Today was just hell, plain and simple.
I spent something like 12 hours working on a 2014 Nissan Murano.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Nissans?
Good crap.
Anyway, this lady had a leaking CV boot, and I went out there, and after looking at it, I recommended that you not do anything to repair it. It may have leaked out its grease, but the joint itself wasn’t bad yet and might be a while before it would actually go bad, so it would be a waste of money, in my eyes, to replace it until it’s actually needing to be replaced.
She wouldn’t listen to me and just wanted it to be replaced anyway, so I started to work on it.
Everything went well until I tried to get the CV axle out of the car. It took absolutely everything I had to get it out, trying and trying and trying, finally I was able to get it out with my slide hammer and lots of effort.
That’s when the real struggles began.
I tried to install the new axle, but it wouldn’t go in. Nothing I could do would get it to go back on. I tried and tried and tried. I pushed on it. I banged on it. I now have a mark in my shoulder shaped like the end of a CV axle because of all the effort I tried to put into it to get it to go on.
But nothing.
The only thing I could think of was that the retainer clip was just either damaged or too big or something. So I drove to my friend Miguel’s shop because he said he had a retainer clip for a Nissan CV axle, but when I got there, it turned out to be the wrong shape, so then I drove to the Nissan dealer and bought a new retainer clip, but it was exactly the same as the old retainer clip, so that let me know that the old retainer clip hadn’t been misshapen in the removal process.
I tried again and again and again.
But nothing.
With all of the effort, it felt to me like the new CV axle I was trying to put in had been damaged, so I went and got another one and hoped that maybe there had been a problem with the original.
But nothing.
I took off the entire steering knuckle to get a better angle for the install.
But nothing.
It was an absolute nightmare, and my sailor came out in fits and spurts, unfortunately loud enough for my customer to hear. She didn’t mention anything about it, but she did hear it.
I was so frustrated.
After spending 12 hours trying to find some way to make it work, I finally gave up. My customer was pissed and proceeded to berate me. If you’ve ever heard of the term Karen, she was the very definition, going on and on about how much of an inconvenience it was, How she’d called a mobile mechanic so she wouldn’t have had to take it to a shop, and on and on and on.
I told her I wouldn’t charge her anything for my entire days work and all my efforts, and she responded by saying that was the least I could do.
Every option I gave her for how to proceed forward she complained about and railed against, simply preferring to rip me to shreds over and over instead of looking for an actual solution.
Nightmare job. Nightmare customer. And when in my efforts to continue to help her, I showed her some other things to be aware of to be prepared for that a shop might mention to her, she then started down the path of saying well that wasn’t a problem before, how do I know you didn’t damage it?
She was an absolute witch to deal with.
To top it off, she called the tow company before I even had her car back together enough to make it possible for the company to tow, so the tow company ended up having to wait for me to get the car back together.
Her neighbor actually came over and privately apologized to me for her behavior. That was nice, at least.
From her place, I drove up to Miguel’s shop where I had the tow company tow it. I also got in contact with my part supplier and well talking to him, it dawned on me that maybe the part they had given me actually was the cause of the problems. You see, the description for the part when you go to buy it explains that it’s both the CV axle, the intermediate bearing, and the intermediate shaft together as one assembly, but what comes in the box is only the CV axle.
Normally, with this kind of a build on an automobile, all you do is replace the CV axle, and you don’t bother with the bearing or the intermediate shaft because there’s nothing wrong with them. You can just replace the CV axle and everybody is happy and everything is perfect.
Apparently, though, that’s not the case with this Nissan Murano. Apparently there’s a reason they sell it as an entire assembly and not just the CV axle by itself, and it looks like that reason is that the intermediate clip is so large that it must be pressed on from the factory or something and isn’t meant to try and be reinstalled separately.
The commercial manager of my part supplier was convinced that what came in the box was the whole assembly, but no, it definitely was not. I bought two of them that day, and neither one was the full assembly.
I called a different supplier that night, and gratefully dealt with a very nice employee who was willing to take pictures of the part inside the box because they were in another city, and they did indeed have the correct part, the whole assembly. So after 12 hours of working on the car, I spent another hour or two figuring out parts and getting them ordered so that Miguel’s shop would have the right part in the proper city to be able to do the job and get the lady taken care of the following day, so she wasn’t inconvenienced even more.
Not that she cares or even appreciates the effort. All she could think about was how inconvenienced she was and how she deserved to have everything be absolutely perfect exactly how she wanted it, and how it was my fault that it wasn’t.
She was an absolute nightmare.
To top it all off, the shelves in my van came crashing down again on the drive home, spilling over and crushing stuff.
Easily one of the worst days of my mechanic career. No money made. Awful customer. Lost money because I bought parts that got ruined and never paid for. Ruined equipment… just… awful. Relapsed again before falling asleep. Just… an awful day.
~ stephen
Lift the World 