Quite the day today!
I got up about the normal time, and drove straight to Farmington to get going on the first car of the day. It was just shy of a 45 minute drive, and when I got there, nobody answered the door, and the keys weren’t left with the car like they said they would do, and no one answered the phone, and I waited there for probably 40 minutes before finally giving up.
So the first hour and a half of my day was shot with that, not to mention all the gas with my crappy gas mileage.🙃
I texted the next job that I could do, but they didn’t reply. I started driving toward that direction anyway, and as I looked in my rear view mirror I saw a white Subaru pull out right in front of a Dodge Challenger. The Challenger tried to swerve to miss them, but the Subaru just kept right on going.
The result was a pretty spectacular explosion of parts as the two cars collided. With all the plastic that modern cars are made out of, it was almost like a movie. Parts on flying everywhere, literally as if a bomb had gone off.
The Challenger got spun around. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and when he got out of the car, he was limping a bit. I did a u-turn and swung back around since I was a direct witness to the whole thing.
I called 911 and gave my report to the dispatch lady. It took a little while for police and paramedics and what not to show up. Once they did, I gave my report again to the officer who is taking all the details. The Challenger was driven by a u of a football player, and the Subaru that pulled out right in front of him was an elderly couple that somehow didn’t see him.
Anyway, I wanted to make absolutely sure that the officers knew who was at fault. Could have been super easy just to point the finger at a young college student in a muscle car, but there wasn’t really much you could do. It was amazing that I was even looking in my rear view mirror watching it all unfold. Not sure why I even looked back.
Hopefully the young men remembers what I told him: Don’t take the insurance companies quick settlement offer. Oftentimes injuries don’t show up for months, possibly a year after the accident, so wait.
I hope he remembers!
Anyway, as I left the scene, the next job that I could do said that they decided just to have their dad come and tow the car back to his place to fix it.
So now the first two cars of my super crazy busy day we’re no longer on the schedule. So I texted the third car, and they never replied. 🙃
0 for 3.
So I drove to Farmington and then Fayetteville and was zero for three. So I drove back up north to Springdale for a car number four. And guess what? No, they actually were home, but it was a big fat goose egg for me on car number 4, as she was having some sort of computer issue by the looks of it. I just don’t like dealing with computer issues because I don’t pay for the software licenses to any of the manufacturers to be able to program, and those kinds of electrical issues where I’m troubleshooting voltages around a gazillion different places just end up being black holes. So after spending probably an hour and not being absolutely sure of what was going on, I bowed out, didn’t charge, and headed to AutoZone to pick up a part.
0 for 4.
😶
Car number five was just putting camshaft position sensor and a crankshaft position sensor in a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder. I thought they were going to be challenging parts to put in, but both of them were stupid easy, which was really nice after starting the day 0 for 4.
The next car was one that I’ve been loathing going back to. A 2017 Nissan Altima valve cover job. I hate valve cover jobs. But I went to it, and I banged it out, and now it’s done.
Car number 7 was a coin flip. The customer called because he had accidentally damaged the threads in the frame of his Jeep. They were the threads that hold the bolt that holds the leaf springs to the back of the Jeep.
I told him that there was no guarantee that I was going to be able to fix the problem but that I could try, but it would be a risk because he’d be paying me to go out with no assurance that I could fix the problem for sure.
He decided to go ahead and risk it, so I drove out there, was able to match up the bolt thread pitch with one of my taps, and gratefully, I was able to clean up the damaged part of the threads such that I was able to get the bolt to go in for him. 🥳
He was super stoked and asked if he could give me a Google review, so I will send him the link in the next few days or so after I’ve touched base with him.
Car number 8 was a 2012 Nissan rogue that had a code for mass airflow sensor. I went out there, cleaned his throttle body, cleaned his mass airflow sensor, try to do a relearn on the idler, took it for a test drive, and wasn’t able to reproduce the issue. Hopefully that resolves it for him, but if not, I taught him how to replace the mass airflow sensor himself, so he doesn’t have to pay me to go back out there to replace it.
Car number 9 on the schedule but paying car number five was going back to the 2010 Honda Accord that had the busted axle. While I was getting ready to start fixing the axle, she also asked me if I could fix her radio. It was a Honda, and someone had tried to steal it, and ever since then, her radio wasn’t working. I powered on the car, saw that all the radio needed was just the security code, found the security code for her, punched it in, and she had her tunes back. 😊
Then I replaced the CV axle. Gratefully, that went relatively uneventfully.
After that, she asked me to see if I could fix the radio in her other car, as it wasn’t working in that one either. That one was a 2014 Ford Taurus. I diagnosed That one is having a bad audio control module. That was a lot more than I would be able to do that night, as it would need either a rebuilt control module or a new one. I didn’t charge her for that diagnostic, even though it was me fixing two problems with the one car and diagnosing the other car when I was only supposed to fix the one issue with the one car. But oh well, she was happy. Super super nice woman. Shame she’s married. 🙃
So it’s 10:45 p.m., and I’ve just finished voice to texting this journal entry here at the gas station before I fill up and go home for the night. Was supposed to play basketball with people from the congregation I used to attend, but I didn’t even get to my last job until the time they were starting to play basketball, so maybe next week.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 