Very very very tired.
It’s 10:30, and I’m just heading home. It’s been a long day.
The day started off with me going to Bella Vista, and dragging my wonderful mother along with me, to go by a van that one of my customers was selling. One of my heel sisters called me the other day to ask if I had an extra car because they were in need, and I didn’t. My little civic is in Utah being used by my niece while it waits for me for my next trip to Utah which will probably be in a few months or so.
So I bought the van, and my mom drove it to her turn at the family history library, And then she drove it home. She said it drives really well, which is good. The guy I bought it from gave it to me for a deal so good that I couldn’t pass it up, so to speak.
Super nice guy. He’s selling me one of his other cars for a crazy good deal as well. That one will be for one of my customers, that little old lady who still working full-time and has been driving that beater truck for so long, as long as I’ve been a mobile mechanic, I think. She was one of my early customers many years ago, I think.
Anyway, I went to my first job after that. It was a 2004 Ford f150 FX4 that he said had made a noise driving down the freeway, and he thought he had a broken axle. Well, unfortunately for him, it was a lot worse than a broken axle. His front differential was grenaded. Completely split from top to bottom. Looks to me like he didn’t have any oil in the front differential, and it finally just blew itself apart.
😬
The second car was a 2015 Toyota Corolla that he said was having parasitic drain issues. He said he had replaced the battery twice, and that it was dead again.
Well, that’s where I guess somebody with just about zero car experience is a bit more of a detriment to themselves. I should have asked more questions because he didn’t have dead batteries at all. His car was cranking and not starting, and he thought that meant that it was low on voltage, so we kept replacing the battery and wanted if he had a bad starter possibly. Nope. Didn’t need to replace the battery either time, and definitely don’t have a bad starter. But because of what he had told me was going on with it, I spent the entire time looking for a parasitic draw or other related issues.
It did have a very small parasitic draw, but nothing in the neighborhood of something that would cause a car to die after just a day or so. The draw that he had would take weeks to drain a battery down to the point that it couldn’t start.
Anyway, after quite a while, I realized It was a crank no start issue that he was talking about, but I couldn’t reproduce that issue in any meaningful way, so I told him everything that I could to help him, and he was super grateful and very complimentary, and I called it a day with that one.
Can’t do much if you can’t reproduce the problem.
Car number three was a 2017 Chevy Tahoe that they said wouldn’t turn off. I found out when I got there that it wasn’t at the engine wouldn’t turn off: It was that the fan was staying on. When I got there, it had a p0128 code, which means the engine isn’t getting as warm as it should, and that almost always is a stuck open thermostat. But after initially being able to reproduce the problem, it went away very quickly, and I could never get it to reproduce again, neither the fan staying on, nor the engine not getting up to temperature properly. So I explained what the likely issues were if they ever come back, and since I’m a conservative mechanic, I didn’t swap out any parts because I couldn’t absolutely prove that anything was wrong. Could be a bad thermostat. Could be a bad temperature sensor. But I don’t want to guess. That’s what doctors do to me.
No thanks.
Car number four was another Chevy Tahoe– This one a 2015. The issue with this one was that it was leaking fuel. And I don’t know what b got in there on it, other than trying to make it harder and harder and harder to work on your own cars, but general motors decided to put shields nearly all the way around the fuel tank on the top between the top and the body of the vehicle, so I couldn’t just look up in there with myself on like I usually can do to see what’s going on with stuff. No, I had to go get my little camera on a wire and poke it through the little slots that were available for me to poke through my little wire camera.
Good gravy.
Honestly, it was pretty much luck that I was able to find the leak that way, as I was shooting blind in the dark. Well, obviously not blind in the dark because I had a camera that had a light on it, but just shoving it into the space between the tank and the body of the vehicle hoping that I might run into where the leak was, gratefully I found it quickly.
The leak was caused due to a poor design by general motors. They put the fuel line so close to the tank, instead of having it held away from it by either clips or molded tank parts, it was just rubbing right against the side of the tank and it finally rubbed far enough to rub a little pinhole in the plastic fuel line.
