So I sent a message to the new guy that I thought was going to work out but didn’t. I let him know that it wasn’t going to work out and wished him the best.
Man, I wish it had worked out! I think I mentioned yesterday that I’ve basically come to the conclusion as long as I stay a mobile mechanic, it’s just going to be the least stress to be alone. I’m going to keep trying, but it looks like it’s most likely that I will just end up walking away instead of getting anything from all the effort that I’ve put in to build a successful business.
Oh well, following my heart is more important than money.
I had a crazy busy day today, all the crazier being alone, though honestly, having somebody with me isn’t really any faster much of the time. And sometimes it’s pretty significantly slower.
Anyway, I was up bright and early and driving down to Fayetteville to put an alternator in a Honda Odyssey. Gratefully, I had convinced them to get a denza remanufactured alternator and not any of the other aftermarket alternators which seem to not work properly in Honda odysseys.
Oddly, though I’ve done that job I don’t know how many times, it took much longer than I expected it to. Seems like I forgotten since the last time I did it. Also, there’s the fact that the squeeze the alternator goes through to get out is so tight that every single time I do it it’s a fight. So I guess there’s that to think about as well. Absolutely pain in the butt to get out.
So I was behind after just the first job of the day, but that’s fine. Is what it is. The next job was a 2004 Dodge ram that she suspected might have two through wires. She lived out in the country, and her husband had died, and she hadn’t driven it in a little while, and she found a nest inside the engine compartment. That’s pretty typical around here if you live in the country and don’t drive your car’s regularly. Those squirrels love to build nests inside engine compartments, and they love to sharpen their teeth for whatever it is that they’re doing when they decide to chew through wires.
It took a little while to find, but I did confirm that the squirrels had taken a snack on her wiring harness. Unfortunately, once again, they chose to do the chewing right next to the connector which made it quite a challenge to solve. There wasn’t enough room in there, not enough wire left, to properly attach butt connectors. I didn’t have a soldering iron with me, and I’ve never had much luck at soldering car wires together. Always seems to take more heat than I can get.
So we settled on seeing if we can find a wiring harness from the junkyard that I can amputate.
The helper that didn’t work out met me there to get his check and to get back one of the tools that he had loaned me the night before to finish up the last job.
Sadly, one of the things that ends up happening every single time that I take on a helper is that I end up losing tools. They put them in the wrong bags, or they leave them at job sites. This time was no different, and this time I lost my favorite pair of pliers. I’ve never seen a pair like the ones I had. I believe they were my granddad’s. Absolutely fabulous little things, and my helper was the last to use them, and now they’re gone. I reached out to the customer where we last could remember using them, but he couldn’t find anything on the ground or in the engine compartment or anything.
😕
(sigh)
Sorry Granddad. 🥺
Third job was a 2013 Honda Accord that wouldn’t start. Turned out to be a starter, and she didn’t tell me that she’d already bought a starter, so I came prepared with one to put in. Since she had it, I went ahead and put it in for her.
Fourth car was a 2000 Lincoln navigator that he thought had a fuel issue, but as I pulled the dipstick to check the oil before I tried to start it for the first time, I noticed that the dipstick was absolutely covered with glittery metal powder. It also smelled like fuel.
Poor guy. I tried to manually crank the engine over, and if I’m remembering right, it would move just a tiny bit with a massive amount of force, but it was basically done. The engine really wouldn’t crank much at all when you tried to start it. The starter didn’t have enough force to move a partially seized engine.
He didn’t mean that his mother was bad but and I tried to explaining, but he kept coming up with questions that made it obvious that he had no idea how things work. He thought the only problem was it wasn’t getting gas. Unfortunately, the problem was exactly the opposite. It was getting so much gas that it apparently reduced the lubrication capabilities of the engine oil, turning more into a solvent than oil, and thus putting the engine in a metal on metal condition.
😕
He probably had stuck open injectors or something to that effect. 20 probably been driving that way for a long time before he finally parked it.
Just to be 100% sure, I drained out maybe a half a quart of oil into a see-through container. Then I shines my light through the oil and you could see the little metal flakes. I also took my little magnet and write it just above the surface of the oil, you can see agna through the oil. If I got close enough to the oil, but still not touching it, some of those metal particles would jump from the oil onto my magnet.
Bad engine. 😕
The fifth car was a 2012 Nissan juke That wouldn’t start. It was a no crank, no start, and it acted a bit like it didn’t have a good starter, as you could hear the starter kicking is to something icking mine to start it pulled out it way bad break pedal position sensor.
Add that to the list of problems that can cause no crank, no starts. It used to be at a no crank, no start could only be printful of issues, but the number of issues that it can now be with modern cars has grown significantly. Oddly, he had only just recently replaced break switch, another shop having fixed it just a few months prior. So, apparently, the part they put in was bad out of the box.
For the 6th car, we went back to a 2007 Toyota Yaris that we had gone to twice earlier in the week, and they hadn’t paid us. I was pretty sure that it was going to be helpless to try and get paid for it, but the woman who was directing what we were doing gave us the contact information for her mom and said that she was going to pay for it. So I decided to drive over there and try and get paid from the mom. Amazingly, she did pay me! 🥳
I also stayed longer to do a block test on the vehicle to confirm my suspicion that she had a billion web gasket or a cracked head.
Suspicion confirmed. 😕
Another blown engine. 😞
The last car was going back to a 2013 Land Rover range Rover. We had diagnosed it prior as having a crack in a wiring harness fuse that was part of the harness itself and couldn’t just be repaired. So the customer ordered the part, I think something like 300, and I was thinking originally that it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to put in. I mean, how hard can it be to put in a power cable?
Yeah… 😅
Well, probably three or four hours later, having thought it was going to be a simple job and having to turn out to be a very long, frustrating job. I had to remove a turbo pipe that was a nightmare to get out of the way because the clamp was way up inside where fingers don’t reach. I had to remove the starter which wasn’t that big of a deal, but it’s annoying because that kind of starter has a gasket on it that’s made out of foam, when you put a starter in that tide of a location, it’s nearly impossible to keep the foam gasket in one piece whether it’s new or used. Such dumb designs in my opinion. But what can you do?
It also had places for the harness to clip in that were in super challenging places to get to. Oh, and the harness comes all coiled up, so you’re fighting with the coil being the wrong direction in super tight places. Two ends went to the battery. One end went from the battery to the engine block. The other one that came from the battery split into two, one going to the alternator, and one going to the starter. Had to pull the starter out just to put the cable on it.
Gotta love it. And so did my inner sailor. 😅
I think I got home about midnight, end of another long long day. I think it was a 20 hour work day. 😶
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 