Should I even bother saying that I set out for an early start again today in the hopes of getting everything done? 🙃
As I was heading to my first job, I got a call from somebody who said they told their car to my shop the night before without calling me first.
Well, I don’t have a shop, and my marketer had put the address of somebody else when he created our Google listing, and the owner of that place had contacted me a couple weeks ago asking me to get that fixed, so I got the address switched over to an empty field until I can figure out what on earth to do, but the pictures that other people had posted for my business still had his business as the main picture, so I figured they would drop the car off at his car dealership.
I was right.
So I got there as quick as I could, though I was supposed to be going to another job first, pushed his dead car out of their parking lot, on to the street, and into the AutoZone parking lot, and set about doing a diagnosis as quickly as possible since I was already there with the car.
Gratefully for me, but not so gratefully for the customer, he had a super bad rod knock, and his oil was a silvery dark brown.
Not a good sign.
The silvery part of that was pulverized internal bearing metal. I drained out a few ounces into a drain pan to be absolutely sure, grabbed my magnet, and yep, the little particles of metal followed my magnet as I moved it around the drain pan just above the oil itself.
That’s twice in the last week or so. I’m glad that’s an effective diagnostic method. I’m not the best with internal engine noises and knowing exactly what issue the car has, whether it’s rod bearings or piston slap or something like that. But once you have metal in the oil, that pretty much settles that.
The next job was a 2017 Jeep compass that wasn’t starting. I went over there, they had a very new battery, but it was just cranking and not starting. I held the gas pedal down completely, started cranking and pumped the pedal, which in modern cars shouldn’t make a difference because they are drive by wire? But it still started for me oddly enough. After doing some further diagnostics, I found that their auxiliary battery was completely shot. Bad auxiliary batteries can cause all sorts of issues with cars, including not being able to start them. So weird.
We have so many gadgets now, that even smaller vehicles need two batteries to run everything.
At least we’re switching over to electric cars soon. They are going to be so much more reliable and so much less expensive to own for people. That’s going to be nice. At least that’s my expectation. So many fewer parts to go wrong.
The next car was one that was way out in the middle of nowhere that I didn’t realize was way out in the middle of nowhere until after I had given him a quote and said I could do it.
Oops.
Their address said Springdale, but it was way way east of Springdale, on the way to Huntsville.
Oh well.
They didn’t want me to do any diagnostics, just replace the starter, so I came out prepared with the starter, but before I even got started, I realized they had a blown head gasket. The radiator was full of oil contaminated coolant to the point that it was pretty much sludge.
But, they wanted me to put the starter in anyway, so I did.
Gratefully, I found an easier way to do it then the service manual instructs you.
Thanks, YouTube. Sometimes YouTube is fabulous.
And sometimes it’s awful. 😂
Got that one wrapped up and was heading back into town and realized I was passing one of my customers houses who’s become a friend. Gave him a call to see if he was around, but he was out working on jobs himself. (He owns a plumbing company)
I decided to swing by the job he was on because he said he had a van that was having issues. It had a misfire on cylinder 2 as well as a bunch of other codes, so I swapped out the coil on cylinder two because that’s usually what the issue is, and it got rid of the code. The misfire didn’t seem to come back, but it’s still ran pretty poorly.
He has lots of old vans that his employees don’t take good care of, I don’t think, so lots of issues at the same time is par for the course.
Anyway, he said he had another van back at his house that was having issues as well, so I went over to that one and diagnosed that one as well. I charged him less than a service call to do both vans because several months ago I had gotten a diagnosis wrong and told him that I was going to give him a freebie, which he didn’t ask for and didn’t think was necessary, but I felt like it was.
He went out and got us dinner, and we hung out at his house and just talked for a while before I headed home for the night. I actually got home at a relatively decent hour, and it was nice today to not be running around like a crazy person. I’ve been a little better lately at not getting so stressed when things are crazy busy, but only a teensy weensy bit better. 🙃
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 