2021-09-14 — Runnin’ and Gunnin’

The eyes be “a [shuttin’] on me” (think The Great Race). 😴

Another late one, and, yes, my anonymous Blogreader friend, I need more sleep… for sure. 🙃

Coming up on 2 a.m. again, and things be “crazy as a coot.” Things be “as crazy as two coots.” Gonna meet with my new potential worker on… Thursday, I think it is? Funny, just a couple days ago I was worried that I was staring at a precipitous drop in incoming business, and now? 

We be jammin’.

Things are slammed beyond slammed. It’s nutty.

Hopefully, this older gentleman who’s interested in working for me will be a good fit, and hopefully things stay hopping like they are right now. I’m running and gunning like a crazy buy, but lots is getting done.

Did laundry this morning before I left for work (I ended up wearing my winter black shirt today because everything else was dirty. Gratefully, I didn’t roast too badly, but man, black is so much hotter. Good grief!).

Did 7 cars today. First one was a nice, easy battery job. Pull out. Slap in. Next. Second job was a 2002 Honda Civic that had a stuck ignition lock cylinder. I tried to get a bypass for him, so he could at least use it. I thought I had one for him, but then it locked up two or three more times, and I just called it. That one will need to be fixed fixed. No bypass option without mr. jimmy rigging it all to crazy. So… part is ordered, and it’ll be an expensive one. 😬

Third car was another Civic, but this one had a stuck shifter. 2014. A bunch of drunk middle aged somethings were mad the car was in the way of theirs (she happened to have the car parked at her own residence, thank you very much, but being drunk… not really gonna be too rational). They got in her car, tried to force it into gear, tried to lift it, move it, etc. In the process, at least it’s my best guess, they ruined her shift knob. I ended up having to take the entire shifter assembly out. I did create a work around for her (shifting the car by pulling and pushing the shift cable by hand instead of using the shifter assembly), but she probably won’t take advantage of it. She’s gonna look for a shifter assembly for it.

Fourth car was another easy breezy battery job–this one in a 2017 Ram 1500.

Fifth job was one I shouldn’t have taken. I gentleman called up with an issue with his hydraulic trailer not working. They’d messed with a bunch of things but couldn’t figure it out. They messed with the wiring but didn’t take pictures of what it was before they started working on it, so… 😶. I told the gentleman that I wasn’t a trained trailer guy and that he’d be paying for someone to come out who might not know how to fix it, but he said he’d been stuck there for days and was willing to risk it.

So I headed over there, and got to looking at things, and it… just didn’t make any sense. There was only one wire going to the pickup on the lift motor. The trailer would go down but not up, and it was down so far it was almost on the ground. I couldn’t see how a motor can go up and down with only one wire. You have to have two–one to go up and one to go down. Otherwise you have the same current going through everything in the same way, and it just goes one direction.

Anyway, I tried and tried and tried to figure out the wiring, and in the end, nothing worked. I finally realized that the motor itself was on it’s way out. It wasn’t totally dead, but it was on its way. I didn’t think it was because they said they’d been able to jump it and get it to go up, but we couldn’t recreate that, and the bad motor was the reason why.

We’d all pretty much given up, including myself, when I decided to try one more thing. I got my jump box, attached it directly to the motor, and with one of the workers banging on the motor (like you’d do trying to get one last start out of your car’s starter), I gave the motor all the juice my jump box had.

And slowly…

Ever so slowly, it began to crank over. 

Then faster. Then faster. Then faster, and finally, it started going at full speed. But the motor was getting hotter and hotter the longer it ran. 3 inches. 2 inches. 1 inch.

But it was sooooo hot. I stopped the motor wanting to cool it down for a minute, but that was a risk, too. Would it start again or was that the last gasp?

Gratefully, it started again, finished the last inch, and everything locked into place. 

🥳 They were super happy, and the owner gave me a tip, grateful they didn’t have to leave the trailer yet again a couple hours or so from home (they’re down on business from Springfield and had to leave it multiple days with no one being able to figure it out. 

Nice to get them on the road happy. The owner was grateful and gave me a tip, which was really nice.

The sixth car was one that’s been hanging on the schedule for a couple of weeks now, maybe, so I was glad to have it done. It was a 2013 Pathfinder that needed an o2 sensor. It was fairly uneventful, aside from the little children who were pulling everything out of my tool bag asking “what’s this?” 😊

Last job was a 2006 Toyota Rav 4 v6 with a misfire. I was grateful the misfire was on cylinder 6, as that one was super easy to get to. Cylinders 1, 3, and 5 are under the intake manifold, and I didn’t get to the car until almost 9, I think, so it was nice it was the 6th cylinder. The only hiccup really of any consequence was that the boot for the old coil decided to get stuck inside the spark plug well, so it took a little while to get it unstuck and fished out.

Home. More laundry. Food. Tax stuff. Etc.

I’ve got someone who’s gonna rent my mini excavator tomorrow, and the tensioner for my skid steer should arrive tomorrow as well.

I feel really accomplished, honestly. So much is happening and getting done. I’m just… every moment is just slammed with stuff. 

Most important of everything, my dad is doing much better. He’s gonna have a procedure to fix his heart. Same procedure that his brother had, and I think? the same one my mom had (an ablation). They’re thinking about moving as well. Well, not just thinking. I think it’s pretty much gonna happen.

So… there you go. That was the day. I think I have like 10 or 12 cars on the schedule for tomorrow? Wish the guy who’s interested were already working for me and were a good fit. But… gotta get there first.

Get up. Get up. Get up. Keep moving. Keep going. Never defeated. Always hopeful. The future… will be incredible.

Love to you all.

Lift the World.

~ stephen