Didn’t go to bed until after midnight, but I woke up before 6 wide awake. 🙃
So… I jumped right into the day.
Bring it on. 😎
Relentlessly positive. That’s where my attitude is headed.
Invictus maneo.
Ready?
Set?
Go!!!
Morning Gratitude!!! (of course! How else would you begin the journey toward being relentlessly positive. 🙃)
- Did you know different kinds of apples have different flavors? 😅 I’ve been in the same rut with the type of apples I buy just because they’re the cheapest, that when I bought a different type recently the flavor took me aback a bit. Ooh! I like that! Aback a bit! That’s a fun phrase. 😁 I’ve gotten so used to what “apples” taste like but I forgot that there were others. 🙃
- I’m grateful for the multiple-return customer who was absolutely effusive in praise for me when it was learned that i wasn’t married. He was legitimately shocked and then proceeded to tell me a bunch of reasons that women would think I was just greatest ever and would love to be with someone like me. 🙃 That was really nice. Too bad they don’t seem to see it that way. 😅 But it was nice, and i was grateful for it.
- I’m grateful it’s gonna be rainy for the next couple days. I’ve got lots of cars scheduled, bit I think most of them are with the understanding that rain might be an issue? I think?
- I’m grateful to be up early while it still feels quiet in the world. 🙂
- I’m grateful to people who love and care and share that with others. 🙂
…
It’s been a super-busy day today (yes, yes, I realize that’s pretty much the norm with me 🙃). Today was even more so. I have about 20 cars on my active schedule right now, which is quite a lot for a mobile mechanic. Mobile mechanics are usually booked out only a day or two max, in my experience. But I’m pretty loaded down right now.
And it’s raining, and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. 🙃
And Malaki is back but… not ready to work again, so I’m scrambling. Didn’t expect to be in this position, but it is what it is.
The day started off with me thinking that I was going to be taking the day off because of rain, but I realized that I was so loaded down with jobs, and also that I was going to be paying two of my hill nephews to help me make progress on my to-do list. Combine those two things together, and I figured it would be best for me to go out and work.
So I got a really late start fixing cars because I was organizing things to be able to give my nephews specific projects to work on.
One of them did a little bit of work on my pickup truck and a little bit on my lift. He then did two runs in my dump trailer to pick up compost that my hill brother is using to help enrich the soil in the upper field, as it’s almost time to plant.
Then both of them spent probably a couple hours going through the woods clearing out vines. There’s more to do with that, but the next step is probably to go cut down all the dead trees in the areas where they cut the vines out.
It’s thundering.
Love me my thunder. 😊
🐿️
So that took a bit of my morning, getting things going for them to be able to go out and do stuff. After that, I just dug into the day. At first, I kept thinking that it was just going to be a short day because of the rain, but then the rain got delayed, spat just a little bit, and then was clear all the rest of the day until the evening. That meant that I ended up working a full day, and on into the night.
First I stopped off at the junkyard to grab a part that I was going to need for later. Then I drove to look at a car for sale in Bentonville. I’m trying to find a car for my poor little customer lady who’s driving an absolutely busted up broken down piece.
I was really hopeful, but when I got there, it wasn’t the deal I had hoped it would be. The car had nearly twice the number of miles that was listed in the ad.
Starting to get annoying how many people don’t put the right information in the ad. Such a waste of time.
Anyway, no biggie really, just annoying. First car of the day was finally getting to that 2008 Nissan rogue that needed a seat belt. He didn’t tell me that it had been in an accident, so that was why the seat belt was necessary. Someone else had already attempted to go in there and work on stuff. They had rounded off one of the seat belt bolts, lost or broken one of the main clips that holds the seat belt electrical connector in place. Kind of important, too, because the seat belts and the airbag system are highly integrated, so you don’t want to be missing clips to electrical connectors, less something comes undone and trips in the airbag, and you end up with blown out airbags.
🙃
Anyway, it was not too bad at the beginning, definitely a challenge at times, and then it just got ludicrously stupid trying to figure out the electrical connector. Whoever had been in there before had clearly broken the connector out because it was so ridiculously unintuitive. I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent 30 minutes or more just trying to figure out how the electrical connector mechanism worked. I’ve never seen anything like the one I dealt with today. Grately, in the end, I was able to get it figured out, but it certainly was quite the frustrating ordeal.
The second car was deja vu. They’d taken their 2011 Ford F-150 truck to the dealer because the fan kept on constantly instead of turning off. The dealer told them that they needed a water pump, a thermostat, a t pipe, and a degas bottle. They were skeptical, so they called me to come take a look. Sound familiar?
Yep, definitely familiar. And the results were also familiar.
Did they need a degas bottle?
No.
Did they need a water pump?
No.
Did they need a thermostat?
No.
Did they need a t pipe?
Yes!
