It was another early morning to evening job, though. I finished about 6:45 today instead of 10:00.
Another five-car day. 🙂
First car was a long time multiple return customer with a 1992 Ford F-150. I probably shouldn’t have taken the job, as those old cars are such a nightmare to work on. Everything is old and breaking. The rubber crumbles. The lines are trash. There are leaks all over, etc etc.
But I went out there anyway, is she had had her power steering go out, and she’s an older lady, so it’s not going to be that easy to steer an old truck without power steering.
It was just the pump that went out, but with it being as dirty as it was, oil everywhere, and then having issues with the power steering lines (the pressure line wouldn’t seal to the new pump, so it would just poured fluid out as soon as he started the engine). Top that off with a pump that wouldn’t bleed, no matter what I did, it just kept whining. That might be because of the leak, so we need to fix the leak first before we go any further.
Poor lady. It’s an old old broken down truck, and she just doesn’t have the money to be spending on it. I gave her a discount today, even though I spent 3 and 1/2 hours and only charged for like 2 hours. Maybe not even that.
Anyway, hate giving bills to people that are more than is comfortable for them to pay.
Second car was a 2009 Ford escape that was a no start. It took all of about 30 seconds to diagnose. Probably more like 10 seconds. She popped the hood, and just as she was trying to start the car, I grabbed one of the battery cables, finding that it was loose, and as soon as it grabbed a better hold on the battery post, the car fired right up. 🙃
So I spent a little bit of time helping her with some other concerns that she had with her car. She asked how much I would charge her to replace the coolant reservoir bottle, but I told her that she shouldn’t pay me to do it. A bottle was something she could easily buy herself, and there were only two bolts holding it in and a couple of hoses with clamps. I taught her what she needed to do to replace it, so she could save money and not have to pay me to come back out.
I also taught her the basics of how to use a multimeter, so in the future she could test things like what happened today herself and not have to pay me or anyone else to go out and help her.
I miss being a teacher. Probably my favorite thing in the whole world to do as a profession.
Third car was a 2014 Jeep Patriot. It was one we’d done an alternator on back in September of last year. A week later or so she had called with a warranty claim on it, and I had found that Malaki had accidentally left the power wire on the alternator loose. So all it took was to tighten up the power wire. She called again today with what sounded like a warranty claim again, but when I went out there, even though others had tested her battery and said that it was good, it was a 5-year-old battery, and the cables had a bit of corrosion on them. Them. The alternator was charging just swimmingly, so I cleaned the corrosion off the cables, covered the bare metal in liquid electrical tape, ran the car through a handful of tests, each determining that the alternator was functioning properly, and settled on the fact that because her battery was nearly 5 years old, that was almost certainly the culprit, though it also could have been the connections with the ground wires that were corroded that I had cleaned up.
Anyway, I gave her an extra month of warranty on her alternator, on the off chance that it really was going out, and I just couldn’t reproduce it while I was there. Hopefully that gives her a little bit more peace of mind. I also gave her a pretty good-sized discount on the service call. She was thinking it was going to be a warranty call, but since the alternator was fine, it was a normal service call. But I knocked off quite a bit of the service call for her.
The fourth car was a 2012 Jaguar XKR. He wanted help replacing his battery. The funny thing was he had already done half the job. He just ran into a concern and stopped. So I went over there and finished the job. He also has a Maserati that he wants me to do some work on. I haven’t worked on those Italian cars. Much. Never worked on a Ferrari or a Lamborghini or anything like that. I don’t think I’ve worked on a Maserati, but it looks like I’m about to. 🙂
Fun fun fun.
The last car was the 2011 Kia Sorento, the one that had the squirrels chew through the wires that I’ve been waiting for connectors for so long. I’ve been waiting so long, in fact, that apparently I threw away a very expensive sensor that I had pulled off her car to help match up the connector with. I must have been cleaning out the work van, seen an old sensor, and thrown it away thinking it was just trash.
Oops.
That was an expensive mistake. Gratefully, again, the good relationships that I have with AutoZone meant that they gave me an extra $40 or so off the part to help soften the blow of my costly mistake. That was nice of them. 😊
So that was the car day. 😊
One of my hill nephews had invited me over for dinner with him and his wife. We’re both interested in real estate, and he’s way ahead of me in that game. So he spent a good little while with me tonight helping me to make some plans for forward progress in that arena. I’ve got a house I’m going to be looking at tomorrow, and possibly more than one. We’ll see how it goes. Goes. I’m looking for both investment properties right now as well as a place for myself. Hard to know exactly what to do, but might have some good opportunities here.
Anyway, happy March 1st! Hope you all had an enjoyable day today. My body’s been very unhappy with me since eating that strawberry yogurt. It’s amazing how big of a problem it causes me. Both the crackers I ate the other night and then the strawberry yogurt I ate last night took until the next day to really do their damage. It’s funny how that works.
Anyway, my love to all y’all. Hope you have a great night!
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 