2022-04-19 — Near Misses

Hola, folkses. 😊

My morning trading session was pretty nutty. Ups and downs and ups and downs. I started out down about… $50? I don’t remember for sure. Then I got up about $230, I think. Then I lost just about all of that. Then I went into the green about $350. I almost walked away at that point, but I was sooooo close to getting back to break even in this trading experiment (overall break even that is from when I started to now) that I decided to keep trading, as the stock I was trading was still moving a lot, so I took another trade.

Whoops.

Plummeted, and I went from being up $350 to being down $250.

😬

All this after a near miss of epic proportions. I don’t remember the numbers exactly, but it was something like this. The stock I was watching… I was expecting it to make a jump. I’d been watching the stock go up and down a few cents, and I saw it drop as low as $6.07 at one point, so I put my order in for $6.07, even though it was bouncing more in the $6.08-$6.10 range.

So I put in the order, and it went down to $6.08… and I waited for $6.07… but no. It went up. And up. And up. And up. And up. It went up so fast that I couldn’t really get in like I wanted to. By the time it finished climbing (in a brief few minutes), it had gone up more than a dollar, which meant that I would have made over $1000 on that one trade.

One penny. I under bid by $.01 in an effort to get the lowest I could get on the buy.

Oops.

So after missing the big up, I still managed to make it up to $350 before the terrible crash down to -$250.

That was… a crappy trade. I’m working on a strategy to cash out of those faster. It’s hard because often times you buy, and the stock goes down a little before going back up, and if you just hold on, you’ll be fine. In fact, that trade that I lost $500ish on, if I’d held for another 15 minutes or 20 or so, I not only would not have lost $500ish, I would have gained an additional $300ish.

But you can’t be sure. And the way it crashed on me, it could have just kept crashing. As it was, I cashed out to stop the bleeding, only to watch it go back up. But other times, I’ve stayed in, only to watch it bleed me more. So… yeah.

So I was down $250, and then I did something I probably shouldn’t have done, but it worked out anyway, gratefully. I did a little revenge trading. I was like, “I can’t finish the day down $250 when I was up $350. That… would bite. So I kept trading, catching a few upward breaks. Making $20 here, $50 there, etc. After a little while of chipping away at the $250 hole, my last trade of the morning put me at +$19 on the day, and as soon as I saw green on the balance sheet, I closed the lid on my laptop and walked away.

Near misses. I missed a monstrous winner by one penny, and I missed a red day by the skin of my teeth.

😅

So… yeah… rather eventful in the morning. 🙃

With the mountains of credit card bills from paying all my owed taxes, I went out to work on cars, starting about noon and working until about 9ish. I did six cars, and like 8 billable hours, so that was good. I’m trying to make enough money in the next couple weeks to pay off my credit card bills without having to transfer money from my trading account back to my personal and business accounts.

I didn’t reach my money goal for the day, but I did do well, so that was good. My money goals are actually pretty high lately, as things have been going quite well in that arena.

On to the cars of the day…

First car was… um… let me look at my list. I forget. Oh yeah! It was supposedly a no start, but when I got there, it fired out without any issues whatsoever. They said that after a rainstorm, it wasn’t starting, but that they were able to jump start it and get it home. They said they have issues with rainstorms sometimes causing flickering and weirdness. Anyway, I couldn’t reproduce any issues, but the battery connections were a little corroded, so I cleaned those. The oil was two quarts low, so I added oil (always check the oil before turning on a customer’s car, and it wasn’t even reading on the dipstick, so policy says I can’t start the car until I know there’s enough oil in the system to be safe to start. The coolant was about a gallonish low, so I added coolant. Then I pulled off the dog house (it’s a full-size van, and if you’re not familiar, the engine cover on the inside between the two captains chairs is called the dog house.). I was looking to see if there was any standing water on the engine or anything I could find to pinpoint the issue, but there was no water at all. What I did find was a spark plug wire that wasn’t fully attached to the spark plug. Not sure how that went unnoticed, but I snapped it back into place, secured the spark plug wires in their places (as they were unsecured and rather close to the uber hot exhaust manifold). Then I put the doghouse back on, and called it a day on that one, unable to prove the cause of the issue but wondering if maybe water was getting onto the unsecured wire, causing it to short all over the place?

I don’t know, but without being able to reproduce the problem, everything is a guess anyway. Can’t diagnose what isn’t there to find. 🙃

Car number two was a doozy. He had a flat tire and needed his spare put on. Poor me. Kicked my butt. 🙃 Just kidding. Nice to have an easy one.

