Tad late to be starting a post, but as you know, I haven’t written in a little bit, so I figured I’d catch you up…
My stomach issues have decreased in severity, gratefully, and they’ve shifted a bit.
Perhaps you’ll be proud of me. I went to see the doctor today, and she said she thinks I’m right, that I’ve got a hiatal hernia.
Didn’t want to be right.
Hopefully, I’m not.
I have an appointment on the 7th for a barium swallow test. She also tested me for h pylori, and she took x-rays of my hand and wrist to try to get that figured out.
My guess? No h pylori, unremarkable x-rays, thus pointing to soft tissue issues that’ll likely require an MRI to diagnose accurately. If i had to guess, I’d guess the barium swallow will either be inconclusive or negative.
Gratefully, my pain level has been much less on all counts the last couple of days. I pushed it a bit today, playing basketball for the first time in probably 3 years, maybe longer.
So I’m hurting pretty good right now. And I’m pretty tired. And my stomach is not happy with me.
I can’t really remember what happened yesterday. It was halloween. I think I fixed a few cars. I guess I could go look.
Moment…
Oh yeah, yes.. three cars yesterday as well. First was a truck that died while it was driving and we’re just crank but not start afterward. It was an older, 2004, i think, Chevy truck with the V6 in it. Pretty much every time I’ve come to one of those older V6 chevys, the issue has always been a distributor, if it’s cranking but not starting, and it appeared to be the case with this one as well. The fuel pump was kicking on just fine, there was spark as best I could tell using my camera on my phone to watch well I cranked the engine over. So I jumped right into it being an issue with the cap and rotor like always, and when I pulled off the cap, the insides were just nasty, so it seemed to indicate that that was the problem like it usually is.
The customer didn’t have money to pay for the repair, so I taught him how to do it himself, which sort of shot myself in the foot because I basically already done the repair myself before I found out that he couldn’t pay for it. But that was fine. He was grateful that I didn’t charge him for the extra and that I taught him how to do it himself when he had the money to fix it.
Second car was another car that died while driving, but when I got there, the keys weren’t where the tow truck driver said they were, so I searched around for quite a while trying to find the keys, but I couldn’t find them, so that one was a no-go.
The next car was a car that wouldn’t come out of park, so I showed her how to bypass the park lock switch, and I spent quite a while trying to determine why it was stuck in park, but Nissan made it extremely challenging to pull everything off to look on the inside of the shift assembly and to test the shift assembly solenoid. There was a piece of trim that I couldn’t get off to save my life, and I knew that if I kept trying, I was just going to snap it right in half. So I threw up the white flag on that one, settling for giving her the work around that is only mildly annoying.
Third car was way up in Bella Vista, and it turned out to be just a battery, which was nice. So I swapped the battery, and then I headed home.
Once home, I spent a good while online trying to run business errands and my continuous efforts to prepare for my trip. I was finally able to figure out the password for my long lost Gmail account that I used to create my auto mechanic business cards. I was struggling, after spending quite a long time trying to find the account that I used to make the cards, and after finally giving up the first time, I tried to redesign the cards, but I couldn’t get them to look anywhere near as good as I did the first time because the system was different, I think. But fortunately, once I found the account, I was able to just reorder another 2,500 cards.
Stevie also created a logo for the business that’s a pretty nice looking logo. It’s going to serve as our temporary and possibly permanent logo going forward. One of my jobs for tomorrow is going to be to set up the Facebook business page as well as finish setting up the Google business page, which I think I finally have fully reinstated. 🥳
Today the three cars were fairly simple and unstressful. The first was just a battery job. It was a no crank no start, but it was just a super super bad battery.
I did that job after my doctor’s appointments this morning.
The second job was a little bit of a surprise, as when I was fairly close to getting there, I realized I was heading to the job of somebody I actually knew personally from my church congregation that I used to attend.
He had done a lot of work on his own car, and when he was done, it would crank but it wouldn’t start. But it would only crank for a few seconds, and then it would shut itself off and not crank again until you turned the key off and then try it again.
After listening to some of the work that he had done, I keyed in on a potential issue with the crank sensor. He had replaced it, and after he had done that is when the problem started. I checked the RPMs on the scan tool, and there were no RPMs registering when cranking the engine over, so I figured there was a problem with the crank sensor part of the circuit.
The crank sensor was a little bit of a pain to get to, but fortunately I was able to pop the cover off and get my hand inside. What I found was that the crank sensor was just dangling inside of the Bell housing. He had accidentally installed it incorrectly, and it hit snapped off, so it wasn’t able to send the proper signal.
The third job was another battery job, so that was nice. November is nice for battery jobs. There are so many of them!
After that, headed home where Stevie had also been having car troubles. So I found a belt that would work for his truck, which it had the AC compressor sees up on it. I replaced the belt for him, and then I started working on my own truck. I’ve got to fix the oil leak that’s super super bad, and I also have a coolant leak I’ve got to fix. I’m hoping that the oil leak is just super bad valve cover gaskets. I know those were leaking because they’re leaking right onto the exhaust manifolds and smoking. But the other day, the leak was so bad that it was just leaving puddles within a short amount of time. Today I couldn’t reproduce that, but I could see that oil was leaking from the valve covers down onto the exhaust manifolds, so I know for sure that that’s one of the problems. I set my camera over to look at the oil pressure switch, because usually an oil leak that fast really only ever comes from the oil pressure switch, but the oil pressure switch looked fairly dry comparatively, so I’m hoping that it’s just a valve cover gasket issue.
I started working on that issue when my nephew Austin said he was going to go play basketball tonight with people from the church congregation I used to attend, and I decided that I would go and play basketball with them today, as I hadn’t played basketball in years, and I need some exercise, especially in preparation for going to new zealand.
After getting back from playing basketball, it was around 11ish, so I ate some dinner because I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I don’t think, and then I headed up to work on my truck.
Probably sounds crazy to work on the truck around midnight, but Austin got a tree job for us tomorrow, so I’m trying to fix the oil leak and the coolant leak so we’re not leaking fluids all over our customer’s drive away or the road in front of her driveway.
I didn’t do the whole job tonight. I realized on the drive up to fixing my truck that I could get away with sending Stevie in his own truck to start with, getting mine figured out and showing up later in time to gather up all the tree limbs and stump and whatnot. So that’s what I’m going to do. That’ll give me some time in the morning to fix the truck and not be up for hours longer tonight. It’s already pretty late, as it’s almost 1:30, but it’s not as late as it would have otherwise been had I stayed up there to finish the job.
I think I’m pretty far over the edge having not eaten at all today, and then having played basketball for like two and a half hours. I’m a pretty active player, so I run and gun the whole time. So I’m pretty exhausted right now and quite sore, and the stomach is unhappy with me, but here I am, and here is the end of another day.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 