Hola, folks! It’s been a wild day today.
I’ve been lonely, missing someone who’s very dear to me. Mostly that affected me this morning. Then cars started, and they started going mighty sideways. The first car was one where he had broken both his outer door handles, with the windows rolled up. So even though the doors were unlocked… there was no way to get them open. It took probably 45 minutes to break into the truck, trying not to break window glass, break other stuff, etc. Was quite a frustrating challenge. Then I found that I didn’t have all the clips I needed to get it put all back together. I wasn’t really sad about that, as the job involved drilling out rivets and whatnot. Really annoying. That’s one thing that Ford really… didn’t have to do. Makes changing door parts out so much more tedious and time consuming.
I ended up walking him through how to fix it from there, showing him the clips he’d need to buy.
Second job was an overheat. Was the mom of my old employee/friend Chase (the one who lives in Alaska now). She lives way south, but she was in Fayetteville for a job when her car started leaking antifreeze badly. So I put some antifreeze in diagnosed the blown radiator (split along the top edge). I also did a block test to try to rule out a blown head gasket (common issue with those Subaru engines. Hers was the 3.0 engine, though. Not sure how many issues those had with head gaskets.
That job didn’t go too badly, but the radiator was a special order, so I got it all prepped to put back together. I’ll do that probably on Thursday.
Next job was an absolute nightmare–like everything went wrong. First, she didn’t have her key for the special safety lug nut that keeps people from stealing your car. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a fairly quick way of getting those off–even without the key. Just get a 12-point socket that’s roughly the same size as the lug nut, a sledge hammer, and an impact wrench.
Pain in the butt getting the lug nut out of the socket after that–best to consider it a sacrificial socket–but it works!
Anyway, so I got that off. Then I went to get the wheel bearing off (I’d diagnosed a bad wheel bearing, which was what she thought it was as well). That actually started going very well. I figured out how to do it without taking the axle out, and I was stoked about that. Until… the axle wouldn’t separate from the wheel bearing/hub assembly.
Usually, the CV axle and the wheel bearing/hub separate just fine. Usually it’s the hub assembly that’s hard to get out of the knuckle. Well, as luck would have it, the CV axle was seized to the bearing assembly. I PB blastered it, I beat the snot out of it, and I heated it up with a torch, which finally broke it free, but not before the nut and the CV axle end were ruined. I even had the nut on the end of the CV axle like you’re supposed to to stop such damage from occurring.
Well… wasn’t enough. It still ruined both. Before I gave up on the CV axle, I tried getting just a new nut and cleaning off the threads to the CV axles.
No dice. It was just as bad, and it ruined the new nut which I’d just paid $18ish dollars for (the nut, the washer and the cotter pin).
Lovely.
So then I went to pull the CV axle out, and that wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t very nice either. The worst part was that when the CV axle came out, instead of being a little stream of tranny fluid that came out with it, like I’m used to seeing, it gushed out. I mean gushed. Probably lost a quart or two, most of that spilling right on the hotel parking lot because I wasn’t expecting that at all–not at all.
I spent so. much. time fighting with that car today. It was one thing after another going wrong. Massive pain in the tail.
Next car… 4th? was a 2017 Ford Mustang 5.0 GT with an oil leak he wanted diagnosed. I found it had a leaking valve cover gasket, and when I looked it up, I found that the fix involved drilling more holes in the valve cover gaskets and putting in more bolts to better tighten it down because, apparently, they decided not to have bolts in all the tabs on cover from the factory.
Yeah, that worked out well. Good gravy. It was a TSB, but in my opinion, that should be a recall. I mean… c’mon. That’s just crappy designing.
Last car was a 2007 Chevy HHR that wouldn’t start. Turned out to be a starter issue, and I found that it also had a leaking oil pressure sensor, so I cleaned it up, replaced both, and called it a night. By then it was after 8, and I was tired and I’m even more tired right now. Eyes are closing on me.
I came home and worked on more finance cleanup stuff. I should finish up my rework of my sales tax stuff by the end of the day tomorrow, assuming I stay up late to finish it like I stayed up late to do the 9 months I did tonight. I’ve got 8 more months to finalize, and then I have to plug in 36 months worth of submissions into the state’s sales tax site.
Fun, fun, fun.
Really tired. Thirsty. Gonna drink some water, floss, brush, and crash.
My love to you all.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 