Car number three was the 2016 Dodge Challenger from the other night that had a fuel pump issue. Let me tell you, this one was a crazy twist of crazy. I mean… it was just weird. So. His car won’t start, and he figures it’s the fuel pump (I think someone diagnosed it as a bad fuel pump), so he wants me to put one in for him. So he buys a used one from the junk yard, and I go to put it in. I swap it all over, and nothing. Won’t start. So I pull it out of the car, and I test his old pump, and it was broken, as expected. Then I tested the new pump, and it was broken, too! The old pump assembly the pump itself was bad. The new pump assembly the built-in connector on the pump assembly was bad, but the pump itself was good! The net result was still the same–bad pump! (it would have required some awkward surgery to try and make a working pump out of the two broken ones–possible, but awkward, and I didn’t want to be splicing wires and whatnot, and if something went wrong, then he wouldn’t be able to take the pump back, so… I suggested he get a new pump, and I taught him, start to finish, how to install the pump himself and be on his way.

So he bought the pump, installed it, and nothing. Same problem.

😶

I wasn’t very excited to come back, as it was sounding like it could be a black hole, but I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch. But something was weird. After the second car, I checked in with him, and he met me over at his place, and I tested the pump.

No dice. It wasn’t working. I supplied power and ground, and nothing.

😶

So… the original pump was bad. The connector on the used junkyard pump was bad, and now the brand new pump was bad, too?!?!

It was… crazy. I wondered if something might be frying the pumps… a short somewhere or something, so I checked the voltages, power and ground coming from the car’s computer to the electrical connector at the pump.

Perfect. Nothing wrong. Perfect power present. Perfect ground.

But would it fry another pump? I carry one with me to help speed up siphoning jobs, so I wired it up to the car’s pump connector, and turned the pump on with my scan tool.

Fired right up.

So… no short in the system, but another bad pump?!?!

Good gravy.

So I decided to check one more thing. There was a document in the box of the new pump he installed. Aaaaaaand there was a new fuel pump harness pigtail! After looking at the new pump, I realized that they redid the wiring on the pump, so the wires weren’t in the same spots. I couldn’t use the actual wiring harness from the car because the new pump was rewired differently.

(banging head against wall)

Really?!?! You build a new pump but you don’t keep the wiring harness the same? I have to cut the existing wiring harness and splice on a new connector that puts the same wires in a different configuration to match the new pump?!?!

Why?!?!?! Why would anyone make the new part such that it required cutting and splicing a new pigtail. Just make it the same as the old pump. No cutting nor splicing required!

Anyway, after figuring that out, I spliced in the new wiring harness (poor car owner. I taught him how to install everything. I didn’t count on there being that kind of a crazy wrench in the process.

Good gravy.

But it was done. His car was starting and running, and he was super happy, as it had been a bit of a nightmare for him. All good now, though, and he was super excited.

Fourth car was a 2016 Ford F150 3.5 turbo that was running like absolute crap, had some funky noises and had codes coming out its codes–all of them pointing to potentially devasting engine issues (all three cylinders misfiring on one bank, coupled with camshaft codes indicating their being out of time). I checked the oil, and it was caked in nastiness, lots of nasty sludge.

Lots of modern cars use variable valve timing solenoids. You can’t have really dirty oil and have good functioning solenoids. It messes crap up. You can have awful noises, have the car run like crap, etc.

But with all the codes that were there, it was looking like the most likely cause was timing chain issues. I didn’t want to run the car very long after seeing all the codes, so I diagnosed one of the noises as a bad fan bearing, and then I did a compression test to check to see if one of the chains had jumped.

The compression was a lot lower than I’d expect, but all the cylinders were within range of each other, so…

?

They wanted to tow it to a mechanic anyway. The next step would have been to inspect the variable valve timing components and try to desludge the engine, perhaps. Poor truck. Gotta take better care of the engine. So. Much. Sludge. It was just crazy.

Fifth car was a 2010 Mazda CX-7 that would only click when you tried to start it. A “mechanic” friend of hers had tried to diagnose it and decided that it was probably something wrong with the engine or transmission, like something majorly wrong. When I got there, he’d cut the belt off, removed the starter, pulled out all the coils… pulled off a pulley…

Yeah…

So, I went about the task of putting it all back together so I could actually diagnose it. First thing I did was manually crank the engine over, though, to allay her fears that her engine was seized. The engine wasn’t seized, but the AC compressor was, so that’ll be expensive, but it’s not new engine expensive.

Given my experience, I figured that since the AC compressor was seized up, that’s probably the only problem right there, as that easily can cause the no crank no start condition. can’t very well get an engine to turn when the belt is pushing against a locked up pulley.

