After 5 a.m. I didn’t plan this. 🙃
I thought I’d done well at saying no. I thought I’d gotten is pretty well taken care of to get home in time for dinner and whatnot, but nope.
I forgot one of the jobs that we had to do, and then I said yes to a job that turned into a major deal, so here we are. Cory is asleep downstairs, and I am on my back in my bed writing this by voice to text on my cell phone… Trying not to fall asleep while I write.
Was a crazy day today. I thought I was taking it easy for the first half. Just sort of chill and whatnot, but I realized in the early evening, when it dawned on me that I forgot one of my customers, that we were looking at potentially a very late.
But I didn’t think it was going to be 4:00 late.
😶😶😶
First job of the day was a parasitic draw in Bella vista. 2010 Kia Forte. Her car was randomly dying after sitting for just a couple days, and we were able to track it down to the radio that was sucking the power from the car. That was enough for her. Instead of paying what could be a lot more money to figure out exactly what about the stereo is the audio circuit is the problem, she’s just going to live without a radio for the time being.
So that one was done and pretty successful.
Oh, I forgot to say that we returned over $1,000 of parts today. Probably closer to $1,500 worth of parts. 😬
That was first thing this morning, or at least the first $1,000 of it was first thing this morning.
Then we went to a 2008 Toyota tundra that was having brake issues. Turned out to be a very very expensive job, so I walked him through how to fix it himself if you decides to. Might be pretty tough for him, but at least I showed him how.
I’m falling asleep well writing this. I think I fell asleep well talking. 🙃
Next job was finishing up the Mazda Miata that has been on my list to finish up for weeks. Really nice to get that and the tundra job done. The Miata has been on there for weeks, and the tundra for probably at least one week. I know I’ve probably said this multiple times before, but any job that lasts more than a day turns into a little bit of a stressor. It’s just more to keep track of, which adds to the emotional bandwidth expended.
After that we went to a 2005 Nissan Titan that wouldn’t start. Interestingly enough, it started right up for me without any issues. I barely jiggled a very loose battery cable, so that could have been it…
Just fell asleep again while dictating. Started talking about something totally unrelated. Apparently, I’m dream talking. 🙃
I did find some resistance in his negative battery cable, and his cables were both loose and corroded a bit, so that could have been his whole issue. The battery seemed good and strong, and the starter was also strong, so I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
After the Titan, we went to a 2016 Chevrolet Trax where I was able to diagnose the problem in about 4 seconds, really even before we got there, but we ran into multiple issues during the repair. The first one was that Chevy made the bolts that need to come off to replace the belt torque to yield bolts, meaning they can only be used once. Once you remove them, you have to throw them away and buy new bolts.
Lovely.
I didn’t have any bolts replace the ones that were in there, so that was pretty stinky.
The craziest part was after I removed both bolts from the tensioner, I hadn’t even moved from my spot, and one of the two bolts disappeared. It completely vanished. I literally spent maybe 30 minutes trying to find it. Maybe even longer than that. I dumped out all my tool bags. I got my big magnet out and went through the grass on the other side of the sidewalk, underneath the cars, in the parking lot area a little bit.
Nothing.
I have no explanation for it. We gave absolutely everything trying to find the bolt. It was crazy. And it was pretty awful, honestly. Very discouraging at the end of a, well, at what I thought was the end of a very long day. Turns out we still had several hours left to go.
So, I told the girl with the tracks that we were going to need to order new bolts, and we wouldn’t know anything about what needed to happen until Monday morning when I can call the dealer. So that one’s been postponed until Monday. I was hoping to clear Monday somewhat at least to make some good time to spend with Cory. But I’m grateful that we’ll at least have tomorrow for sure, though we’ll both likely be crazy tired after today.
Finished all we were able to get done with the tracks about 10:00, and then we stopped off at the Walmart in Springdale and bought five, five-gallon buckets. Why five, five-gallon buckets? Well, because sometime around maybe 6:00 or 7:00 tonight actually, maybe like 5:00 tonight, we had a gentleman down in Fayetteville call who had accidentally put DEF fluid in his diesel fuel tank. I didn’t really want to do the job, and I quoted him a really high price because it was far away and was going to take a lot of time to even get there and get home, but he wanted us to do it anyway. So about 10:00 we left Bentonville, drove to the Walmart in springdale, bought those buckets, and drove down to Fayetteville to drain his tank and get all the DEF fluid out of his system.
It took about 4 hours, and there were a handful of hiccups along the way, but the best part of everything was that we were able to get the truck back up started and running, with absolutely no risk of damaging the engine, because we completely clean the tank, every last drop of DEF fluid was dried up and out of it.
When all was said and done, Cory and I put in 12.45 billable hours today. 😶
Granted, it was like an 18-hour day, including driving but not including eating lunch.
Anyway, our last customer was very happy, even though we charged him a lot to go that far and come out that late. He even gave us $100 tip when we were done. Nice man, and he was very happy we were able to get him taken care of tonight.
Long long day. Grateful to be sleeping now. Really really looking forward to closing my eyes and listening to my rain noise maker.
Wish it hadn’t been such a long day. I didn’t get to say hello to Corey last night because he was exhausted from the trip and asleep by the time I got home, and then today we’re out until 4:00 almost. But, it was wonderful to spend all that time together even if it was lots of work and Cory’s back was killing him.
Okay, I’ve crashed. I crashed a long time ago. Closing my eyes now. Loves and hugs.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 