Hola! 😊
On to the 23rd!
I’ve been so completely swamped that I could keep several mechanics going right now if I just had them. 🙃 I’ve been waking up in the morning and pretty much just leaving right away to go out and fix cars, not coming home until late.
The first car of the day was one that’s been on my list for over a week now, I think, because at first O’Reilly said they didn’t have a record of her having purchased the starter, but they didn’t actually check outside their own store. So I ended up waiting three or four days only to find out that they hadn’t properly checked. Once I was able to figure out that they actually did have a record of her buying the starter, and we could warranty it, then the next step was convincing them to actually warranty it. That’s where I really appreciate my relationship that I’ve developed with the various AutoZones. All I have to do is say that it’s bad, and they swap it out for me. O’Reilly’s wanted to test it first, and the crappy thing is that a bunch test fine, but on the car won’t work. Whereas, the replacement starter that I already installed works just fine, so it’s clearly a problem with the starter.
Hopefully, a little bit of convincing, they were willing to just refund the starter, and I installed one from AutoZone on the car.
I actually showed up to that first job without her having to my messages early in the morning, and I wanted to get that job out of the way because it had been on the list for so long.
Once again, gratefully, as I was finishing up the car, she realized I was there (she hadn’t been awake until just about when I finished), and she was pleasantly surprised that she woke up to a repaired car. 😊
And I was also happy because that meant that I was going to get paid on the spot instead of having to try and collect later. 🙃
That was for the 2005 Honda Accord.
Next car up was a 2018 Infiniti QX60 that had a check engine code. Turns out, they were just really low on oil, so I topped off their oil, cleared the code, and they were good to go. They will be paying attention to their oil level from here on out.
Have I ever mentioned to you that you shouldn’t buy Nissan’s?
Yeah, don’t buy a Nissan. Hate those darn things. No. Nissan’s, no. Infinities.
The next repair job was one that I probably should have said no to, but they were stranded on the side of the freeway. It was a no-no for two reasons: One, it was on the side of the freeway, which is more risk than I generally want to take on. And two, it was a trailer, and I’m not that well equipped to deal with trailer issues. But when you have an older husband and wife stuck on the side of the freeway…
So I went over there, and I found that the u-bolts were broken on the driver side rear axle. There wasn’t really anything I could do other than finding more u-bolts, so I drove around from one side of Springdale all the way to the other side of Springdale, going to like six different stores trying to find u-bolts that would match up. But nobody had them. I drove so many places that I even stopped off to do the QX60 in the middle of the job because I was right next to it, and it was a quickie.
Finally, as I was driving heading back toward the trailer, I passed an RV dealership but also went inside, handed them the leftover pieces of the u-bolt, and the gentleman went upstairs and, as luck would have it, he had a bin of u-bolts with no labels or anything on it. In that bin, he found two u-bolts that were exactly the right size!
It turns out that the reason why we had so much trouble finding you bolts for his trailer was because it was a homemade trailer that used mobile home axles.
😶
After that, I went to O’Reilly’s and grabbed some nuts and washers, headed back to the trailer, lined up the axle in the previous spot where it used to sit, bolted everything up, torqued it down, and sent the happy older couple on their way. 😊
The next car I had on my list was going back to that really big brake job that I had done the other night that lasted well into the night. He had said that the brakes that I just put on started smoking on one side. Sure enough, I went over there, and the brakes were cooked on one side. I took it for a test drive, and everything worked just fine without any problems, but they were clearly cooked. So I pulled off the wheel, and tested the caliper, and the caliper itself was fine, meaning that the brake hose was the issue.
Got to love it.
So not only did he need brake pads, brake rotors, outer tie rods, and a caliper, he also needed a break hose. Break hoses, though, aren’t something you normally check when you’re just replacing a caliper because it got pushed out. So far it was damaged because they ran their brakes so far down that it ruined the caliper. You would check for something like that if one wheel showed evidence of overwear, and the other one was fine, but both sides were worn down. Down pretty much to nothing, just the one side was worn down further. That’s pretty normal in my experience. So the brake hose wasn’t on my radar, and when he tests drove it after I finished the job, everything was fine.
It’s crappy to have to tell somebody who’s just been a whole lot of money on their car that even more about the car is messed up. 😕
Honestly, the car should probably just be junked. It has so much wrong with it, but they’re trying to limp it along for another couple months. To buy another car now or rent one for the cost of all the repairs.
I didn’t charge him for the visit because I felt bad for him. He doesn’t have a job, though. He could go out and get one and is talking about needing to go get one.
Anyway…
The next job was all the way to the north end of my area in Bella Vista, where they had a 2006 Buick Lucerne that Big o tires had told them they needed a whole bunch of stuff done, but they didn’t believe them, so they wanted me to come out and verify.
So I went out there, and just as they suspected, I don’t think Big o tires had even really inspected the car. They said a whole bunch of things needed to be done that didn’t need to be done, and some extremely obvious things that needed to be done right away weren’t even listed. That says to me they’re just making stuff up or are completely incompetent. I would say that maybe they just got two cars mixed up when making the report, except for it’s sort of a pattern with places like this. All. The more frustrating, though, because Big o tires is a franchise, I believe. So every place is individually owned, and you’d think they’d be more honest, but no.
They were grateful for my assessments and my recommendations, another older couple.
Last one on my list was a 2009 Toyota Corolla that was cranking but not starting. Unfortunately for them, it had low compression, meaning that the timing chain had most likely slipped or jumped. On a Japanese car, that generally means that the engine’s toast, but I explained some further tests that they could have done at a shop that could pinpoint for sure where the issue was. The problem is that those kinds of things take hundreds of more dollars just to get this specific diagnosis, and when you’re looking at a possible throw away car because it’s not worth the price it’s going to cost to fix it, then what do you do?
Anyway, so that was my 23rd… except for one small poor choice at the very end of the day. 😬
I had felt so much better over the last several days with my heartburn, stomach acid, whatever thingy that I decided to try and add one food to the mix that I hadn’t been eating. So I grabbed a stack of multigrain crackers (one stack out of three from the box of crackers). And I ate the whole stack.
After eating them, i felt like maybe I might have a reaction?
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 