My plan was to take most of the day off. I had one job on the schedule. I’ve been just struggling and needing some breathing room, so I was going to take the day off and do just that one job. But then somebody called you needed help it was nearby that first job, so I was going to add that one to it.
The first job was replacing a window regulator assembly on a 2011 Jeep Liberty. Good gravy the design is just ridiculously stupid. It literally should only be a couple of bolts and the part. But now, you have to take off the entire interior door panel, and the replacement part is the panel itself. It comes with the regulator attached to it. All they had to do was cut a hole in the panel as an access point, and then you could unbolt the two bolts on the regulator, hold the glass in place, put the new regulator assembly in place, bolted back up, and you’d be done. But no, of course not. Not only do you have to pull the entire panel off, the interior one not just the exterior one. You pull off the exterior one, and then you have to pull off the interior one, and in order to pull the interior one off, you have to undo all the lock mechanism assemblies as well. It’s just… asinine.
What made it more of a challenge, was the customer sat there and watched the entire time. That makes it a bit awkward, especially if there’s stuff that I have to look up. You want to be able to give your customer confidence, but at the same time as a mechanic working on every make and model and generation, you learn on every single car you work on.
Anyway, it was quite the challenge, but eventually I got it all done and together and solid, so that was good.
The next job that I was going to do had towed the car by the time I was able to get to it, so that was nice, but in the meantime, I had had a concerned father from Kansas wondering if I could help his daughter who is trying to drive home because it was the end of the semester, but her car was doing some pretty weird things, shaking and whatnot.
She had had two tires replaced, but was still having the shaking. He thought he was going to have to Get a U-Haul trailer, drive down, and tow the car all the way back to Kansas.
I didn’t want him to do that, so I said that I would check out his daughter’s car. I thought that maybe would be something simple.
Right.
Not simple.
I think about six and a half or seven hours later I finally got done. 😶
What did she need? Well, she had one blown CV axle, her right brakes were completely locked up, which had ruined her pads and rotors and caliper. Her left brakes were partially locked up, which had ruined the pads. Of course, the pads and rotors need to be replaced anyway, but still pretty nutty.
Not only that, but she needed brake hoses as well. That was the cause of the locking up of the brakes. I usually only ever run into that on general motors vehicles, but apparently it’s a fairly common thing with these Ford escapes.
In the end, I ended up replacing the passenger CV axle, and the pads, rotors, calipers, and brake hoses on both sides in the front.
Good gravy!
I finally got done some around 10:30 or 11:00 at night.
A shout out to my wonderful mother for coming to my rescue as well. About 9:00, I realized I was going to have a lot more work to do on the vehicle, and I was going to be alone with my 19-year-old female customer in a very dark parking lot.
So for her comfort and my safety, I asked my mom to come down and be a chaperone. I think the young lady appreciated it, though I think she also trusted me and wasn’t worried about me at all. And she seemed like a super nice girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but in this day and age, I just want to make sure that my butt is safe. I’ve thought about buying body cameras, and maybe I’ll do that still.
Anyway, thanks Mom! Thanks for spending a couple hours in a parking lot watching me do mechanic work instead of being able to do the things that you had wanted to do!
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 