad. My tech David said that when he started working on it, the reservoir was full, and the power steering wasn’t working, so he thought the pump was bad. I don’t know if that’s it or if the truck just never had a chance to get all the fluid where it needed to go last time I worked on it, because it was gushing out so fast that I didn’t continue the bleed procedure. It’s also possible that the young man burned out the pump driving it for the 15 or so miles he drove it without any fluid in it.

So the question is, what do I do? Do I bill him nothing at all because the cracked new line wasn’t his fault and was under warranty? Or, do I go ahead and bill him for a new pump and the labor for that because he may have burned out his pump driving it for 15 miles without fluid in it, and it may really be that and not just an incomplete bleed procedure? Or do I split the difference, and just charge him half the parts and half the labor, or only the part and no labor because he got a brand new pump out of the deal, and his pump might have been bad anyway from having driven it, but then again maybe not, so we call it 50/50?

Mechanics don’t always get the correct diagnosis. Sometimes I don’t charge anything, even if it costs me money. Officially, I have a policy that if we get the diagnosis wrong, then they only pay for the part, and the labor is free. Generally, I just eat the cost on everything, parts labor, labor, and everything, even though my “official” policy is a little different. that’s always been a hard one for me. Doctor’s charge even when they get their diagnosis wrong. Mechanics often charge even when they get their diagnosis wrong. I had sort of decided “officially” to split the difference when I get the diagnosis wrong, but most of the time I just eat the whole cost and don’t charge them a thing.

I guess I’m repeating myself.

Anyway, he does have a brand new factory GM pump, and when I took apart the old one, it was obviously well used. There was the metal dust all over the magnet inside the pump. But I just do not know if the pump was still okay or not. Thoughts?

Please feel free to weigh in. I would be curious about your thoughts on the matter. It’s important to me to be honest and treat my customers right, but I also don’t want to walk all over myself or short change myself. I’m a little too close to this one at the moment to have a perspective I’m comfortable with.

Anyway, after that job was over, I paid David for the day and went to my last job of the day, which was another water pump with exactly the same issue as the first job of the day.

That’s the job I just finished up right now.

So… I’m tired 😊.

Must be time for gratitude. Have to say, I’m not really in the mood for it, but thinking about it makes me smile a little bit, so I’m getting in the mood for it.

#1. I’m grateful to have voice to text that gives me a better chance of getting my journal entry done on the way home, so that I don’t have to stay up another hour to finish the journal entry on a super late night like tonight.

#2. I am grateful that just when I thought my last job was going to spill over into tomorrow with the likelihood of having a bad thermostat out of the box that I was going to have to replace yet again, just when I thought I was at that point, I tried one more time, and everything kicked on and works just fine. It was only then that I remembered that the same thing happened the last time I did a water pump on a Dodge Ram truck. So hopefully he’s good to go now. It was working great when I left, so I’m grateful that that one is done.

#3. I’m grateful that I’ve made it 15 plus days straight in my journaling. Starting to get back to the flow of what things used to be when I used to journal every day for years. Hopefully I can keep this up 😊.

#4. I’m grateful that I’m home and that I have the disposition to simply eat and go to bed instead of watching a few episodes of something or other, which is what I would have done two-plus weeks ago before I started keeping my journal every night.

#5. I’m grateful to be clean and sober today, at least from the pornography/sex addiction stuff. I let my mouth run a little bit with this Dodge when I thought things were falling apart. But… one thing at a time. I’m having some short-term success in this addiction area. I’ll work on the potty mouth one of these days soon. But for now… One thing at a time, one day at a time.

Well, all you wonderful people, good morning! 😊 “And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night” 😁.

~ s