2022-06-18 — Thermo… nuclear meltdown

Up late, up early, and lots and lots of car work today.

I saw the title of yesterday’s post, and it seems so long ago already. It’s crazy how time is. So fast. Slow.

Anyway, 1st car was one that was running rough and had a passenger window that was stuck down. The rough running was super easy to figure out. Took all of like 30 seconds to find a big split in the air intake hose.

The window was more of a pain. The motor was actually okay. I jumped it directly, and it did fine. But the switch wouldn’t move it up. It would move it down but not up. Realized that it was getting power but not ground when trying to go up. I spent a good while trying to track down the issue when it spontaneously kind of fixed itself–started working again.

It still didn’t have full power going back up (didn’t have the same voltage), but that’s where we left it. They were happy to have the car runability issue figured out and to have the window up. Don’t know if they’ll want any more.

Second car was… oh yeah, it was a 2012 Subaru Outback that was overheating. Except… when I got there, it wouldn’t overheat. It behaved just beautifully.

🙃

Next job was another overheat. It was the 2013 Fiesta I put the stretch belt on the other day. I guess the van stopped working, and I verified that–power right to the fan, but no worky.

So I replaced the fan, and that was that, not too painful.

Fourth car was a 2003 Pontiac Vibe no start. Turned out to have a bad starter, which I replaced. Fifth car was… a nightmare. 2007 Ford Mustang… another overheat. With this one, it was a coolant leak at the thermostat housing.

Super easy.

Until it’s not.

Someone who did the job in the past stripped out the thermostat housing bolts, my best guess anyway. When I went to torque them down, two tightened fine, but the third stripped out. It took probably 30 minutes to get the part back off because the bolt would just spin. It wouldn’t loosen. It wouldn’t tighten.

I ended up having to break the housing off, which by itself took ages. It was… a nightmare. So now I had to replace the entire water outlet assembly, since the threads were stripped. I realized later that another one of the thread holes was stripped, too.

So… that part was a nightmare. And then I went to put the whole new water outlet housing in, and what happened? The hole for the coolant temperature sensor was bigger than the old housing’s hole, so coolant leaked from the sensor.

Great.

I spent probably 40 minutes and $20 in coolant trying to find o-rings that would work, but I finally just gave up, drove again to the parts store, bought a whole new sensor (same brand as the housing assembly), and what do you know, it fit.

So… what should have been about a 45-minute or less job took like… 4 hours? It was awful.

Last job, which I didn’t even get to until after dark, was the 2013 Chrysler 200 from the other day that wouldn’t start after putting an alternator in it. After a lot of work trying to track the issue down, I finally pulled the intake manifold off and found that the ignition wire to the starter was unplugged.

🤦‍♂️

How? I mean… yeah… how?

Finished up and got home about midnight. Long, long day. But it’s over, and I’m going to sleep with no alarms, thank you very much.

Good night, all. Love and hugs

Lift the World

~ stephen