Hola, world. 🙂
Happy end of weekend/beginning of another week! Let’s see… I went to bed a bit earlier last night, which meant I got up a bit earlier as well, so that was good.
The early morning is a bit of a blur. I renewed the ad I had out on Indeed.com, working toward hiring mechanics and a manager to see if the business is sellable. Cross your fingers. We’ll see what happens.
I started working on my Missouri department of revenue paperwork, but I’m gonna need to talk to someone. I’m a single-person business, but their application requires that the member and organizer be different people. So… not sure how to figure that out, so I’ll call them tomorrow and try and clarify.
I decided to go out and fix cars today, in a small effort to make back what I lost in the market on Friday, as well as to make sure I have enough money to pay off my credit card bill balances, so I don’t carry a statement balance and get charged interest. I think I mentioned… can’t even remember the last time I had to pay interest for a credit card. I’ve just made it my habit to pay off my credit card bill in it’s entirety. I do that, generally, twice a month. Sometime around the 5th and sometime around the 20th.
But I’ve got a lot of money to make quickly if I’m going to be able to pay off at least the statement balances by the next due dates. It’s certainly possible, just gonna be a good bit of work.
It feels odd to be in this position.
Granted, I’m not really in this position. I just don’t want to pull money out of my Fidelity account to pay my card bills, so I’m sort of using it as motivation to bust my tail and get it paid off without having to move money around from one institution to another.
Anyway, did a bunch of cars today. First was a pre-purchase inspection on a 2006 Honda Accord. The gentleman came down from Joplin, MO to see a car in Bentonville. He hadn’t seen it before, which I generally recommend against. Best to do all your own thorough research and inspection before having the mechanic look at it.
I found it was both low on oil and coolant, two big red flags and deal breakers for me personally. It doesn’t mean anything awful is going on, but it could. I generally choose to walk away, even if I want the car, if the car is super low on oil and/or coolant.
I’m not sure what my customer decided to do in the end. I did a pretty detailed inspection but stopped short of doing everything I normally do because he wanted me to do a pressure test and a block test to see if I could determine if there was a leak in the cooling system (couldn’t find one) or if the head gasket was having issues (passed the block test [head-gasket] test).
Second car was supposed to be a starter on a 2003 Honda Accord. The father of the college student I was helping out (broken down in Walmart’s parking on at the Supercenter on MLK in Fayetteville) told me not to do any diagnostics but to just replace the starter (about a $600 job); but when I got there, the daughter was like, “yeah, it just cranks and cranks but never starts.” And I was like… uh… what? Can you try and start it please?” So she did, and it cranked over strongly, so I said, “It’s not your starter.”
So I was a little disobedient to the father’s wishes, but had I just gone ahead and replaced the starter, he’d have been out $600 and still would have had the same issue as before.
So… I think he’s happy I disobeyed his directions. 🙃
Anyway, took me just a few minutes to realize that it was the exact same issue as the Honda Accord I was working on yesterday. Key problem. The kid yesterday had ordered a blank off of Amazon, but it had no innards, and thus could not have been programmed, so the car didn’t recognize the key, and it wouldn’t start. In today’s version, the daughter was trying to start the car with a fob that was missing it’s innards as well, but it wasn’t a new fob: It was one where the metal key had broken out of the plastic fob piece. It took me a little bit, but I was able to “fix” the issue by forcing the broken metal key part back into it’s slot in the fob. I then held the parts together as I turned the key in the ignition, and it fired right up.
It’s interesting because it wouldn’t fire up unless the metal key was attached to the rest of the fob. Not sure why. Weird.
Anyway, I left the young lady with homework to go and buy three more keys and have them programmed. One for her. One to hide on the car in case she locked herself out, and one to be kept by a friend/roommate.
Third car was… oh, what was it… Oh yeah, third car was that valve cover job from yesterday. I went back today, and replaced the valve cover–in the rain.
I got myself pretty soaked, but I was able to keep the engine dry, and that’s what matters. Got the cover put on, and that solved the rough running, and it also solved the billowing smoke out the back (the busted valve cover was messing up the vacuum, and it was allowing oil to get sucked into the intake and burned up (causing the billowing smoke out the tailpipe.
Something like that anyway.
The job took a lot longer than it should have because of the rain. I hid under the hood working on the car while my back and but got soaked by the rain.
Got it done, though.
Fourth job was fixing super-corroded battery cables on a 2004 Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi. I used my bolt cutters to just cut off the ends, and then I took the leftovers and clamped them into new battery cable terminal connectors, and he was on his way.
I’m grateful to have so many tools that I usually have the right tool for the job. In the “old days” as a mobile mechanic, I often found myself hamstrung because I didn’t have the tools I needed and lost lots of time because of it.
Nice to have a boat load of tools to keep me going and going efficiently.
Fifth car was… replacing an ECU on a 2011? Toyota Corolla. That was relatively easy, although a bit more challenging in the rain (definitely can’t let the computer get wet). Anyway, I got that put on for him, and I left him to finish the rest of the homework with it, which I believe he was able to do.
Last car was replacing a battery in a 2009 Hyundai Sonata. Easy peasy.
I thought I only did five cars today, but going back over it, I realized it was six. Wahoo! 🥳
After that, I came home, ate dinner (beans and rice and avocado), a looked over the news, spent a good bit of time on Eharmony.com going through profiles, and now here I am ready to crash into bed. Feel free to petition the universe to help me with my discipline during morning trading tomorrow and, if possible, to have some good success. 🙃
I’m… uh… a little ways from getting back to break even after Friday’s… adventure. 🙃
Oh! I made my list of what my dream property looks like, so that was good. Now I need to make my list of what my dream occupation would have me doing (the nonprofit stuff). Then I need to see if those dreams are compatible with each other, and if not, which gets to be more flexible.
Time for bed. Love to all of you. 🙂
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 