Anyway, since the starter was already out of the car, I tested it, and it tested good, so I put it back in. (It’s an adventure trying to put stuff back together that other people have taken apart.) After I got everything back together, other than putting the new pulley and belt on, I went to start it up (as you don’t need a belt or pulley to do that), and instead of starting, I got one loud click.

Really?!?! More than one problem at a time causing the same symptom?!?! That’s… I mean… that never happens. But here we were. I knew the engine was turning beautifully. It wasn’t locked up. I knew the starter was working, as I’d bench tested it. So that left… bad ignition switch, bad ground, or bad power cable, pretty much.

So I bypassed the ignition switch by jumping the starter at the fuse box.

Same problem. So… that ruled out the ignition switch. Then I jumped the starter directly at the starter using my jump box, and the engine fired right up! So… now I was pretty sure it was going to be a bad ground, so I grabbled my jumper cables and added a temporary ground from batter to block.

Same problem.

Then I added another temporary ground from block to body.

Same problem.

Hmmm… then I checked the voltage at the ignition wire.

Perfect.

Finally, almost as an afterthought because it never really happens, I checked the main power wire to the starter.

Nothing. No power. Zero. Zilch.

So I went to the battery, and I found an inline fuse between the battery and the starter. I noticed evidence that someone had put the jumper cables on backwards (easy to do because both cable connections are black on her car). I ohmed out the power cable, and that revealed the culprit, blown inline fuse.

So, there really were two completely different causes of the same symptom at the same time. Locked up AC compressor. Blown positive inline fuse.

Wow.

She’s happy, though. She was worried it was her engine, based on what the other “mechanic” had said. I don’t mean that disparagingly, just I hear that word thrown around a lot–“mechanic friend,” And what I find is that not many people who are “mechanic friends” don’t know enough to understand what’s going on, and often when people work on their cars themselves, lots of money is often wasted guessing before calling the mechanic–more money than if they’d just called the mechanic.

So… tips for all who might be interested, if you’re a DIYer (and I highly encourage it), and if you find you’re guessing because you don’t know how to diagnose something for certain, then pay the mechanic to diagnose it, and then go buy the parts and fix it yourself.

There was no need to remove the starter. No need to cut the belt off the car. No need to remove the coils. Lots of wasted time and money paying me to put stuff back together than never should have been taken apart in the first place. I’m 100% a DIY proponent, but don’t overestimate your knowledge. If you’re going to diagnose something make sure you learn how the systems work and get the tools to help you properly diagnose (in this case today, a multimeter. The version I have is like $35. You can get them as cheap as like $7 from Harbor Freight.

Sorry, tangent.

Last car, which I didn’t get to until after dark, was one I’d just worked on a few days ago. They’d had me put in a crankshaft position sensor, and it was driving fine until they got a car wash, and then it wouldn’t start back up very well. They’d managed to get it started and get it home, but it was having trouble starting after the car wash.

When I got there, there were not codes, so it wasn’t a reprise of the crankshaft position sensor issues. And the car started right away (flashbacks of the first car of the day). I couldn’t prove anything wrong because nothing… was wrong. 🙃

Finally, after letting it run for maybe 10 minutes, when I’d start it up, it would die right away. The first several starts were perfect. Then as the engine warmed up, it would start and then almost choke out, and finally once the engine was warm, after starting, it would choke out so hard that it would actually fully kill the engine.

That pointed me to an air-ratio issue as a likely culprit, so I removed the air intake hose, and sure enough, the throttle body butterfly valve was caked in carbon/oil buildup. So I spent probably 10-15 minutes cleaning out all the gunk, put it back together, fired it up, and she ran like a dream. I let it run for many more minutes, getting the engine back to warm, but it purred like a kitten, started up and stayed started without the slightest hesitation.

Fixed.

So what was going on? Why would it not have issues starting until it was warm? Well, I imagine you’ve noticed that when you first start up a cold engine, the RPMs go a lot higher than normal idle. This is designed to help the engine get to operating temperature faster which allows for max motor efficiency, etc. Well, in order to get the RPMs up, you have to open the throttle plate more, which allows more air in! So when the engine was colder, the plate was opening up enough to allow more air in. But once the engine was warm, the plate (butterfly valve) would close, and the gummy residue would choke out the engine because it was blocking the tiny bit of air that needed to get in!

Problem solved. Fixed. Done.

Drove home, had dinner while chatting with mom, and now I’m off to bed. I wasn’t planning on writing all of this stuff. Was just gonna be a quickie, but now it’s late, and I’ll be tired. 🙃

Good night, all. Loves and hugs!

Lift the World

~ stephen