I don’t think any part of today went according to plan. And the best part was last, but we’ll get to that…
Or maybe I’m not allowed to say that if I didn’t really have a plan. 🙃
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I never expected what I got from today.
To start, I think I actually might have slept for seven hours, maybe longer! 🥳 I think I went to bed around 11:00 something, and though I woke up 80,000 times during the night as usual, I didn’t wake up for the last time until like 7:30.
And i was groggy. 🙃
I mostly sat in the recliner in my room doing things on my computer until almost 9:00. Normally, I’ve been out the door by 7:30 or so. But not lately. I’ve just been so tired and so burned out that I’ve been dragging and getting out later than I should.
So even though I was way behind, I ate a fairly leisurely breakfast this morning before I finally heading out to work.
The work day… was… different. The first car I was going to go to canceled shortly after asking me to come out. So I went to the second car on the list.
Just as I pulled up, I realized that I didn’t have the Bluetooth portion of my scan tool set. I searched around a little bit hoping that somehow it was in my work fan, but nope, I have left it in a customer’s car yesterday.
Man, I needed a good scan tool for that first job. My little backup scan told just wasn’t going to cut it. Sure, it had a heck of a lot of functionality that my big one has, but I just don’t trust it to be able to give me everything that I need.
I tried to diagnose the vehicle with what I had, it was a 2017 Infiniti QX60, and we all know what infinities are like 😅
Blasted Nissan Products.
After spending a good little while working on the car trying to figure it out, I realized that some of the issues might need to be taken care of with software updates that I don’t have.
They had been driving the car with it steadily getting worse and worse. When the issue first started, they could max out it maybe 60 miles an hour, that it moved to 40, then to 25. By the time I got to it this morning, I couldn’t go more than a couple miles an hour. It had random misfires, and other codes, but nothing was making much sense.
I wanted my other skin tool, and probably a good bit more experience with these would have helped as well. 😅
In the end, I threw up the white flag and suggested he take it to a shop that could do the programming, and of course, I didn’t charge him for my visit.
From there, I chatted a bit with my friend Miguel on the phone and realized fairly quickly that we were within just a handful of blocks of each other.
So instead of heading directly to my next job, I paused and got lunch with Miguel. We talked a lot about business and all sorts of stuff.
It was nice to actually finally take a break during the day and eat. When you work as much as I do, hundred hour weeks, 14 to 16 hour days and what not, there’s just not really any time to stop to eat.
It was also nice that I didn’t have a massively busy schedule. I thought I did, but then I realized that probably half of the cars that I had on the schedule weren’t actually officially on the schedule for today. So that was nice!
From lunch with Miguel, it was on to the next vehicle. The poor customers with that car had tried to do their own oil change but had accidentally drained the transmission fluid instead. For some reason, and I’m guessing it was a phone conversation because it wasn’t in our text conversation, I had the idea that their transmission was a manual transmission.
So when I got there and realized it was an automatic transmission, I realized I didn’t have the tools necessary to refill their automatic transmission. Nowadays, they don’t have dipsticks and filled tubes anymore and a lot of these transmissions. They consider them lifetime transmission fluid units, so supposedly, you don’t have to change the transmission fluid.
Riiiiiiiiiight.
Nice wish.
Anyway, since it was an automatic transmission, I couldn’t refill it for them. It requires a special tool on those transmissions because you actually fill the transmission up through the drain hole. So it requires a special adapter to screw into the drain bolt hole, and a special pump to pump fluid back into the transmission.
Can we get any more convoluted?
Good gravy, Infiniti. 🙄
So, not being prepared for that an automatic transmission, and knowing what was required to even fill that transmission, I let them know that a mobile service was not going to be the best service. The car needed to be up on a lift so that the whole car could be completely level while the special tool was hooked up to pump the fluid in and then checked the levels.
So I gave them the suggestion for where to take it, and then I headed north, all the way back up to Bentonville.
The next job was supposed to be a water pump in a 2014 Chevy Malibu. When I got there, I was able to confirm that it was indeed the water pump, but when I heard the engine start in order to back it up to give me a little more room to work on it, I heard a super loud rattle.
Timing chain issues.
Poor guy.
At that point, I had been dragging all day, and it was afternoon, and I just honestly didn’t want to work anymore. Even though I hadn’t made any money at all that day, I just wanted a day off.
That loud rattle gave me the opportunity to get out of doing that job. Sure, I could have done the water pump for him, but If you needed timing chains done, then it would make more sense to me to have everything done all at once whenever things apart.
So I spent probably 45 minutes with him, but I didn’t charge him a dime. I confirmed the diagnosis, and I helped him with some other stuff, but since I actually recommended that he not do what he had asked me to do right now, I didn’t feel like I should charge him.
By that time I want to say it was like three in the afternoon, and I had one more car on my schedule. So I had it off to that last one, but it turned out to be a no-go because he never answered his phone. So I drove up to my friend Miguel’s shop and hung out with him and his employees for a while, helping them a little bit with some of the cars, but mostly just yacking about this and that.
Funny, the end of the day, it turned out to be one of the days where I lose money instead of making any, but I honestly didn’t care even a shred.
It was just nice to have some breathing room today. 🙂
I left Miguel’s shop when they close, and I headed home. On the way home, I realized that it would be a good opportunity, with things having been slower today, to help my Hill brother with one of his cars. It has been needed as a backup car recently to help some other family members here, but it hasn’t been running.
So I went up and put a radiator in it and got it going, but when it started up, It had a loud, ugly noise. The noise was enough for me to check the oil to see if there might be anything in it, and sure enough, metal shavings in the oil.
Crap. 😬
I still wonder why there’s metal in the oil, though. After the engine had its initial loud noise is, it quieted down and sounded great.
Instead of doing the other fixes on it that I was going to, I suggested that my hill brother just drive it around for a few days to see how it would act, see if it was worth putting more money into it.
Generally, when you find metal in the oil, that’s pretty much the end. I guess we’ll find out soon with this one.
This is a pro bono job, as I was just trying to help get a backup car ready that family members could use If it went tough circumstances hit. The same reason I bought the little mini van the other day.
My hill sister Liz wanted to talk to me about something important, so I swung by her house, and we chatted for a little while.
It looks like I might have the opportunity to help in some ways that might be really meaningful for her family, and I’m excited to be able to help.
After talking to my hill sister, I had some of the most surprising and definitely some of the most personally meaningful experiences that I’ve had in a long time.
I’m going to keep the details private, as they don’t really pertain to me as much as to others, and I want to respect privacy.
Maybe that’s a little anticlimactic given how I started out this blog post, but I need to keep this private and safe. So… you don’t get the details or the who.
What you do get us this:
I had the opportunity to catch up with some family members that I haven’t really talked to almost at all in… gosh… a long time. And it was really cool because I got to be able to have these really great, meaningful, personal conversations with them. And I think it was super meaningful for each of us, and I think I was able to lift the world, so to speak for each of them in both similar and different ways.
It makes my heart happy to have been able to have been there and to have had those conversations. I hope I can be a support more in the future.
I didn’t make any money at all today, but my soul is filled to the brim.
There’s no more valuable currency than love, and the more you give, the more you have to give.
Beautiful day. So grateful for it.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 
Spread the love. ❤️