I’m over doing it.
Of course, that’s not anything new. Part of it is running away, I think. Part of it is trying to prepare for the future. Part of it is just the I let fear take over.
Eight cars today, and my helper was with me again today. It was another day, the second in a row, where the first two jobs took more than half the day. We had I think 10 cars on the schedule to start the day, and by something like 3:00, we’d only finished two after having started around 9:00 on the first one.
Not so great.
And I just keep saying yes to the customers, loading my schedule up beyond what’s reasonable. The phone’s been ringing off the hook since I got home from New Zealand.
I also had a pretty big shock to my system this morning before I even started work for the day. An old friend of mine who had blocked me out of her life inexplicably unblocked me. I don’t know why. I don’t know if there’s any purpose or reason or anything.
For the last I don’t even know how long–many months at least–I’ve checked, often multiple times a day, to see if I was still blocked, hoping I wasn’t. I know that’s probably not healthy. But it is what it is. I lost connection with someone very dear to me, and it wasn’t because of any problems we had with each other personally. Just… circumstances. And I’ve wanted to know how she’s doing, what she’s doing, what’s going on in her life.
Now I’m… back in the loop ish. That’s both nice and hard at the same time.
So that was on my mind in the morning, and then the day just turned into one of the busiest days ever. 20 hour day.
That kept my mind quite occupied.
The first job was going back to that 2007 Ford focus that had a broken power steering pump shaft that was caused by no fluid in the system, which was caused by damage to the power steering return line from having been rubbing against the oil filter housing for so long. Finally, it wore through, squirting fluid everywhere. We replaced the line, my helper doing most of the work as I was slammed with scheduling and phone calls–the phone just ringing off the hook.
The second car was a 2013 Land Rover that was a no start. It seems to act like it had a bad starter, but I just had this gut feeling that it wasn’t a starter. My helper was pretty positive it was a starter, and he’s been a mechanic longer than I have, but I just couldn’t agree. Still, we went ahead and pulled the starter out, and I bench tested it, and it tested fine. He was still convinced that it was a bad starter, but I wasn’t. I took it to O’Reilly’s to have them bench tested, and it tested good. Though we all know what happened with that Accord a couple weeks ago where they bench tested it and it tested good when it was actually bad. We kept trying and testing and trying and testing because I wasn’t convinced it was a starter. Even though I was embarrassed to keep testing when he was confident the starter was the problem, I just kept looking at other things that it might be. Eventually, my helper noticed that the main fused battery cable had a crack in it. That was making it so that we were getting volts to everything like we should, but not amps. It had the juice, just not enough power behind it.
So we eventually figured the issue out, but it took three and a half hours or so, and it turned out to be something extremely simple, just not easy to figure out, if that makes sense.
By that time it was something like 3:00. I had poorly scheduled the day because things have just been so crazy that I haven’t been able to stay on top of everything because I am saying yes to too many people and unable to keep track of how many there are and where they are and what not while still doing all the fixing of cars for all the gazillions of other people that I’ve already said yes to.
So we ended up having to head north for a job after already heading a good bit south. But I had made a promise, and if I headed south, I might not get back to that car at a good time.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I’m not sure which, we spent about an hour or so on that car only to find out the customer had purchased the wrong parts–all the wrong parts. We had the car torn apart, the engine being held up by a jack.
I had forgotten to send the message that I should always send to customers who want to use their own parts. Basically it says something to the effect of, if you get the wrong parts, we still will be charging our service call because we have to drive out to you and take our time to do that.
It’s a crappy situation for everybody in those times, but it happens fairly regularly, just a few days ago with that belt, as I imagine you can remember.
Anyway, we ended up leaving that job after putting things back together enough at least to be able to take my tools with me.
From there, we split up. I went to a 2015 Jeep latitude that supposedly wouldn’t start, and my helper went to a 2004 Mazda Miata that we had put plugs and coils on the other day but that I thought had an issue maybe with compression by the sound of things.
The Jeep latitude had nothing wrong with it that I could find. It started up on the first try when I got there and gave me no problems whatsoever the entire time I was there searching for some way to try and recreate the issues that they had said that they had had. Unfortunately, we couldn’t recreate them. That was actually helpful for me, as it meant it was a simple job on an insanely busy day, but it’s not so fun for the customer when there’s no way to tell them what’s wrong with their car because, well, nothing’s wrong with it. Nothing can be found. Their oil was a bit dirty, and new cars tend to not like low or old, dirty oil, so that was the only thing that I could point to. But that was just a guess.
The Mazda Miata did indeed turn out to have a compression issue as I suspected from hearing the sound it made while it was trying to start.
It’s nice to have enough experience now that even if I don’t trust my own experience, I tend to be right much of the time in my preliminary hunches.
Next car on the list was a 2008 Nissan Xterra that also wouldn’t start. I got there and realized that their security had been tripped, so it would start and die immediately because the security cuts the fuel off. Fortunately, all I had to do was manually lock and unlock the doors with the key. Two twists to the left to lock first the driver door and then all the doors. Then two twists to the right to unlock the driver door and then all the doors.
If you’re ever in a situation where the security has been tripped, that’s the first thing to try. Lock and unlock the car with the key in the door and not using the fob. Do it twice each direction, and you might save yourself a service call to somebody.
We had briefly reunited while I was at the Xterra, though he got there after I’d already figured it out and was finishing up. We split up again and headed all the way back north for the last two jobs. He going to a Dodge caravan that had damaged wipers because I said fallen down and caused damage during the ice storm. He was able to get that taken care of with just a nut that needed to be put back on, though it was a good bit more intensive than that.
On my end, I had a 2014 Camaro that needed an oil pressure sensor and front and rear brake pads. It was already pretty late at night when I got started, but again, having over promised, I was still out working. I didn’t finish until something like 11:00. Things didn’t go so smoothly. I accidentally broke a PCV tube and spent probably 45 minutes repairing that. The brakes, gratefully, we’re relatively easy.
Unfortunately, though, I had forgotten some other things that he wanted to get taken care of. Issues with blend doors and issues with his emergency brake. So he was disappointed that I didn’t fix everything that he was thinking I was going to fix. Somehow I had spaced the other two things. Not surprising since I’ve overloaded myself far too much.
I got back way late, spent another two or three hours writing messages to customers and scheduling stuff and planning the next day, finally getting to bed after 3:00 only to get up around 7:00 something I think. So, somewhere around 4 hours of sleep, interrupted because I wake up quite a bit during the night.
But that’s all fine.
I’m tired. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Trying to figure out my life and what on earth I’m doing with it given everything that’s happened and where the various circumstances of my life currently stand.
What a life.
~ stephen
Lift the World 