So… I don’t know what the deal is, but I’ve been having… anxiety? I don’t want to overblow it, but lately I’ve been having these fear responses to a lot of things without… reason? I think I’ve felt it a lot in relation to my upcoming trip. I’ve felt it in relation to things that are going on with work. I just… it’s weird. I’m not sure what’s going on. It’s probably happening dozens of times a day. Just short, seconds-long reactions to… I don’t even know what. I’m trying to trace what’s going on in my thoughts at each moment. But it’s… weird.
I don’t like it. 🙃
That aside, I feel like I’m making some progress in my struggles to just relax about life and let go of my expectations/hopes/dreams/fears, progress toward just… enjoying the moment.
It’s only a tiny bit of progress, but it’s something. 🙂
Was a crazy day today. Seemed like I was 5 steps behind everything that was going all day long. We went to seven cars today. The first was going back to the 2005 Infiniti that we did the valve covers on. He said the check-engine light had come on, and it was almost dying when coming to a stop. Gratefully, it just turned out to be Infiniti (and Nissan) finickiness. They don’t like having their batteries disconnected, and since we’d done a job that required leaving the car off for 24 hours while gasket maker cured, we couldn’t start the car to check everything, so we ended up coming back, and I had to use my scan tool to perform an idle volume relearn procedure. Which I did, and now his car is fine. So… free visit because of the Infiniti fun.
Second job was also a free visit. The Honda Fit we put the radiator in started overheating on the owner again. We’d verified everything was good and working and solid when we left, but the customer said it got low on coolant again, so we went back out “under warranty.”
Turned out the issue wasn’t likely related to us, but whatever. The coolant was low again, but it wasn’t leaking. It was pushing the coolant out of the radiator and overfilling the overflow bottle. The fact that it did just fine with the radiator cap on the other day during our tests, led me to believe that he might be dealing with a blown head gasket–perhaps having blown it during one of the times he overheated before calling us to check it out. The other possibility was that maybe there was an air pocket in the system that we couldn’t get out after our repair, but that seemed rather unlikely to me, as every time I’ve run into an air pocket, it causes an overheat, and this wasn’t overheating at all until it had pushed out enough coolant out to then start overheating. Once head top it off, it wouldn’t overheat for a little while. In my experience, if there’s an air pocket, it just overheats but doesn’t push coolant out (though I’ve heard that it can, just haven’t ever seen it myself).
Anyway, given it was doing well when we left it, it seemed to me that driving it for a longer period of time would give it more time to push more coolant out and subsequently overheat again. Our testing tested for leaks, proper fan function, proper thermostat operation, and proper temperature–all of which it passed just fine during our probably 15-minute or longer test after the repair was completed.
So, that’s why I’m thinking head gasket.
Given that, I suggested he take it to the nearby shop to confirm my tentative diagnosis, get a quote, and see if he wanted to keep fixing the vehicle. Hopefully, it’s just trapped air that we somehow couldn’t get out. But… yeah… not likely. We’ll cross our fingers for him, though.
Third job we actually got paid for. 🙃 It was a radiator in a 2012 GMC Yukon. Malaki did that mostly on his own. I checked things over a bit while I was with him. Then I went over it over the phone with him as he was finishing up. He seemed to do a pretty good job there.
While he was finishing that one up, I left to do a job on a 2014 Nissan Versa that needed a blower motor, which turned out to be a lot more than I expected. I got there thinking I needed to just take out the gas pedal and brake pedal assembly. What I didn’t realize was that in order to take out the brake pedal assembly (including assembly bracket), I had to disconnect the steering column.
I don’t like doing that, honestly, but whatever. I got the needed instructions and service info, and, after a good, long fight with it, managed to get it done with only a couple of snags. One, the dust boot on the brake booster shaft got cut by the huge and awkward brake pedal assembly/gas pedal assembly/brake booster assembly bracket, so I put some silicone sealer on the cut and let the customer know. The other hiccup was that I forgot to take a picture of the wiring harness orientation which was wrapped all around the brake pedal bracket. So… it took me probably 20 minutes or longer to figure out how on earth I was supposed to run the different tentacles of harness to clip into their proper places.
