The day started off pretty nutty today. I got a message from somebody that absolutely shocked me, and though I needed to rush out the door as early as possible this morning, I ended up spending like 45 minutes trying to figure out how to respond to the person without damaging the relationship.
We saw things very differently, and we’re both really good people, but it was still hard to figure out how to navigate the situation. I ended up calling my hill brother and chatting with him for a little bit to get his feedback and perspective. It was good to have him to talk to about it to kind of help me get a little grounded.
The challenging interaction didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but it went well enough, which I’m grateful for. It’s important to me to keep relationships as healthy as I can. And I hate it when there are bad feelings.
First car of the day was a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. To be honest, I don’t have a clue what I did with that car. I believe it was a lady who thought something was really wrong with her vehicle, but it turned out to be just a bad battery connection. Yeah, I think that was it.
Second car with the 2001 Ford f150. His belt head snapped, and I told him over the phone that I wouldn’t be able to have time to fix it if it was anything other than about, and I told him that there was a very good chance given that it’s snapped, that it was something other than the belt, as belts don’t just break like that. Sure enough, when I went out there, because he still wanted me to go out there, the belt was snapped because the tensioner pulley had seized up. Me being who I am, even though I didn’t have time to fix his car, of course I did anyway. I could have just taken the service call because I told him the risky was taking and that I didn’t have time to fix his car, but once I was out there, I just couldn’t feel good about not fixing it and leaving him there stuck still, so I went ahead, got the part, and fixed it for him.
Oh, I probably should have said that before I went to that one, I went out to 1996 Toyota Land cruiser. A family was in from Kansas for a youth baseball tournament. His Land cruiser is sprung a leak with one of the hoses. So I went out there and took a look, and tried to Jimmy rig something for him because that’s all he wanted, but I couldn’t figure anything That would work because the hose had been so damaged from someone having put the clamp in the wrong place that I simply couldn’t make it work. So I drove to the parts store to try and find hoses that would work. The actual hoses that were correct for the vehicle weren’t available, so I ended up walking up and down the rails aisle trying to match up hoses that could possibly work.
I ended up buying a couple.
the Ford F-150 with a broken belt was actually on my way back to the Land cruiser, so I stopped and fixed it on the way back to the Land cruiser.
Once back at the Land cruiser, I have the two hoses that I hoped might work. LOne of them look like it would match up pretty well, the other one I thought would, but it didn’t once I got back to the car. So I ate the cost of that hose, spent way longer than I should have because I was squeezing the gentleman in on an already crazy busy day, but I got him on the road, and he was grateful. So that’s something at least.
The fourth car, which was actually the first car on my schedule that was actually on my schedule before the day started, was a 2000 Mercury Grand Marquis. Someone else had been working on it, dropped stuff down the intake, and caused it to misfire. I went out there, took a look at some things for him, and fixed his windshield wiper and made sure that the car wasn’t misfiring anymore, and then I also gave him a work around for an issue he was having with his wife’s car’s drunk.
He was super happy about that, too. 🙂
The fifth car was a 2011 Kia Rio that was stuck in a Firestone parking lot because they didn’t have time to help her put the belt on. So I went out there, tried to put the belt on, only to realize they had the wrong belt, waited for them to get the right belt, put it on, and sent them on their way happy as clams.
Car number 6 was a 2011 Chevy Malibu that he wanted me to do a throttle body relearn on. I tried to do the relearn, but it wouldn’t take. There was an electrical issue in the system where circuit number two of the five volt reference circuits was only reading 1 volt. That was messing everything up, but I couldn’t figure out which part of the wiring harness was screwed up or which sensor was screwed up. Every sensor that I pulled kept the issue the exact same. I did the best I could, but ran out of time, having already completed what he asked me to do and spending a lot longer trying to help him figure out what was still going on. I left him with some thoughts and suggestions and offering to help him further over the phone or what not if he wanted me to or to come back later.
Car number 7 was a 2017 Hyundai Elantra. They were supposedly going to be in Fayetteville, but then they wanted me to go to Bella Vista. In the end, they needed help badly enough that they drove back down and met me at the AutoZone parking lot in Springdale. They had soldered everything back together, but then they left the two wires touching each other without insulating them first, so that’s what was going on causing the misfire. So I separated the wires, put some liquid electrical tape on them, then wrap them in regular electrical tape, then wrapped everything in insulated wiring barrier, and they were good to go and on their way.
The last car was a 2002 Ford mustang that had busted out the lower ball joint while driving. I went out there, fought with it for a while, got everything apart, and then found that the new ball joint was totally loose in the lower control arm socket. I didn’t want to leave the vehicle just sitting there like it was, and so I had to put it back together anyway since it was stuck on the street and he was going to get towed, so I put it back together with the sloppy ball joint, and told him to be super careful driving at home, that we probably come back later and do it as a warranty job unless it was the control arm, in which case, he would need to have it repaired at a shop because that’s a spring job, and I don’t have the tools to do that job.
Anyway, that was pretty late by the time I got done. I got home late, but it’s Saturday night, so Sunday rest day comes. 🙃
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 