Hola, folks! I’m winding down a little earlier than I have been lately–it’s not even 10:00, though it is very close to 10. Only did two cars today–each taking a lot longer than I expected. The first one was an alternator in a 2007 (I think) Toyota Avalon. Book time had it listed at only a little over one hour.
Right.
I think this one is actually like a 3-hour job. If you look the same job up on other cars, I’d be willing to bet it’s got a much higher billing time. I think I’ve done this job multiple times with much higher billing hours, just… different models of car.
Well, I didn’t realize the billable hour estimate was so much lower than what the job actually was, so I got hosed. Took me a little over three hours to finish the job, and I was super frustrated because of it–other customers waiting for me and whatnot.
It just… amazes me sometimes how ridiculously engineered some cars are. Recognizing that engineers are not a dumb lot, the only thing I can come up with is that they’re tasked with making things hard to take apart, so that dealers can charge more money. I had a customer of mine tell me that once, something about how he’d received or witnessed instruction about how to make products more complicated in order to make more money off the repairs.
Anyway, despite the craziness, I got it done. So that’s something at least.
The people with the second car didn’t reply back after the last text, so I guess they decided they didn’t want to pay for me to diagnose the car. The lady was pretty high maintenance, I guess, already going through one mobile mechanic company who decided it wasn’t worth trying to deal with them, so I guess I learned the same thing, too.
Third job was a battery on a 2015 Mercedes Benz ML350. It’s a small SUV, and it was just a battery job… how hard could it be? Right?
🙃
Yeah… pretty nutty.
So here was a first for me. I popped the hood to change the battery, and when I didn’t see the battery right away, I was like “oh yeah, Mercedes… it’ll be in the trunk.” Well… the hatch wasn’t working. The fob wouldn’t open the back hatch, the rear hatch button inside the car wouldn’t open the rear hatch, there was no key hole to manually undo it…
Eventually, providing external power to the system I was able to get the rear hatch open. I pulled off the overcover to get to the battery, but low and behold, no battery.
Right.
So I gave up guessing and looked it up.
On this particular vehicle it’s under the passenger front seat. That’s fine. It’s not uncommon. GM does that quite a bit with their small SUVs, so whatever. What I ran into from there was a bit of a trip, though, definitely a first for me: When the Mercedes ML350 is built at the factory, the battery is installed on the vehicle before the interior carpet is installed. Yes, you read that correctly. They install the battery on the metal frame in the subfloor of the vehicle, and then they install the carpet over the battery compartment.
By the way, it’s a nearly 60-lb battery, I believe.
So how do you get the battery out of the vehicle? Believe it or not, the instructions direct you to cut the actual carpet under the seat, so you can peel it back enough to get to the clip that holds the HVAC molding in place, so you can remove that, then remove the plastic cover piece, and then try to remove the battery hold-down piece, the negative cable (relatively easy), the positive cable (much much less easy, as it’s wedged underneath way back inside) and then remove the battery out of it’s coffin, that’s deeper than the battery, but barely larger than the battery. With the seat in the way, you have to try to get a 60ish pound battery out of a battery coffin at a 45 degree angle, smashing your hands and trying to get it between the floor and the seat (you have to move the power seat all the way forward and then raise it all the way up–otherwise, it’s impossible.).
So yeah… that’s a first for me. All those batteries in those types of compartments are a pain, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to cut a battery out of a car, and I think it’s the first time I’ve had to pull an H8 sized battery out of it’s coffin.
Good gravy.
But I’m done. After the battery, the labor charge, and the tip, it was worth the asininity of the job. It was a decent money day for only two cars–not great, but decent.
Played a little ball with Rafe and Rhett today–just tossing the baseball around. That was good. Chatted with Hunter a little bit about his truck that he’s doing a complete rebuild on, and after not hearing from anyone about renting my equipment since last fall (I haven’t advertised it at all and so haven’t been expecting anything), I had two people enquire about renting stuff today.
Imagine that.
What else… I’m making progress on the smaller finance cleanup projects that I have to do still, little by little. I’m knocking it out.
Well, folks, I guess it’s time for bed. Hope y’all have a beautiful evening. Retirement from cars is coming quickly!!!
Love to all.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 