Hiya, folks. 🙂
Happy Weekend!
Another busy day a hair past a whisker west of the Ozark bumps.
I started working about 9:30 ish, I think, and I didn’t finish until about 8 ish, I think–two of the five jobs taking much much longer than expected. Still, it was another really great money day. In four days this last week, I believe I made more than I did the entire month of February.
That’s what makes this job a little hard to move on from. I’m doing really well. It’s super successful.
But it’s not where my heart is. It’s where my fear is. I’m gonna make a concerted effort, though, to have all my small, leftover cleanup projects done this week. Some of them have proven a bit more of a headache than others, but we’re getting there.
I’ll be making a daily plan for what needs to be accomplished, so I can better stay on task and hopefully keep myself from working a ton on the actual fixing-cars front.
I’m a little more upbeat today. I still feel and think the same way as I described yesterday. That… doesn’t really change. It’s not a “I’m down, so these are my thoughts when I’m down but not when I’m not down.” No, those thoughts and feelings are every day. It’s just that some days I’m better at accepting it or ignoring it or something, if that makes sense.
Anyway, first car today was a no start that turned out to just be a battery job, as expected (it was a 2015 Toyota Camry no crank, no start. I mean, it’s one of the best cars ever made, and it’s relatively new… so… what else is it gonna be? 🙃
Second car was a van of a long-time customer that I’ve had for years. He runs a plumbing company and has a handful of service vehicles that I take care of. He also wants to go in on a house in Costa Rica with me. 🙃 He asked me about it again today. Fun.
The van was supposed to be a simple misfire issue, but when I got there, the scanner wouldn’t connect to the van, so I had to figure that out, diagnose and fix that problem before I could even start working on the misfiring issue. Once I figured out the connection issue (blown aux jack fuse, as usual), I pulled the coils out of cylinders 1 and 5 (the two misfiring cylinders), replacing the one in cylinder 1 with a new one, and noticing that the coil that came out of cylinder 5 was really wet. Figuring that the wetness might be causing the misfires, I tried to dry out the spark plug well. That took a little while, as it’s a little awkward without an air compressor. I don’t usually need an air compressor for what I do, but occasionally it would be nice.
Anyway, after drying it out as best as I could, I put the coil back in, and it did really well, no misfires for a good while; but then, all of the sudden, it started misfiring again; so I pulled the plug, and it was wet again. 🤔
Hmmm… water leak into the spark plug well? Or water I missed the first time I cleaned it?
I wasn’t sure which it was, but I couldn’t see any leaking coolant in the vicinity, so I figured it was just leftover water, so I put the coil pack back in, but barely resting on the spark plug instead of fully installed. That made it so that the plug but was not sealing the spark plug well, which meant the heat of the engine could evaporate any liquid inside the well, and it could escape out the gap I created.
After doing that, the spark plug well dried up, and it never manifested water again. 🥳 The coil was still untrustworthy, in my opinion, so I went ahead and replaced that one as well, noticed he had a cracked radiator, and called it a job on that one. He still owed me for a previous job, so he paid me for both, and I went on my way to job #3.
Job #3 was an add on from today. It was a 2001 Ford F350 diesel. They wanted help dropping the fuel tank because they thought the pump was bad, and so I said I could do that, but I wasn’t a diesel tech, and I was really busy, so that’s all I could help them do.
After plugging them in, they called back and said they’d gotten the tank down themselves but were thinking the issue was something else, and wanted me to bring my scanner over. I told them that all I’d be able to do was scan the truck, as not being a diesel tech, I wasn’t going to be very helpful diagnosing a crank, no start condition (way way different than gas engines, and I just don’t know them at all).
So I went by, but again, like with the previous vehicle, my scanner couldn’t connect to it. This time, though, it wasn’t something simple (like a blown fuse). The truck had an aftermarket performance chip added to it, and it was loose inside the computer, with more than likely means it fried the computer, and that’s probably why neither of my scanners could connect to it to read the codes.
Realistically, he’s probably going to need a new computer, which isn’t cheap at all. 😬 I pulled the computer out for them, so the could get the serial number and order the part.
Fourth car was a purge valve assembly on a 2015 Ford Fusion. Let me tell you, Ford has a thing for having hoses and tubes and pipes and whatnot running all freaking over the place (in their recent models). It’s… crazy. A purge valve is like half the size of your fist (or smaller), and it has two ends and an electrical connector. Yet Ford has seen fit to make the purge valve a one-piece spider hose assembly, so instead of undoing two hose ends and replacing just the purge valve, you have to replace this big spider maze of hoses.
C’mon, Ford. It’s a complete and utter waste of materials, time, etc. Costs more to make the car, creates more trash, etc. So dumb. So unnecessary. But it was easy. Took me 15 minutes ish.
Speaking of a complete utter waste of materials, the 5th job was replacing both the throttle position sensor and the power steering pump return hose on a 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix 3100 motor. There’s a part of the line, and I’m not exaggerating or joking in the tiniest, that loops down does a little curly cue thingy, and comes right back up. There’s absolutely no reason for it. None. It wastes probably maybe 30 linear inches of probably 3/8ths inch metal tubing.
Why? It’s… ridiculous. That whole metal tube assembly could just be connected together, bypassing the weirdness altogether.
Talk about uselessly convoluted.
😶
That job took way longer than expected. I fought and fought and fought to get the fitting out of the steering rack, but I couldn’t do it. Finally, we decided to just disassemble the new part, as the old part was still functional on one end. So I disassembled the new part, disassembled the old part, and clamped them together. It actually worked wonderfully well.
But… there was yet another problem. After pulling apart and installing the new return hose, we went to bleed the power steering pump, but it wouldn’t bleed, and I realized that not only had be been dealing with a blown return hose tube (had rubbed against the block for so long that it wore through the metal and started leaking), he also had a leak in the power steering rack itself.
Lovely. 😕
By then it was after 8, and it was pretty crappy to have to give that news. Spending $350 fixing the one issue, only to realize you’ve got another leak that didn’t manifest itself before either because it only leaks when the pump is under heavy pressure (when the steering well is turned) or because so much pressure was being dumped out the damaged line, that there wasn’t enough pressure make make the leak at the rack noticeable.
Either way… there you are.
That was the last car, and I headed home, where I ate banana pancakes that mom made. I did some laundry, showered, cut some of my hair off (in the back, as it was starting to become a mullet, and that’s… not quite me, thank you very much).
I left the front long, though. Now it’s roughly the same length hanging down in back as in front. So if I decide to grow it back out to junior high lengths, it’s all set, and if I decide to cut it short, well it’ll be slightly easier.
My love to all y’all.
Lift the World.
~ stephen
Lift the World 