Super busy day today! Did seven cars, working from morning until pretty late.
The first car was a 2011 Chevy Cruze. She had been calling me on and off for probably a couple weeks about the car. At first, she wanted to swap the starter from one of her cruises to the other, but they had different engines, and hence different starters. So that wasn’t a possibility. Then she wanted it done quicker than I was able to get to her, so she tried to get someone else to do it. Then she called again saying that she still wanted me to do it, but she couldn’t afford for me to do it with a regular starter, so she bought one online. Online. Once it finally shipped in, she called me again, and set up a time with me, today, to go fix it.
What? She did not tell me is that she had already had somebody working on it trying to replace the starter. They had taken bolts out that I didn’t even recognize and had nothing to do with starters. So when I got there, I realized the project was bigger than I thought it was going to be, and not only that, I had promised her a discount because she said she couldn’t afford my original quote. So there I was going to get less money for the job than it called for, and not only less money for the job, but a more challenging job.
If that weren’t enough, she was super low on coolant, and I noticed it and pointed it out to her, and she went and got a bottle of coolant and topped it off. That was great and all, except it wasn’t great. The reason she was low on coolant turned out to be because one of her main heater hoses had a bad o-ring and just poured all the coolant right back out onto the ground right where I needed to lie down to work on the starter.
🙃
So… I got soaking wet with coolant, and splashes of coat in my face and eyes as the residual drops kept splashing down on me while I was working on the starter.
That wasn’t so fun. 😶
Eventually, I got it done, and the lady who said she didn’t have enough money for the job came out with $200 bills asking for change. So there you go.
Second car was 2010 Honda Odyssey that was making a grinding sound while she was breaking. Gratefully, instead of waiting like so many of my customers do and letting them grind and grind and grind until they ruin more parts and cause more damage, she called me immediately.
Super nice lady. 🙂 She was in town from Illinois because her son was a pitcher for the team that was going to be playing against the University of Arkansas. He was scheduled to start that day, and she was worried because she was stuck at the hotel instead of at the game.
I went over there and found that the last company to do a brake job on her car forgot to do one side, so she had really new pads on one side, and pads that were ground down to nothing. On the other side. I quickly ran over to the parts store, grab some brake pads, slapped them on the side that needed them, and got her on her way super quickly. She was really grateful, and she sent me a message later saying that she got to the game just as the national anthem was being sung. She got to see every pitch. 😊
Yay!
The next car was a 2016 Dodge ram 1500 truck. It had a check engine light and what not. I went, and I did. Some diagnostics, replaced his oil filter, and then ended up having to send him along to another shop.
The fourth car was a 2015 Nissan Altima that just needed headlight bulbs replaced. Gratefully, that was super easy, so it was relatively quick. The beginning, and I thought he wanted his inner bulbs replaced, so when I took out the battery and went to replace the bulb, it didn’t match up with the bulbs he had bought. At first, I thought he got the wrong bulbs, and then I realized it was just a miscommunication. That added probably 20 or 30 minutes to the job, but it was still a relatively quick and easy job.
Car number five was a 2004 Nissan Xterra that he thought had an alternator that was bad. It turned out, gratefully for him, that there was no problem with the alternator. He had replaced the battery, and that had solved his problems. He had just been concerned that maybe the battery wouldn’t solve the problems, but it did just fine. So that was another quick one, gratefully.
Car number six was a 2011 Cadillac CTS that was having brake booster issues. There was a problem with vacuum in the system, and when I went to try to diagnose it, I found that the PCV tube was completely disconnected, creating a huge vacuum leak in the system. It’s possible there other issues that might be at play, but when I left, everything was working just fine. It’s possible that it’s having an issue with the little solenoid thingy. Sometimes on the first startup of the day, those can have issues, but there wasn’t going to be any way that I could test further if it happened to be that issue since I’d already started it up.
The last car was a 2016 Nissan Altima that had an oil leak, and I guess there was a miscommunication because he already knew what the oil leak was, and I didn’t realize that and went out and diagnosed it instead of coming out and fixing it. So I so even though I spent an hour and a half or so out there, I told him I wasn’t going to charge him since it was my fault for misunderstanding what he needed. He said he wanted to pay me something anyway, so we settled on half my normal service call. Which was probably well worth it because I think I helped him a lot more than just the diagnostic, but it was good. Either way. I was grateful that I didn’t have a big goose egg for all the work I’d put in.
And that was the 25th. 🙃
Loves and hugs to all 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 