And… They missed that they also needed the primary upper radiator hose. It wasn’t hard to diagnose at all. Which means once again, either you’ve got incompetent mechanics, or you’ve got money grubbing liars. Or, I suppose somehow perhaps a mix-up between two vehicles, but this is just becoming so ridiculously common. So frustrating how shops can be so dishonest with people.
I explained to him that it was an easy job to do, and I told him that I would see if I could find a YouTube video so that he could do it himself. If I can’t find one, or even if I can, he may end up just having me do the job anyway. It’s pretty simple.
The third job was one who called today, and I decided to squeeze her in. She had a 2016 Nissan Pathfinder That was stuck in the Chick-fil-A parking lot. She had been taking Ubers for like 4 days while she tried to figure out what to do with the car. She tried jump starting it, but it wouldn’t start. Eventually, she gave up and called me after getting tired of paying for Ubers and after having a car she borrowed get towed while she tried to figure out what was wrong with her other car.
So what turned out to be the issue?
She was out of gas.
😅
Oops.
She didn’t think that could possibly be the case because her gas meter said that she still had 39 miles left in her tank.
First of all, that’s just an approximation. Second, all left over gas data goes out the window when you’re parking on a slope.
She had parked in a part of the parking lot where the nose of the car was sloped down from where the rear of the car was. That meant that all the gas had pooled in the front of the tank. Since there wasn’t much left anyway, that meant that it had pooled far enough away from the fuel pump that there was nothing near the pump to be sucked up.
She was pretty embarrassed, I think. And she was frustrated with her self for wasting all that money on Uber’s and having me come out when all it was was just a lack of well, now she knows, and now she can help her family and friends in the future not have the same issue. And if you all weren’t already aware, now you know too. 😊
Don’t let it run so low, and if you’re running low, don’t park on a hill. If you do need to park on a hill. Point the nose up, as most fuel pumps are in the middle of the tank or in the back of the tank.
The fourth car was a 2005 PT cruiser that’s been on the list for probably well over a month. She needed a radiator fan, but she took a very long time to finally get it scheduled, and once scheduled, she postponed it a couple of times at least, I think. But today was finally the day, and I went over there and managed to get it out with a decent bit of challenge. Gratefully, the new fan went in much easier than the old fan came out, even though the new fan was bigger and the confines were crazy tight. I had learned by that point how to get it out, so it was easier getting it back in.
The hard part came when I tried to fill up the system with coolant. I had to remove the lower radiator hose in order to get the fan off, which means I drained the coolant out of the system. So I had to fill the system back up, but the darn a little card didn’t want to accept the coolant. It sucked down a little bit, but there were air pockets that try as I might, I couldn’t get out. I ended up having the coolant boil over at one point because I knew there wasn’t enough coolant in the system still, so I didn’t want to put the radiator cap on, but it got to the boiling point and boiled out instead of filling the air pocket spaces.
That was a bit frustrating because for a good little while, I had no idea what I was going to do. No matter what I did, the air pockets weren’t getting filled up. Eventually, I just decided to say screw it, and I filled the system as best I could, put the radiator cap on, even though I knew it still needed more coolant, fired it up, and drove it around the block several times with a little bit of gusto. Gratefully, that was enough, the extra movement, the extra power, etc, to get the coolant cycling through every part of the engine and filling the places where the air pockets had been.
I’m so tired right now and I’m just yawning and dictating this with my eyes closed. I’m also migraining right now, so that’s not so fun. But that’s okay. Just life.
The last car I went to was a 2019 Chevrolet suburban that had the AC working last fall, but nothing working this spring. It only took a couple minutes to identify the fact that there was no refrigerant in the system, meaning that it had all leaked out. Being a 2019, I figured that the most likely reason would be a rock to the AC condenser. There was one part of the AC condenser that did look like it possibly might have taken a rock. But who knows? There were no obvious damaged places on the condenser. There were a couple that looked very very minor, but sometimes those minor ones are where the little nicks are in the tubes inside the condenser.
The other problem was that this was a 1234yf refrigerant system, and I’ve never worked with one two three four y f refrigerant. So I was totally out of my league on that, and completely unprepared, as I had no one two three four y f refrigerant with me at all. Even though it’s a different, and much more expensive, refrigerant, it’s still the same principal. Thus, had I had the proper refrigerant with me and a bottle of leak detection dye, I could have gotten the job done tonight. Being completely unprepared, I didn’t really feel like I could charge them anything just for saying that there was no refrigerant in the system but not being able to even get them started on figuring out why there was no refrigerant in the system. Cross your fingers that when I go back on Monday or Tuesday, will be able to find the leak relatively easily.
🤞
After that, I chatted with one of my sisters on the phone, then I called one of my brothers and chatted with him for quite a while. He’s going through some pretty rough stuff right now, so it’s good to be connecting. Life is pretty hard for a lot of us right now.
Head hurts. Knife through right eye. Bed calling. Well… My recliner, since I’m still trying to sleep sitting up in order to reduce the stomach acid issues that I’m dealing with. Good night!
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 