No recall, just a known issue and the four customer has to pay for the flawed design.
Gratefully, the part is available locally, so it’s not going to be a major deal to get it taken care of.
Car number 5 was a 2013 Honda Accord that he wanted me to put a starter in. He said it would occasionally make a really bad noise, and that his friend had diagnosed it 100% as a starter issue. His friend, apparently was a mechanic either in another city or another state or something.
Anyway, so I got to work replacing the starter. Stupid Honda 3.5 motor where they put it diagonally facing down with a gasket. Same as that Odyssey from a couple of months ago or so that was just an absolute nightmare. This was a return to the nightmare. 🙃
Eventually, I got it done, everything back together, any fired it up. It definitely sounded a lot better than before. The car started up a lot faster, but after a few starts, boom it actually reproduced the sound that it had been making.
So his friend was wrong. It wasn’t the starter. 😕
Crappy for him. 😕
On a positive note, at least for him, I stayed and figured out the issue for him so that he would be able to know exactly what was going on and what would take to fix it. Turns out Honda screwed up when they designed the system, and they made the tolerances between the Bendix on the starter and a particular part of the torque converter too small, so the starter grinds against the torque converter if just in the right place.
The fix takes about an hour or so, so greatly it’s not going to be much of a bigger deal for him, but it is a bit more than what I’m comfortable doing, as it involves unbolting the torque converter and repositioning in it. I don’t like doing the internal stuff like that. Certainly, I can do it, but I don’t like to at all. It’s drivable, and I did the first half of the service bulletin by replacing the starter. He just needs to have the torque converter re positioned and rebolted down, and that’ll be the second half of the job.
Car number six was a 2013 Dodge avenger that needed a new window regulator. That job… Went sideways when the bracket that holds the window glass to the window regulator broke on one side. That’s… Kind of a big deal. 😕
I don’t know that you can actually buy that bracket without having to buy the window glass itself. So… Let’s just say I’ll lose some money on that job. 🙃
So that one’s not done, and I’ve got to go parts exploring to try and find what I need. I may actually try and go to the junkyard or something and grab one. That would actually maybe be a little easier than dealing with what I might have to deal with otherwise with window glue and all that other stuff that is a pain in the butt to deal with.
Yeah, I think I’m going to try the junkyard…
Car number 7 was a late edition because she called late in the evening with her car shaking badly and afraid that she couldn’t drive it to work the next day. I didn’t want to add her to my schedule, but neither did I want to leave her hanging with no vehicle to get where she needed to go early in the morning, so I closer into the schedule, and gratefully, it just turned out to be a bad coil, so one of the quickest and easiest of all fixes.
🥳
I just pulled into the driveway, and I’m finishing up this little journal entry via voice to text. I’m absolutely exhausted, and it wasn’t so fun to have that one job go sideways, but I was able to help a lot of people today, and I gave a discount to the first guy because he had crappy crappy news, and it was a super easy diagnosis, so I didn’t want to give him the full bill that normally people would pay. He’s just a younger college student trying to get back home to Kansas City after visiting his girlfriend at the u of a here.
I also gave a discount to the Corolla guy, spending more than 2 hours there, but only billing for one.
It’s nice to be able to help people out. Now I’m home, and speaking of helping people out, my hill sister had her leaf blower go out, and no one else can figure out how to get it started, so I She asked me if I would try and figure it out. So I just picked that up from their shed, and now I’m home and I’m going to work on our lawn mower a little bit before eating and getting to bed.
Looks like getting a good night’s sleep won’t be on tonight’s menu. 🙃
But I’m doing okay. Just super exhausted.
Oh! Ticks!!! I got all ticked off this last time around working in the woods. Apparently the ticks have woken up, and they found me. I think I have probably four tick bites, and I’m super allergic to dick bites, so they itch like the dickens. It’s like poison ivy times 20. They didn’t even stay on long enough to fully latch down, as I found them very quickly, but apparently they were there long enough to at least send some of their little goo into me that causes the allergic reaction.
Lovely. 🙃
Speaking of lovely, good night, my lovelies. 🥰
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 