My huge week last week took such a toll on me that I was just dragging all day today. It’s almost like a hangover from last week.
Totally exhausted. Burned out. Unmotivated. 🙃
I only did four cars today, despite the phone ringing many many many times. I gave a bunch of referrals to one of the mobile mechanics down south, which is really nice for them because they’ve been super slow while I’ve been slammed.
So yeah, just four cars today. Went back to a 99 Jeep Grand Cherokee that wouldn’t start again. Last time, the battery tested bad, but by the time we got it over to O’Reilly’s to have it replaced, it tested good.
So we just left it as is. But then a week or so later, she called again and said that it was dead again. This time, I called O’Reilly’s myself, told them that the battery was testing bad and couldn’t hold a charge over the weekend. Alternator was testing fine, no parasitic draws of any kind, so the only realistic thing to point to was a bad battery even though it was a fairly new battery.
They finally relented and said they would just swap the battery out even if it tested good, so that was good. Nice to be a mechanic and to be able to have that leverage to get my customers what they need.
Next car was a 2012 Ford F-150 that had the blower working but no heat in the car. It took me quite a long time, several hours actually, trying to get it properly diagnosed. In the end, it seemed to me that it was just the simple blender actuator, but I couldn’t get myself 100% sure. Not wanting to give up and thinking that I had it right, I just went over to the Ford dealer, grabbed an actuator, through it in because I already had the whole center console torn apart and the actuator out testing it, then figured that if it wasn’t the blend or actuator, then I would just eat the cost of the actuator. Fortunately, it did turn out to be the actuator, and she now has heed again.
🥳
She also turned out to be a nurse who works for a gastroenterologist, and she said she’d light a fire under their butts if I wanted to make an appointment, so I didn’t have to wait as long as I might otherwise. I will probably call today to make an appointment.
Third car was way up in Bella Vista, a 2010 Honda Accord that she heard a pop and then The car wouldn’t go forward or in reverse. I got there and found a snapped axle. 😶 I’ll get that one fixed tomorrow.
The last car was all the way down in Fayetteville, so pretty much as far north as I cover to his far south as I cover one car to the next. I didn’t really want to do the job in Fayetteville given that it was such a long drive, and he only needed a couple of bolts pulled, but he still wanted me to come even though I kind of tried to talk him out of it, suggesting that he just go buy a breaker bar because all he wanted was the bolts taken out and his impact wouldn’t do it.
But he still wanted the help, so I drove all the way down there, loosen the bolts for him, cleared the codes that he had in the engine, reset his battery monitoring system because he’d put in a new battery, and that was that.
Funny story, that car turned out to actually be the same BMW 750Li that I was interested in buying just a couple of weeks before that. 😆
That’s the one that I went out to see that was the personal car of a car dealer but being sold at a huge discount. That by itself is a bit fishy to me, as car dealers generally want to get all the money they can out of a car, and then when he wouldn’t let me put my jump box on the car to check it out, there was no way I was going to go any further with that car. How funny it was to find out that I was now going out to help fix the very car that I had thought about buying. 😆
I got home at like 6:30, Thomas shocked because I don’t think he and I had seen each other in the last 4 days because I had left early in the morning and gotten home so late at night that we never actually saw each other.
I got my other work van back from the guy who fixed the transmission. Crossing my fingers and hoping he did a good job. Seemed a little odd the way it drove on the way home, but I’ll give it a couple days and see.
Totally dragging today. Totally. Should have swapped all my stuff over from My beater van to my better van, because I actually had time today after getting home, but… I’m just burned out and wanted to go in and have a longer evening instead of crashing after swapping everything over and starting over again with a super busy day tomorrow.
The day tomorrow is absolutely slammed, so we’ll see how it goes!
Love to all. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 