Up early but started late. I’ve been a bit more concerned lately with getting up on time because things have slowed down right about the time I had a major new competitor join the mobile mechanic scene. Calls often come in bunches early, first thing in the morning, and I’m listed as opening a half hour before my competitor, so… I want to be there to take the early calls.
So… with that in mind, I was up early. Thought things were really busy today, but then they… weren’t… at least, for a while. Brought some stuff over to the shop that’s doing all the timing and water pump stuff on my GMC Terrain (oil, oil filter, coolant, etc).
It’s done! The Terrain is done, and I’ll get it picked up tomorrow. Wahoo! Cross your fingers that it’s done right. 🙃
I’ll be putting an ad up for it this week to get it sold. Will be so nice to have that one gone! So many projects that need to get done. That’s one of the biggest of them all.
I didn’t get going to my first job until around noon. First job was a starter on a 2008 Ford Explorer Sport Trac. They were providing the part, and wouldn’t you know it, I forget to mention the part about if they get the wrong part, they’re gonna have to pay for my wasted time waiting to get the right part. Forgot to tell them, and of course they had the wrong part.
Fortunately, I always have so much I can do digitally that it’s not necessarily a waste of time. So many things to log, total up, keep track of, schedule, etc., wasting time is… not really a thing. Still, I shouldn’t be stuck waiting for them to get the right part. Took maybe 30 minutes longer than it should have because of that, but oh well.
Second car was a 2003 Honda Civic. Had a camshaft position sensor code, and he’d just had his sensor replaced, but he hadn’t ever changed his timing belt, so I told him to have it towed to a shop to be safe and to get the timing belt, et al, replaced.
Third car was… uh… oh yeah, another Honda–this one a Honda pilot with a bad battery and a bad battery connection. Fixed the cable/connector issue and got rid of another used battery. Interestingly, though the used battery was starting the car without any issues whatsoever, it was testing bad. 😶 So I sold it to her dirt cheap and gave her a warranty that I wouldn’t normally give on a used battery, but… I wanted to get rid of the battery, and it seemed fine (started the car without issues after having sat in my van for two months or so? And then it started the car 10 times in a row without issues and an 11th time after letting the brights be on for 5 minutes, so… I told her it was testing bad but seemed to be decent since it was having no issues starting the car even after leaving the brights on for 5 minutes and 10 starts without letting it run.
Fourth car was a 2007 Cadillac DTS that wouldn’t start and that had an oil leak. Wouldn’t start because the battery was 9 years old. 😶
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
9-year-old battery?!?!
Wow. Go Walmart. I’m regularly amazed at how long I’ve seen some Walmart batteries last. Pretty amazing.
The oil leak was from the oil filter housing, so that’s on my list to repair another day.
Fifth car was actually an RV. His automatic stops weren’t coming down, and I went out and found he has a bad motor (I bypassed all the wiring, and the motor still wouldn’t move at all even when directly jumped).
Last car was a 2001 Honda Accord (day of Hondas? Was that four Hondas in 6 cars?) She had a rough running engine, and I got there and found that she had multiple misfires on both banks of her V6, and it was all sort of sudden, and I found out that they had owned the car since it had 40k miles (it was at about 250k), and they had no memory of ever replacing the timing belt, so I spent a good long time stripping a bunch of stuff off to get a look at the timing belt and timing marks to see if it was in time. Belt looked decent. Timing marks appeared to indicate it hadn’t jumped time, but since it was already nearly 10 p.m., and I’d been there for over two hours, and since the plan was to get a new timing belt anyway since they didn’t have any record of when the last one was, we called it a night, and I gave her lots of instructions for what to do next. It’s probably just a coil or spark plug issue, but best to get the belt and pump changed if it’s been a long time. Best not to mess with that.
So… that was it. Got a few things done today that have been on the list for a while. That was good. Still making progress staying away from things that drag me down. Heart starting to feel a little lighter, though some of that is illusory. Still… some is real… I think.
Time for bed. After 2.
Loves and hugs.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 