I won’t waste any time talking about how busy the day was. 🙃
Six cars, 7 1/2-ish billable hours, even with the discounts I gave to multiple people.
First car was a 2011 Hyundai sonata that wouldn’t start after she’d gone to a local bakery/bread store/restaurant/place thingy.
At first, I was thinking the issue was related to the key/ immobilizer system because I was getting a message that the key wasn’t present even though it was. So I replaced the battery in the key fob, and that got rid of the message that the key was not present, but it still didn’t help get the car started.
I spend a while chasing down different things before finally settling on the fact that, is odd as it seems to be because I’ve never seen it before with that generation of Hyundai sonata, it had a bad fuel pump.
I probably spent like 3 hours diagnosing her car, but I didn’t feel right about charging you for all of that, so I think I only charged her for like an hour and a half or something.
She was the first car of the day, and I think I didn’t even get started on her car until like 11:00 a.m., Even though I’d started away from the house at like 7:00 or 8:00 something.
Not sure what the deal has been lately, but it seems like no matter how hard I try to get an early start lately, the first car doesn’t get figured out until noon or after.
Apparently I work mornings for free. 🙃
The second car was a 2007 GMC 2500 HD diesel. I keep forgetting to tell my diesel customers that it costs more to work on diesels, but oh well. His power steering and brakes went out at the same time, and his particular truck has the hydra boost set up, so that made sense. I found that his power steering fluid level was super low, and after doing a bit of diagnostics, I found that his turbo air intake pipe had been rubbing against his power steering pressure line for so long that it finally wore a hole through the pressure line.
It was a dirty, nasty, filthy, yucky job to do because there was oil absolutely everywhere.
I hate getting my hands greasy.
Yeah, I know, bad profession to have chosen if I hate greasy hands. 🤪
I got it all put back together and the system bled, and he had power steering and power brakes and was happy as a clam.
The third car was a 2004 Jeep Wrangler that was leaking from the cooler lines. I went over there, tightened the cooler lines, and called it good. I checked the tranny fluid while it was cold, and it red just fine for the cold range, so I headed out. I didn’t find out until later that he had been having transmission slipping issues, so I walked him through how to check the transmission fluid when it was hot, and he went ahead and did that, found that it was a little low on transmission fluid, top it off, and was good to go.
I felt bad that I hadn’t gone out and done a drive test, though I didn’t actually know there was a problem with his shifting until later, so I gave him a 50% discount which he said wasn’t necessary, but I felt like it was necessary.
The fourth car was a 2016 Chevy spark that I had just replaced the TCM and O2 sensor on for him. I had told him that the TCM would likely need to be programmed, but he wanted me to put it in anyway, then he called me back because it was still having issues, and I checked the codes for him, and it was still reading TCM problems, almost certainly because the new TCM hadn’t been programmed. He was happy because he just wanted me to read the codes and tell him what the issue was so that he knew what to do next, so I gave him a more than 50% off discount because all I really did was show up and check codes.
The fifth car was going back to that 2009 BMW 750Li that I’ve been to two or three times already in the last week or so, the guy who bought the BMW I was thinking about buying. He told me that there was some noise that was happening from the rear left wheel area, but he wasn’t sure what it was and wanted me to come check it out. So we took it out for a test drive, and I was able to reproduce the sound, and when I jacked up the wheel, I found that all the lug nuts were super super loose.
That’ll do it. 🙃
The last car was a 2006 Nissan frontier truck that wouldn’t start… Ah, now I remember! He had a bad TCM, it’s something that’ll have to be sourced and then programmed, so more than what I do is a mobile guy.
That was pretty much all she wrote for Monday!
Home late. Tired. Stargate Atlantis. Bed.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 