Everyday is a good day: It’s just good in different ways.
Today has been sort of a discouraging type of good day. I don’t even remember when I got up. I don’t think it was that late, maybe 8 something.
I’ve been working on my tax stuff more consistently, so I didn’t leave for work right away. I also want sure what all work I was going to do, so I waited for some calls to come in to help me plan my route.
While I waited, I used the opportunity to work on tax stuff, spending perhaps an hour or so doing that and leaving for work maybe around 11?
I don’t remember how many cars I did today. I guess I will figure that out as I run through everything on here. First car was an Isuzu box truck that had an oil leak they wanted me to diagnose. When I got there, there was oil all over the place, but there was no oil reading on the dipstick at all, and I don’t carry that much diesel oil with me, so I didn’t have everything I needed to do that job. So I let the customer know that I would be coming back another day to finish up.
The next one I went to a 2014 Ford f750. One of the other mobile mechanics called me because he needed some help diagnosing it, so I went over to help him out. Turned out to be a bit of a nightmare trying to figure it out. I think I narrowed it down to the combination switch, but I wasn’t able to verify that because I didn’t have time for one, and two, the part wasn’t available. I didn’t charge the vehicle owner, and I wasn’t going to charge the other mechanic, but he gave me 50 bucks anyway, so that was nice of him.
Third car was a 2016 Honda odyssey. Just needed a battery, so that one was nice. Sports car was a 2004 Nissan Xterra that needed all three belts. I put all the belts on, only to find that when I was about to start it, no oil was reading on the dipstick. So I put a couple of quartz in, and it read great, in fact just a tad bit over full, so I took out a few ounces, and when I checked again, it didn’t read anything at all in the dipstick again. I’m thinking that there is an issue with the dipstick itself not reading properly. Not having enough stuff with me to do an oil change right there for her to make sure there was exactly the right amount of oil in the system, I told her to drive to the Big O that was just a couple blocks away and get an oil change before she went home for the day. Don’t want to risk having too much oil in the system.
Fourth car was a pre-purchase inspection on a 2004 Chevrolet malibu. It had a lot of things wrong with it, so I suggested that maybe he look elsewhere, or at least not being a hurry. The dealership had changed all the fluids, I think, and must have power washed the engine, as it looked like there was some evidence of oil leaks, but the engine looked clean. The evidence was just a little looks and crannies, so I think they were trying to hide the oil leak. It also had a bad AC compressor and the rocker panels were so Rusty that when I tried to jack it up to check the wheel bearings, it crunched the rocker so much, but many large chunks of rusty metal can crumbling to the ground. Bad tires… Beater car. If you can get it for Peter price, then yeah it’s worth it, but it’s not, nope.
Fifth car is a 2004 Jeep Liberty that I needed to put a radiator in. I had done the diagnostic the other day, and today was the day to put the radiator in. That job went relatively well, actually, until the very end. After everything was put back in the Jeep started overheat again. I thought it had been fine, it had been running for 15 or 20 minutes without overheating at all, and then all the sudden it started to overheat pretty significantly. What I found was that the radiator fan fuse was blown and the radiator fan itself had a bad bearing and couldn’t turn. So, I showed him how to replace his own fan, highly recommended that he not drive it home tonight, as he could risk badly overheating it again, and went on my way. He’s going to go ahead and buy the radiator fan and install it himself.
Sixth car was the big nightmare of the day. I didn’t get there until 10:00 p.m., and when I first got there it looked like a simple battery issue. But as I always do, I jumped it because the battery wasn’t low enough to be worried about damaging the alternator, and then I watched to see how it would do. Unfortunately, the alternator wasn’t putting out any voltage, so I got the go-ahead to put an alternator in. When I was about to put the alternator in, I realized that the brakes stop grommet was broken, so that added to the issues. On some Asian cars, some Hondas and some Hyundai’s, there’s a little rubber stop grommet that breaks and leaves your brake light on even when the car is completely turned off, which of course will drain your battery.
Anyway, I put in a new alternator, but apparently it was bad out of the box because I had just the same problem with a new alternator as I did with the old one. Either that, or there’s some funky computer or other electrical issue going on that’s causing problems. So I pulled the new alternator back out only charged her for a little bit of oil that I put in and the basic service call, after spending over 2 hours there, and put the alternators in my van to test tomorrow.
So now it’s 12:51, I’m still about 20 minutes from home, I’m tired, over the edge, and not looking forward to going back to that car. It’s way down in fayetteville, and I’m nervous that there might be something else going on other than a simple alternator issue.
Ugh.
Anyway, all in all, it hasn’t been a bad day, just some rough patches here and there. I’m still struggling pretty strongly with the other stuff. Doesn’t seem like I can forget it for very long anymore. I guess I said that yesterday.
Please cross your fingers but the issue really is just a bad alternator out of the box. That would be nice, cuz then I would get paid for doing the job and a labor claim from AutoZone for having a bad part.
I had had a really good stretch there for many many months without having bad part issues, but this last month and a half seems to have been a wave of bad parts. Hopefully this is another of those cases.
I’ve also been treating myself a little bit better a mechanic. In the past, when I’ve done jobs and found other stuff that’s kept me there longer, I haven’t charged anything additional because I don’t want angry customers. But if I’m going to have to stay longer to fix other problems that weren’t part of the original deal, then I need to be charging for that, and I started doing that, which feels good. I’ve given away too much labor for free out of fear that people are going to be mad but I’m charging more, but they shouldn’t be mad because if I have to stay to fix other things that weren’t part of the original deal, then they should expect to have to pay for that. For example, the Jeep Liberty that had an additional issue other than the cracked radiator that was leaking. I had to stay an extra 30 minutes or so to deal with that. Same thing with the Nissan Xterra that had oil issues. I had to stay an extra 30 minutes or so for that as well.
Now that I’m not just throwing myself under the bus and eating the lost time out of fear, it’s now become not that big of a deal if issues crop up because I’m at least going to get paid for the work I do. Hopefully I won’t have angry customers, but I think they should understand. I guess I’m repeating myself. Additional work equals additional cost.
I am grateful to be making progress on all the tax stuff. Still have 2019 and 2020 hanging over my head, but I’m starting to really get on top of 2021. And I will just keep plugging away little bit by a little bit until I get all of the tax stuff taken care of.
So there you have it. It’s been a long day. I’ll get home probably about 1:10 or 1:15, and then I’ll eat some food, and I’ll probably do a little bit of tax work, and then call it a night. You know, actually, I probably won’t do any tax work. I’ll just eat relax a little bit and then call it a night. I’ll save the tax stuff for the morning.
As always, thanks for the encouraging words. Loves and hugs to everyone.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 