Second day migraining (I’m writing this on the 13th)… So this catch-up post might not be the greatest. I just want to sleep, but I’m too awake, and the head hurts too much–like someone is pushing constantly on my right eye.
Can’t take anything for it until the stomach meds have been in there an hour. Probably shouldn’t take anything anyway, as the migraine meds are bad for stomach issues.
Ugh.
Not sure exactly the issue this time. Think it’s from a couple of days ago not getting enough to drink. Pretty sure I’ve had plenty since, though? But that’s all it takes. Throw me out of balance, and catching up doesn’t solve the migraine issue. Body is pissed off. Just have to wait until it’s not pissed off.
Pee is electric yellow, not dehydrated orange. That’s weird. I want to say that means something–kidneys? isn’t working properly? But don’t have reception to look that up. Will later today when I have reception.
Let’s see… to the 9th…
Ok, you know that place we slept at that was supposedly out in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, apparently it was just right near a DOC campsite, and Chase and I woke up to tell DOC officers talking to us about how we were illegally parked. We hadn’t parked in a no-camping/no parking area, but apparently, in that area we couldn’t at all anyway.
Gratefully, they didn’t fine us. 🥳 The fine is $200.
From there, outside of Hokitika, we drove to Greymouth, stopping at McDonald’s for Chase before going over to the RepCo. If I’m remembering correctly, we got there before they opened, and we are breakfast and waited for our friends to meet us there.
Gratefully, their car had done just fine, driving down the road at speed, with the heater on a little bit. The wind blowing across the radiator was enough to keep the engine cool.
Once our friends arrived, we started testing stuff to pinpoint the exact problem, thinking it was likely the fan but wanting to prove it for sure.
Fuses were fine. Relays… were…weird. one of them had power, but when it was jumped, nothing happened with the fan. That would tend to point to the fans being bad, except there were four different fan relays. Trying to jump one of the other fan relays, instead of providing power to the circuit, it shorted out inside the fuse box. That was a little crazy.
testing without having all of my tools makes it a bit challenging to figure out what’s going on, especially in a modern system. It took me a little while to realize that this particular car had a fan control module, and that makes testing everything more complicated than simply jumping wires and connections and whatnot.
Also, the compartment was very tight, making it very challenging to get hands in the places they needed to be in order to disconnect stuff and whatnot.
Anyway, there came a point where because of how the system was designed, and because of my lack of tools, I wasn’t confident that we were going to be able to pinpoint the exact problem. The only thing that I knew was that the fans weren’t working properly. I didn’t know if that was because of the fan control module or the fans themselves or what. I knew that one of the fans wouldn’t work even with power and ground given directly to it, so that one was bad for sure. The other fan, though, was a four wire setup, and since I couldn’t get any information about the vehicle, no wiring diagrams, nothing, because it was a model that pretty much nobody has ever heard of before, I couldn’t verify that one without risking ruining the fan anyway by jumping the wrong wires.
I ended up calling multiple mechanic shops in the area to see if any of them had access to the wiring diagrams and whatnot for a 2009 Mazda Biante, but the first shop I spoke with, which had absolutely fabulous reviews, said that they didn’t have information and would have to Google it just like I was trying to do. I also asked shops whether they had scan tools that could scan the vehicle, as that could potentially diagnose the problem within minutes, but that proved to be a no-go as well.
Since we knew we had one fan that was completely toast, we decided that the only thing that we could really do from there was to remove the old fan assembly and manually wire it to the system.
That was what we were expecting to have to do from the beginning, but we had hoped to at least prove our diagnosis correct 100%. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible.
The fan had to come out the bottom of the car, which meant we had to be able to jack up the car high enough to get the whole assembly out. Chase used the scissor jack that came with the car, as that was the only Jack we had, and I finagled the fan out of its place slowly and carefully trying not to damage anything else, noticing that one of the transmission cooler lines was damaged previously and needed to be repaired.
Gratefully, we were able to get the fan assembly out from underneath the car–not bad for having only a scissor jack. 🙃
We fastened the new fans in place, opting for two smaller fans, just like the old assembly, over one big fan. We were able to do that in such a way that we were happy with the results.
The Big challenge came when we tried to connect the fans to the wiring system in the car. We tried to wire the fans to a circuit that would only be on when the car was running, but that didn’t work, as all the normal options were connected to control modules, meaning they were constantly hot even with the car off.
