Well, hiya, peeps!
Work work work. That was the day today; but some really big things might be on the horizon. I’ll keep you posted in the coming days/weeks as things unfold.
As for today… ugh. The first job was a nightmare from the beginning. It was a customer who called me probably a dozen times over the course of 20 hours or so. That was… a bit much.
Then I mixed up the address. He’d said Fayetteville, and then I somehow missed his text that said the new address, way up in Bentonville, so instead of ordering the part for pickup in Bentonville for this morning, I ordered it for pickup in Springdale (on the way to Fayetteville). Gratefully, after picking it up, I realized that there was a second address, so I got clarification, and ended up driving all the way back up within a mile or so of where I’d just been an hour earlier.
So… the day didn’t start off so well, and the first job turned into an absolute nightmare. It was going relatively well until I went to put it all back together. I went to torque down the bolts, and they just… kept turning, never getting tight.
😬
So I pulled out the big bolt, and it was a tad stripped on the end.
😬😬
Then I pulled the alternator out, and the threads on the alternator looked just fine, so I figured it was just from the previous person over torquing the bolt, and that was why the threads on the bolt were a tad stripped.
But then put the alternator back in, and this time it was even worse, It just spun and spun and spun and spun without even getting a tiny bit tight.
😶
(as a mechanic, this is one of the worst things I ever run into… threads stripping out)
So I pulled the alternator out again, and what did I find? The bolt was no worse off, but the built-in nut that pulls everything together when tightened was threadless.
😶
And I mean threadless.
It wasn’t that there were mangled threads. There were no threads. They’d all just popped out completely out of the nut, clean, shiny, smooth, as if there’d never been any threads in the first place.
😶
Malaki had shown up about 15 minutes before that, even though it was his day off, because he was dropping parts off for me for a job I was supposed to do, but with this first job going so badly, I asked the customer if we could postpone until tomorrow, and he was okay with it, so instead of Malaki dropping parts off for me, he picked up a part from me.
Anyway, super glad I had Malaki there because he looked at the alternators (the old and new), and he figured out how to get the nut out of the old alternator! So I swapped nuts!
I went to put it on (by this time, I’d taken the alternator out and put it back in like four times, this time being the fourth). I’d been worried about the other threads on the alternator as well, as they didn’t feel quite right either, but I had the only new alternator that my supplier had for that vehicle in all of Northwest Arkansas, so I was hoping it would still work.
No dice. The upper nut seemed better, but before doing my final torque on it, I tested the lower one that I’d been worried about. I’d tested it off the car, and it seemed to be okay, but when I torqued it down on the car, it just stripped right out. Torque spec on that one was 21 ft lbs, but the threads couldn’t handle it at all. They stripped right out. They didn’t strip as cleanly as the nut, but they did strip out.
Cheap metal?
So with that one, there was no nut to replace it with: It was actual threads built into the alternator, so I reamed out the thread leftovers, found a suitable bolt, nut, and two washers, and I bolted that sucker in with my hardware, and boom. The old nut handled the torque just fine (48 ft lbs). My bolt and nut combo handled the torque just fine (the 21 ft lbs), and we were in business. It took almost 6 hours to do a 2.4-hour job, but thanks to Malaki figuring out we could swap nuts, it didn’t turn into a multi-day nightmare.
🥳
The next two jobs were just about as perfect as you could hope for following a nightmare like that. The first one was a Honda Fit that wouldn’t start that turned out to just need a battery.
Score.
The next one was two no start cars that also just needed batteries.
Score again.
So after the nightmare day killer, I got two easy breezies.
🥳
Very grateful for that.
Finally, my last one was a 2000 Plymouth Grand Voyager that had gone through three alternators, or something like that. I got there, and the main hot wire from the alternator to the battery was burned to a crisp so badly that it was crumbling when I grabbed it.
That job wasn’t easy, but it didn’t go that badly (I’m not finished yet, though). The hardest part was getting my hands around back of the engine and trying to remove harness bolts and connections by braille.
Not easy.
In the end, I was able to get the harness disconnected from all it’s connections, and therefore was able to get the harness out in an area where I could easily repair it.
The alternator had burn marks all over the back of it. It was toast. It had fried once, I think because the connections were loose. Then it fried again, I think because the repair the person did the last time was hugely inadequate. The wire connection was only like a third, or maybe even less than a third of the cable strands going into the end.
Not good.
So… tomorrow I need to find thick enough wire. big enough butt connectors, a circle connector of the right size, and then I need to put it all together and back on.
Fun. 🙃
After that one, I came home and buttoned up a few little things with the Sentra that I realized weren’t done (the engine weather stripping was off still and needed to be put back on. Some clips were missing that needed to be replaced; and the little beauty covers over the wiper arm nuts had to be put back on, oh, and a rubber grommet/dam/barrier thing needed to be put back in place (all stuff related to having to take the wiper arms and cowling off to replace the front struts).
Anyway, folks, busy day. I’m tent shopping for my trip to New Zealand. I’m trying to help with a bunch of things here on the home front.
So many things going on. Super busy.
It’s 11:11, I think I somehow manage to look at the clock right at that time once a day, sometimes twice.
Weird.
Well, folks. It’s 11:13, and tomorrow is going to be a really busy busy busy day.
- Grateful for Malaki and what he figured out. That. was. huge.
- I’m grateful for the easy battery jobs.
- I’m grateful to be getting to bed earlier tonight.
- I’m grateful that my teeth, now that I’ve been back off buying candy and whatnot for a good while, are not so sensitive. They’d gotten really bad. Much better now.
- I’m grateful to have a full day for Malaki tomorrow. It’s… gone a very busy day. Super super busy for him. I think he’s got over 10 billable hours scheduled, so it’s gonna be quite the day! And I’ve got a good bit to do as well. Could be breaking some records tomorrow!
- Grateful for showers. In addition to all the nightmare things going on with the Infiniti (I didn’t mention the broken ground strap I noticed that I rehomed. Nor did I mention that the alternator connector broke into a bazillion pieces on the… 4th reinstallation. Old, brittle plastic just grenaded itself. There wasn’t much to do but leave it grenaded. He needs a new pigtail, but it’s working as it is. Can’t buy just the pigtail. Gonna have to be the junkyard, I think, if he wants to get that fixed.
Love and hugs.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 