2020-05-11 — Awesome Title

Happy Monday, peeps. 😊

Another late night and another early morning has me still rather sleep deprived, but I’m still kicking.

I busted out some more servicise this morning. And guess what? I have you to thank for it. When the sun woke me up at 6 something after going to bed at 1 something, I was not in the mood to go out and exercise, but I thought of y’all, and I didn’t want to have to report a missed day to you, so… I pulled up my big-boy pants, grabbed the metal rake, and went to town (well… to the woods, that is). 12 minutes of raking at a rate that was just good enough to have me a little out of breath.

Progress, mind you. I’m not gonna win any fitness awards with my world champion metal-raking-as-exercise skills, but I’m upping my minutes by one per exercise day (Mon-Sat) until I get to 30 minutes. Then I’ll probably increase the intensity a little bit.

On the outside, I actually look pretty fit. Carrying heavy tools all day, lying down and getting up a bajillion times a day (no car lift as a mobile mechanic, so you’re on the ground a lot), breaking stuck bolts free… It makes it look like I’m in shape.

But ask me to walk up our driveway and not be out of breath by the time I get to the top?

😶

Yeah… no cardio endurance to save my life.

Anyway, though… success this morning in the exercise front, thanks to you.

Much appreciated. Gold star for both of us. 😁

My tech David sent me a text at 7 ish this morning letting me know that he’d been up all night at the hospital with his wife. She apparently has some kind of blockage, so she’s going to have her gallbladder removed tomorrow (my mom recently had the same procedure done). Hopefully that takes care of everything for her.

Amazingly, David still worked today. He’s not allowed in the hospital with the Covid-19 stuff going on, so I guess there’s not much else for him to do. He needed a nap, though, so he got started about noonish today.

That put us a little behind, but we managed.

I feel a bit like a sad excuse for a mechanic lately. I’ve had a rash of super challenging jobs. The first one this morning was a no crank, no start (usually one of the easiest jobs). It had power to the starter at the main hot but no power at the ignition wire. So… you move upstream… Starter relay was fine. Starter fuse was fine. After messing with the under-hood fuse block for a little bit, suddenly it started cranking when I tried to start it. That was weird. It was a no crank, no start that only started cranking once I fiddled with the fuse block. But the fuel pump was still not coming on (at this point I was thinking ignition switch). What I did notice was that the fuse block was super corroded. The lid was missing, and a ton of both male and female connector slots/pins had green corrosion all over them.

Anyway, mechanic stuff probably isn’t that interesting, so long story short, it randomly decided to start, pump kicked on and everything, and it happened right after we swapped a relay. At that point, I thought I’d found the issue (a bad relay, which almost never happens in my experience), and so I thought we were good.

…Until I shut it off and tried to restart.

Ugh… back to cranking and not starting again, without changing anything.

Double “ugh.”

It did that for a while, randomly starting, randomly not until I used my fancy shmancy scanner to clear all the codes in the car’s 10 systems, and after doing that?

It started and ran fine and never had a problem again–through probably 20-30 starts.

Weird.

In the end, I’m still not sure what was the issue, but they do need a new fuse block. That’s likely the issue. at least 50/50, I’d guess. The thing was covered in rat poop and corrosion. If it wasn’t the issue now, it’s gonna be in the future. It was baaaaad.

The lady was super nice and gave me a pretty good tip. The next car was another hairy one. Front air ride suspension issues. I found a leak in the air ride system, but not enough, at least I wouldn’t think, to keep the air suspension from at least filling slowly… but nothing. The whole front end is saggy baggy–super low to the ground.

I’m gonna need Dave to get that one for me. That’s out of the range of my experience and knowledge. In three or four years of doing this as my main job, I’ve only run across air ride issues once or twice, and I figured out the issues quickly. But this one I think has multiple issues–leak issues as well as electrical, and I had lots of cars on the schedule. Best to just reschedule.

Aaaaaaaaand, we’ll sick David on it. 😁

After that one… it was on to the next car. Multiple random misfire, 2005 Altima. Usually not hard, but the misfire really did seem random. It was all over the place. I couldn’t find any pattern to it before the rain started coming down, so I packed it in for the day on that one, rescheduled for tomorrow, and either I or David will give it a go again.

After that one, I drove south, out of the storm, and spent another good while on yet another crazy car–1993 Lexus ES300–that would randomly die while driving (super dangerous… the kid almost got hit by a semi because of it).

Anyway, I spent probably 2 hours or so with that one, but I never could get it to reproduce the issue.

Guess it got scared. 😎

David did three cars–CV axle, no start diag (starter replacement), and front pads and rotors. Wasn’t the best money day, but it was solid, despite so many challenging cars–two of which I didn’t charge for.

Moving on…

I had a cool title for today’s journal entry, but I can’t remember what it was. I thought of it on the way home today, but I decided not to dictate my journal on my phone today, so… I forgot the title.

It was gonna be awesome, though. I promise 😁

So… That’s the day 🙂

I’m toying with the idea of buying this car: https://www.copart.com/lot/30955920

I’ve historically not been a Hyundai fan, but I’ve liked these cars ever since they came out, and the price is so… CHEAP!! I wish they had a “make offer” option. I’d put one through for sure.

#1. I’m grateful to have been in a mood today where I didn’t get as frustrated/stressed as I’ve been lately when things go sideways. I’ve always been a fan of digging into the fundamentals of things, the core at the center. One of these days in the near future, I’m gonna write a post where I war game through my perspective on life and my expectations, boiling everything down to its core. Then I think I’ll be able to put these challenging experiences in proper context, and I’ll likely stop getting so frustrated.

That’ll be a good day.

#2. I’m grateful that I am in the lucky position of earning a good living even on days when I personally don’t pull in much (which seems to be quite a regular occurrence lately).

#3. I’m grateful for re-do’s, for people in the world who don’t put you in boxes, who let you start over, start fresh, people who give you room to grow and change and improve, people who give the benefit of the doubt, people are willing to believe in you when others don’t.

#4. I’m grateful for open dining areas in restaurants as of today. I was Subway’s first sit-down customer since Covid-19 (at least at that particular Subway).

#5. I’m grateful to be clean and sober. I have to be careful. It’s getting easier now, and that’s historically when things get dangerous. Not paying attention, getting blindsided…

Okay, peoples. I’m tired. 11:21 p.m. I’m actually staying a little ahead of my lovely condition, so I’m not feeling super behind right now. I’ll probably eat and drink a little bit still just to try to stay ahead, but it’s nice to not be super behind right now. The cold, rainy day probably had something to do with that. We’ll be in the mid and upper 80s by the end of the week, I think, so I’ll have to be super careful.

Good night, my lovelies.

Lift the World.

~ stephen

oh… 36, 44, 35, 9, 3