Hola, folks!
Happy Friday. 🙂 Hope y’all enjoyed the day. Today was less productive but more fulfilling in some ways. First car of the day today was actually the same as the first car of the day yesterday. She called this morning saying her car was completely dead again, so we headed back out there. This time, instead of just replacing her very old very dead battery at her request, it was time to do some diagnostics.
She assured me with 100% certainty that she’d gone through her little walk-away routine, where she makes absolutely sure she’s turned everything off, so she was certain it wasn’t because she’d left anything on. Taking that to be true, I began a diagnostic looking for a parasitic draw. At first, there was only a small draw–more than the allowable, but nowhere near strong enough to drain a battery overnight.
Then I decided to disconnect the battery and attach my jump box to power up the car, and that did it. I was able to power up the car, and that woke up the computers and exposed the draw. What did we find? Another pedal bushing problem. The draw was from the horn/brake light circuit. As soon as I heard it was from the same circuit as the brake lights, boom, that was it. Bushing. Stupid bushings. Stupid, money-grubbing designs.
This time, I didn’t replace the bushing. I got a bolt and a nut and permanently solved the problem, adjusting the brake switch slightly for the slightly thicker bolt head vs bushing.
The lady was super happy and super impressed that we found the issue so quickly. That felt good.
Second car was… back to that Suzuki we rescued the other day. The other shop had diagnosed it as a wiring problem, but after doing the quick workaround to get them able to get to the shop that had done the diagnosis, they decided they’d rather have us come out and diagnose it ourselves and just skip going to the shop that’d already seen it.
So we went out there, and what did we find? It was just a blown fuse. 🙃 I guess that’s what we get for trusting another shop’s diagnosis. We replaced the fuse, messed around with the wiring harness in a bunch of places, couldn’t get it to blow the fuse again, so we left them with a couple of extra fuses in case it ever happened again, and we called it good with that one, giving them a discount because it seemed pretty dumb that it was just a fuse after all they went through. Apparently, the other shop didn’t really actually diagnose it. They must have just guessed, since they didn’t catch the fuse being blown, and we didn’t catch it because we were just trusting them, having supposedly already done the diagnosis.
They were really happy as well and asked me to get them quotes on a bunch more work they wanted done with one of their other cars.
Third car was back to that 5.9 cummins that supposedly needed a starter that had the bad Napa starter out of the box–the job I shot myself in the foot on by being willing to get the part from where they wanted it from. Anyway, we replaced the starter, as he requested (he requested no diagnosis, just a replacement), and what happened?
Same problem.
I know I’m beating a dead horse, and this probably will sound a bit contradictory after the experiences I’ve mentioned with other shops messing up diagnoses, but… have the car diagnosed. So much money is wasted in guessing.
Anyway, what was the problem? Bad batteries and super-corroded battery cable on the driver’s side.
So… after charging him $50ish less than I should have originally, we stayed 30 minutes longer cleaning up his nasty cable connections free of charge.
While on that job, one of my repeat customers asked if we could squeeze her in. She said her car was starting but dying right away, and she was trying to get to her grandpa’s 90th birthday party in Kansas, leaving relatively early in the morning tomorrow.
The problem? She was 30 minutes back the direction we’d already left earlier today, so it was way out of our way. It was already relatively late in the day, and that kind of a job would normally be an emergency service call because we’re dropping everything and spending an hour just in travel time, so it’s… a good bit more expensive; but she’s just a college student (albeit an older one, but still… not lots of money), and though neither Malaki nor I wanted to do the job, neither did we want her nor her grandpa to miss being together on his 90th birthday, so we headed down there. Gratefully for all of us, it was just a bad coil. I also cleaned her throttle because it wasn’t idling very well, but she should be good to travel to Kansas.
One pretty funny thing that had both Malaki laughing pretty good was that her rear struts were so bad that her car was bouncing done the road like someone who’d spent a fortune on hydraulic shocks. You know the ones people install in their cars, and at stoplights they bounce up and down?
Yeah. That was her car, without the hefty price tag.🙃
So I gave her instructions to test how well it would handle on an emergency lane change, as struts that are that bad can be dangerous, and I wanted her to be clear about how it would handle in those situations.
So… that was the last car for the day. Pretty terrible money day, but it was a pretty fulfilling day. The last customer was profuse in her gratitude, just super happy, posting all over Facebook how we went out of our way to help her. So that felt good.
Nice to be able to do nice things.
Trying to work on my phonetic stuff again. Got out of sync with it bouncing back and forth between Arkansas and Utah with everything that was going on.
Hope I’m able to make some good progress tomorrow and Sunday. It’s gonna be my highest priority Sunday. One of the ladies who was interested in helping me with it actually pinged me asking about it, still excited and wanting to get going.
We’re getting there. Little by little. Sunday I’m going to take a big step forward.
- I’m grateful we were able to find the parasitic draw really quickly in that first car.
- I’m grateful that we didn’t have to do the water pump job today (2019 Charger). I was starting to get a pretty good migraine, and Malaki said he thought if we did the job, it would void the customer’s warranty, and so I double checked, and yep, if we replaced the water pump, it would mean they wouldn’t cover a future issue with the water pump under warranty. But even worse, if the water pump we replaced went bad, and any other system was damaged by the faulty water pump, none of it would be covered by the warranty. So… we wasted an hour at the job, and I didn’t charge him for our time, since we didn’t benefit him at all, but it was nice to not have to do that job. It wasn’t a super hard one. I just… couldn’t get into it.
- I’m grateful that we were able to help the grandpa birthday lady.
- I’m grateful that I was able to break through the wall I’ve been butting up against and finally get going again on the phonetic stuff. It was a little exciting to get working on it again, seeing the transliteration tool working better than it has to this point.
- I’m grateful to be getting things slowly cleaned up and organized. Haven’t seen a single brown recluse outside of my hunting since doing the major cleaning. In fact, I’ve seen many fewer bugs overall since vacuuming up all the dead bugs that were everywhere behind cabinets and shelves and whatnot. The garage has been seemingly nearly bug free. I’ve also been changing my habits, not turning the garage lights on unless the garage door is closed, in order to attract fewer bugs to the garage. So overall, that’s meant many many fewer bugs, and that means fewer brown recluses anyway because their food source is drying up, so they’ll go looking elsewhere for their food, and hopefully out of the garage. I’ve been spacing all the cabinets and whatnot in the garage with wide enough spaces as to make them unattractive for the recluses. They like tight folds, cabinets pressed against walls, boxes packed together, etc., But… I’m taking away those habit possibilities, and I think it’s very effective.
Love to all y’all. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 