I’ve been so loaded down that I even overscheduled a rainy day.
First car of the day for the 2012 Subaru Impreza that had the coolant light flashing. I went out there and found that his radiator was leaking, and that he was extremely low on coolant.
Hopefully, he didn’t do any damage.
I set up my canopy, because it was raining pretty good, and then I replaced the radiator for him. My helper noticed that there was still air in the system even when it seemed like it was good. I guess he’s had a lot of experience with those Subarus. Not sure if I would have caught it or not. I might not have. It had enough coolant not to overheat, but it didn’t have enough coolant to fully function properly. So we spent another hour plus I think bleeding the system again and again to get all the air out. Kudos to my helper for noticing that.
He and I had a good chat after we fixed the car about life and some things that are going on for him. It was good.
The second car was a 2014 Mazda Miata that the fan was stuck completely on as soon as you turn the car on. It was stuck on full blast.
We spent a heck of a lot of time trying to diagnose it. Finally narrowing it down to two things, I believe. One of the possibilities is a part that I can get relatively easily. The other, unfortunately, is not. It looks more like I can only get it through the junkyard.
Hopefully, it’s the part I can get. If not, I won’t charge her for the work that day and we’ll have to find the part somewhere from a junkyard or something.
The next car was a 2012 Dodge avenger that wouldn’t start. Supposedly it was a no crank no start, and the battery certainly was far too low to get it started. We put my jump box on it, and tried to start it, and it still wouldn’t start. I kept trying, and finally it started, but we noticed a coolant leak and the coolant was super low, so I didn’t want to leave it running for more than just a teeny tiny time.
There were so many possible things wrong with the car, that before we had the customer spend hundreds of dollars to fix the leak, I sort of laid out for her everything that we could see in just that short little time, so she would have the opportunity to just forgo repairs or to plan what she wanted to do and what not.
I had figured she’d want us to at least fix the leak, but after hearing all the possible things that could be wrong with it, the battery being dead and likely needing to be replaced, the fact that there was a whole bunch of nasty cooling system sealer in the engine, the fact that it wouldn’t start very well even when it had power, etc. Because of all that, she decided to just have us stop at that point so that she could decide what she wanted to do going forward. So I gave her as much information as I could to prepare her for making her decision, and then My helper and I went to lunch.
Been a long time since I’ve gone to lunch with one of the people who’s worked for me. Used to do that with Chase all the time, although it was dinner and not lunch, but it was still a lot of fun to end the nights that way.
I didn’t eat anything from the place we went, just brought in an apple and a couple bananas and some yogurt because of my stupid stomach issues that just keep going and going and going.
I need to go see a specialist and probably have a scope dumped down my throat.
Ugh.
After that, we drove south to rescue a guy who had broken down and was trying to get back to Conway. He needed a starter in a 2003 trailblazer with the 5.3 V8. Man, they make that starter look so easy to get out, but it’s an absolute nightmare. Book hours are almost 5 hours, but I only build him for two and a half because it didn’t seem like it was going to be that big of a deal.
In the end, it turned out to be the major deal. And for me, it was the decision point and deciding that I’m not going to go and hire the helper that I was hoping to hire.
He wasn’t going to put on the heat shield on the starter because supposedly it’s not needed. He might be right, but what do I know? And what does he really know? It’s designed to be there for a reason. Maybe it wouldn’t reduce the life of the starter. But shouldn’t we always err on the side of caution? In addition to that, I think he massively over tightened the starter bolts, as when I went to torque them down, he had thought that he had talked into like 50 foot pounds, and when I went to torque them down they felt extremely loose for what they should have been. When I went to try and torque them down they acted like they were going to strip out. The torque was supposed to be 37, but I could only go to 30 without feeling like I was going to strip the bolts out, so I left them at 30. Doubt there would ever be a problem with 30 verse 37, but I’m still concerned about the threads on the bolts and in the block.
I was dishonest with my helper because I didn’t want to have a confrontation about it, has he was already feeling sensitive to the fact that I had pointed out issues in his quality of work multiple times to that point which is not easy to hear when you’ve been a mechanic for many many years.
(sigh)
So I sort of pinned it all on me as being my fault and my inexperience and that everything was probably just fine, but it wasn’t. And it isn’t.
I desperately want a mechanic who I can actually trust to do super high quality work. But I’m starting to lose hope in that. I’m starting to feel like as long as I do mechanic work, I’ll be doing it by myself.
I’m tired of mechanic work. My heart isn’t in mechanics. Not even in the least. It’s just a job. It pays the bills. It’s helping me to help other people. And it’s helping me to get closer to my dreams, but it’s not my dreams. At the same time that it’s helping me get closer to my dreams, it’s a dream killer.
So I’m not doing very well right now. I’ve got to find a way to get past my embarrassment and contact the civic lady with the starter that I am going to go back and pull out and put back in properly, even though she probably wouldn’t ever have any issues with it. I know that it’s not right. And even though this guy will probably never have any issues with his starter, I know that we may well have caused damage.
Who knows what could happen in the future? But I have to take responsibility. And perhaps I take more responsibility than I should. It can’t be proven that we screwed things up. I don’t even know for sure if we did. But it just… My gut says that does both were over tightened by my helper and that the threads were likely damaged.
So I’ll get up the courage to address that with both of those customers here soon. Gratefully, in the meantime, they have working vehicles and can do what they need. It’s more just messages about what *could* happen in the future, even if it’s unlikely.
(sigh)
I’m tired. Another long long long day after a 20-hour day. I think this one was 16?
~ stephen
Lift the World 