Well, I’m done earlier than 11:00. 🙃
Finished the last job about 9 :00 but waited for payment for about 15 or 20 minutes, so I didn’t get out until about 9:30.
By the time I finish up today, it will likely be a 15 hour day. Not quite as long as yesterday, but still burning the candle a little further on both ends then I probably ought.
First car was going back to the Jeep Liberty that didn’t have working heat. I brought my flush equipment to flush the heater core, and boy did it need it! I flushed it one direction, and very little of anything came out, so I was like well crap, maybe I got this wrong? But when I sent the water through the other direction, holy freaking crap. I’ve never seen so much gunk and such big chunks come out of a heater core. I spent probably 40 minutes or so just flushing back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Once I got to the point that very little if anything was coming out, I called it good. His radiator is probably full of gunk like that as well. I let him know as much, also notice that he had a leak at the water pump, so I let him know about that as well, and then I headed out.
My next job was going back to that 2001 Ford F-150 that had both rear doors broken. Neither would open, and so I guess what the issue might be, ordering parts to repair the cables.
Gratefully, I was right! Two out of the several door latch cables were broken, so I repaired the two broken ones, and I replaced The fittings on two additional ones to preempt it happening again with a different cable. Since I was already in there, it only took a handful of minutes to do the additional cable in each door. So that was good, and she was happy. Nice lady. Doesn’t seem to have much in the way of worldly goods, but she does own 50 plus acres in Bentonville, which will net her an extremely large pretty penny when she sells it.
The next car was a 2002 Ford F-150 that wouldn’t start. It was a no crank, no start. He was thinking that maybe it might be the starter, I think, but it turned out to be that he just hadn’t put it all the way back in park. 🙃
He was a bit embarrassed, an older gentleman who has been into cars is entire life, but it can happen to all of us. 🙂
Car number four was going back to that 2004 Honda Accord that had the super rare blend door actuator issue. It was a bit of a pain in the tail to put in the actuator, as it has three pins in it that need to line up with three different grooved plates or whatever in the HVAC housing. Fortunately, one of the pins sticks down further than the others which made it less of a pain to figure out how to orient it when installing it. Still, it wasn’t easy, but I got it done, and he was able to have working heat on that side of the car. The part was something that was not easy to find. None of the local aftermarket suppliers carry that particular actuator, and the dealer wanted over $300, I believe, for it. So he bought two of them on eBay, to used ones, and he’ll keep one as a backup.
Car number five was a 2012 Nissan Sentra that they wanted front struts put on. They were providing the struts, so I was just doing the labor. Gratefully, though I made a couple of bone-headed mistakes that ate up some time, overall, it went pretty well.
The next two cars, both at the same house, ended up postponing right when I was heading there direction, because the kids have the cars out and about and weren’t home.
So I headed straight to the last car, which was going back to the 2010 Dodge caravan that had the rested coolant pipe. It should have been a super easy job, but there was so much corrosion from having been in Michigan car, that it took me a good little while to scrape out all the corrosion out of the entry point for the pipe into the water pump housing. Eventually, I got it all done, though and, as I mentioned the difference, left about 9:30 and drove up to Bella Vista to the church I used to attend to play basketball with the group that plays there Tuesday night.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the memo that they had canceled basketball tonight, so my first time back in 4 months ish, and my first time trying to break in my new cheapo basketball shoes, was a bust. 🙃
But it’s 10:06, and I just got the mail, and I’m pulling through the front gate to the property, and I’ve got the first job of the day scheduled for tomorrow, so I I’m just going to eat dinner, veg a little bit, and crash. I do have a quote I need to do, but I’ll probably do that in the morning. The garage door came in, so I’ll be able to get the garage door repaired hopefully in the next couple of days or so before my mom comes home.
If I didn’t already mention it, I went to open the garage door on Monday, I think it was, or maybe Sunday, heard allowed noise, and something clanking to the ground, and realized that the garage motor had busted, the sprocket on top having gone… somewhere.
Gratefully, I didn’t see any damage on my mom’s car, so that was good.
Anyway, the part came, so I’ll add that to the to-do list.
I’m going to go eat dinner, check on the smoldering stump, try and re super glue the inch-long slice in my hand, and call it a night. 😴
Oh! Did I mention that when I popped the hood of my first job today, lo and behold my ratchet and 10 mm socket we’re sitting on the cowling.
🥳🥳🥳
I had been just about ready to go out and buy another ratchet, as I didn’t want to be without the ratchet for yet another day.
Love and hugs to all y’all. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 