Gratefully, I finally was able. 🥳
Fifth car was me alone working on a 2006 Toyota Camry that wouldn’t start. They’d replaced the battery, but it still wouldn’t start. I got out there and found that, as is so frequent, the battery cables were #1 corroded, which was inhibiting good connection, and #2 loose, very loose. So I cleaned off the cables, noted that it was more than 2 quarts low on oil (added two quarts to get it at least into safe range) and probably about a half a gallon or more low on coolant (of which I added as well). Then I started it up (started totally fine), but it idled terribly, so I removed the air intake hose, saw a nasty butterfly plate in the throttle body, spent a good little while cleaning it out, started it back up, and it ran much much better. She has a totally busted engine mount, an awful valve cover leak, and a lot of other issues, but it’s an old car. I gave her a quote for the valve cover and engine mount.
Sixth car was one that Malaki did pretty much by himself and was pretty much the exact same job he did before my last trip to Utah. It was a 2003 Chevrolet Silverado with an awful power steering fluid leak. Turned out to be a cracked power steering line. I’d seen that once before, cracked right out of the bag. If I remember right, it was another 2003 Silverado I had that issue with. Anyway, Malaki seemed to do great pretty much all by himself on that one. He’s doing extremely well at retaining information. He’s not perfect, but goodness, who is? I’m really impressed with his knowledge retention. Super good stuff. And I’m really impressed with his efforts to do a really good job. Reminds me a lot of Chase.
Speaking of Chase! There’s a decent chance he meets up with me in New Zealand and Australia! Three years removed from our last adventure in China (Wow, it’s been tree years already!!!) we might be at it again! Crossing fingers. Would be nice to have a traveling companion. Especially for the Australia part of the trip. With more poisonous critters than anywhere else in the world, if one of us ends up with an unfortunate encounter with one of those critters, it’d be good to have someone else there to help… contact loved ones. 🙃
Just kidding… ish. 🙃
He’s put in his request for PTO, and I think Australia has relaxed its Covid vaccine mandate, so I think he might be good for going! Cross those fingers.
Back to cars… Last job was a 2001? Toyota 4Runner that died while driving. Turned out to be the alternator, and we got it put in–original alternator. That’s Toyota for you. 2 decades plus and just barely needing its alternator replaced.
Fabulous cars… for the owners, anyway. Pretty unfabulous for the mechanics. Why? Because if it never breaks, you have that many more years of corrosion making everything that much harder to come apart and reassemble. The normal bracket bushing that you tap out of the way to get the alternator in before retorquing was so frozen on there that it simply wouldn’t move. Nothing but break it free, so it took us probably 40 minutes to just get the alternator back in its very easily accessible spot.
Well, folks, another day has passed. My poor mother had her flight delayed an additional… 5 hours? after an already 6-hour long layover. Didn’t make it back to Utah until like 4 a.m. or something like that when she was supposed to get in about midnight.
Stinky.
Well, one more day before Sunday rest day. (right… like I actually will rest. 🙃)
- I’m grateful the Infiniti was an easy relearn procedure and not something left unplugged or fastened improperly.
- I’m grateful that I was able to get the Versa done despite it being a lot more of a pain than I thought it would be initially.
- I’m grateful that I was the one who went to do the Versa. I was going to send Malaki on it, and he could have done it, but it really was a beast, and he’d have needed to learn a bunch of stuff to do it. It would have been a great one to do together for his experience, but he did a good job with the radiator.
- I’m grateful to be back at least doing gratitude journaling. That’s… good for me.
- I’m grateful for the little fountain in the garden. Despite having the garden get dropped significantly on the priority list after spending a lot of time trying to have a good garden this year, it’s still nice to sit on the bench swing in the garden and listen to the fountain.
Love to all y’all.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 