🙄
Ugh.
Sometimes technological advancements aren’t improvements.
We tried and tried to find some way to attach it to the main wiring to have everything be automated so that our friends wouldn’t have to remember to turn the fans on and off, but it was a no-go.
In the end, we ended up wiring a toggle switch as an on-off switch for the fans that our friends would need to manually turn on and off to turn the fans on and off. Chase did the majority of the work on the wiring end of things, with me just finding a place for the toggle switch to go and helping as needed.
By the time we finished getting everything done, the vehicle out for a test drive, and fixing an issue with blowing one of the fans fuses because it was too small, we had been there for about 11 hours. 🙃
Of course, had I had all my regular tools, it wouldn’t have taken anywhere near that long, and we weren’t bothered at all anyway. It was an adventure, just funny how long things can take when you’re not properly equipped, and you have a car model that… few people have ever heard of.
In the end, our friends had a jimmy-rig fix done by someone who looked like they cared (and we did 🙃). The place the toggle went looked like it could have been designed that way, and Chase ran the wiring so beautifully that you didn’t even really see much of anything that looked out of place, except right next to the fuse box where you see some extra relays wired in, but it all looked clean and really nice. So that was fabulous. 😊
That was one of the reasons I loved having Chase work for me: He takes pride in his work and does a great job, even if it takes him more time and doesn’t benefit him at all other than knowing he did a great job.
Thank you, Chase! 😊
After we got finished with everything, our friends suggested we play games to finish off the night and then go to Hokitika Gorge together the next day.
I hadn’t thought fixing the car was going to take as long as it did, and I was down to my last few days of vacation, so I was a bit torn: Playing games and going to Hokitika Gorge was what i wanted to do, but we hadn’t been to the East side of the Southern Alps yet, at least not in the Mt. Cook area, and I was only going to have three days left to do all that if I stayed, and I didn’t want to miss seeing the mountains, one of my biggest reasons for coming to New Zealand in the first place.
There was one other concern that gave me pause, but after conferring with Chase, that turned out not to be a concern at all, so I checked the weather for the next day for the other side of the Alps, and the forecast showed rain for the afternoon, so that pretty much settled it: I wanted to stay and play games and show our friends Hokitika Gorge (I’d wanted to since Chase and I first went), so I was already leaning that way (there’s just that FOMO that kicks in); so when the weather forecast called for rain, that made the decision a virtual no brainer (can’t see mountains that are covered in rain clouds, so I wasn’t gonna miss out on anything anyway).
So we just stayed there in the RepCo parking lot, well after dark and into the night. I think finishing up at like… 1:30 a.m., maybe? Whatever it was, it was really late. 🙃
And guess what?!?!
Chase and I finally won!!! In pretty much everything we’d ever played with our friends, they’d won seemingly every game–even the ones we taught them. 🙃
Finally! This time, they taught us a game, and we won! 🥳
🙃
Funny 🙂
Anyway, after we wrapped up for the night, Chase and I drove to a campsite near Hokitika (now that we knew we were at risk for getting fined camping in our normal fashion) and called it a night.
Hope that all made sense and that i didn’t forget anything (not that y’all would know anyway 🙃).
Was a good day. Nice to see our friends again and enjoy time with them, and nice to be able to help out. 😊
Oh! Can i just say one more time how lucky we are in the states when it comes to getting the commodities we want–and at good prices? 4-month wait for the part, if we’d waited for the actual fan assembly, and no joke, a 12-foot set of jumper cables here, not even really good ones–$152 NZD (I think that’s what it was, anyway. $152, $132, something like that). That equates to something like $80-90 USD.
😶
That’s just nutty!!
My 20-foot (maybe 30-foot?) cables that I bought that were super thick? $20 USD, maybe $30. Something like that. And that NZ price wasn’t just a one off. Tool and parts prices are so high here (compared to the States).
Anyway, pros and cons to every place. Still love me some New Zealand. It’s an amazing place. 😊
I’m almost… about to leave her. 😞
But! It’ll be great to be home and moving forward with my other goals and dreams, too. 🙂
Well, folks, that was the end of another day. Hope your 9th was a great one.
MWRTLEPAEPBTWFT 😊
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 