Gosh, folks… I’m ridiculously exhausted. 🙃
First, though, shout out to my high school girlfriend. It was her birthday today. 🥳
Happy birthday, my old friend! 😊🥳😊🥳😊
She’s good people.
…
Did I mention that I’m exhausted? 🙃
It’s almost 1:00 in the morning, And I think I got home about midnight from my last job. I’ll get to all that, though.
I managed to get my tax stuff off to my new accountant this morning. 🥳
So nice to have that off the plate right now. I have some state tax stuff I’ve got to do still, but all the income stuff is done for 2022. Crossing my fingers I might actually get a refund, but I’m not going to bank on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I owe money, but we’ll see.
First job was a battery job today. I was happy because I had a super crazy busy day, and a battery job it was a nice way to start the day. Unfortunately, somehow that battery job ended up taking 2 hours. Ford in their proprietary battery cable connections… It was ridiculously corroded and in super bad shape, but I couldn’t just go out and replace it because it’s one of the proprietary ones that I just don’t have. So I couldn’t just grab a cable end, spliced it in and be done. I had to spend massive amounts of time scraping all the crap off, wire brushing, etc.
Malaki Also swung by that first job to drop off the money he owed me as well as all the consumables that he’s had since he stopped working for me.
Between all of that, which was an absolutely massive amount of stuff, and the parts that I have had in there that I forgot to take out yesterday, my van was so loaded down that I couldn’t really get to almost anything.
What’s really nice, is that that used to be a regular occurrence with my old vehicles and not just a freak occurrence like it was this time.
Anyway, I got the first one done, and Malachi headed home, and I headed to the next job.
The next one was a 2018 Chevy Silverado that had a coolant leak. I thought maybe it might be the water pump like this is a bourbon that I did the other week, but no, this one had a leaking radiator.
Good gravy, general motors, how is it that you can make so much crap and still sell so many cars? Why on earth are water pumps and radiators going bad on 2018 Chevy trucks? Really!?!? I just don’t quite get it. 150 years of building cars, and this is the best you can do?
Anyway, the third car was one that I squoze into the schedule when I probably shouldn’t have because I was already way way behind, and there were so many cars to do. But I did squeeze it in. It was a 2002 Chevrolet 6.6 diesel that wouldn’t start. I went out there and diagnosted it as having a bad starter, but the starter that we needed was in another city, and I had an absolutely massively busy work schedule, so taking 30 minutes each way to go pick up the part was not quite in the cards for what I was wanting to do today. So I headed to the next job which was in Springdale, telling the guy with a truck that I would be by tonight, probably super late.
The next job was one that needed a battery replaced and some battery cables replaced. It was in pretty darn bad shape (the battery and cables, I mean). There were four cables going to the two different posts. I ended up cutting back three of them and cleaning the wire, and I completely replaced another cable.
Super nice young lady. She was just super happy, even though from outward appearances, society would just rip her to shreds. Makes me think to see something like that…
The next car was going out to that thermostat and spark plug wire job out in the middle of nowhere. I shouldn’t take those jobs. I really really really shouldn’t do those jobs.
Anyway, I went out there, and I was there for probably three and a half hours or longer. I got the spark plug wires in, and I got the thermostat replaced, but when I started it up it had a really awful low idle. Since the spark plug wires had been chewed through, I never got to feel what it normally felt like before it was misfiring.
Anyway, I don’t really want to spend a lot of time talking about it right now because I’m just so ridiculously exhausted, but the short answer, or the short story or whatever is that I went out there, I managed to get all the spark plug wires in place even though it’s a crappy engine to have to try and put spark plug wires in.
I managed to get the thermostat replaced. There’s a lot I could say about all of that stuff, but whatever. I really really really need to go to bed.
When I thought I was all done, about 9:00 p.m., I fired it up, and it had a super bad idle.
I ended up staying another hour trying to figure out what was wrong, and I didn’t charge them for the hour. They said that it wasn’t having this issue before replacing the spark plug wires. That’s always a concern for me, but what do you do when squirrels have chewed through stuff, and the scan tool shows zero misfires, which means I did the spark plug wire job correctly. So gosh, where did This awful idle come from?
I don’t know. I stayed until about 10:00, and then I gave up and headed to the next job. The next one was supposed to be rear brake pads and rotors on a 2015 Jeep Wrangler, but as I was starting to head there way, they said that they’d prefer it not be so late, and for me to come tomorrow. I totally understand, as I was already exhausted myself. I would have gotten there about 10:30 or a little after, and I finally would have been done with a break job probably around midnight 30.
As it stood, I went back to the guy whose starter was bad who’s truck I couldn’t fix earlier because the starter was in another city.
I had gone by the parts supplier in Springdale and picked up parts for multiple different vehicles, including that starter. There’s a whole ordeal with the parts And what happened to my visit to the South Thompson AutoZone, but will probably save that for another day… or never think about it again. 🙃
Gratefully, I was able to get the starter in in a relatively decent amount of time, which meant that I got home about midnight. Mom had made dinner, which was really nice to be able to come home to after an absolutely exhausting day.
Not enough sleep. 🙃
I’ve got a crash. I’m already crashing on and off, but I need to crash for due night. Good night!
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 