Gosh, I’ve gotten so bad at this lately.
🙃
Sorry!!!
Four cars on the 1st, and it was a bit of a sideways day. 😬
First car was a 2013 Hyundai Elantra in Bella Vista. I got there and was able to diagnose it pretty quickly, but the parts were the problem. My local AutoZone supposedly had what I needed–there inventory list says so, at least.
But nope. I ended up going to three different stores to get the parts I needed.
Gratefully, that first customer worked from home, so I didn’t have to come back right away.
That made it easier to go to the second car before going back to the first one.
The second car was a 2017 Nissan Pathfinder that wouldn’t start. It had a message about key issues, and they had had a locksmith come out and spent 2 hours trying to figure out what was wrong, so I wasn’t super excited about the job because those kinds of jobs when you’re coming in after another professional that’s already spent a long time can end up being black-hole jobs.
This one… was nearly a black-hole job. Within just a few minutes of getting there, I realized that one of the main fuses at the battery was blown. That was nice, because I had a super crazy busy day, and for a job that I knew could turn into a black-hole job, it was nice that it was just the fuse.
Or so I hoped.
🤞
So I drove over to the dealer and bought the part I needed, which was on a $106 part. 😶
Thank you manufacturers for turning battery fuses into standalone assemblies. Good gravy. $106 for a fuse assembly.
Did I mention that I hate Nissans?
😅
I installed the new battery fuse assembly, went to start it up, but nothing.
My heart sank.
What I wanted least to have happen is what happened. I got back out of the car, wandered back over to the battery fuse assembly, and yep, it was blown again.
Ugh. That’s a $106 part, down the drain, and the only one the dealer had.
Ugh.
You know, it’s not a big deal when a fuse blows when it’s just a regular fuse. But good gravy, $106 fuse? Yeah, that’s kind of a big deal when it blows.
What that meant was that there was a dead short in the system. Somewhere, the positive was dead shorting to the ground. That meant That I needed to trace back the wire from the battery all the way to the source wherever the issue was, wherever positive was grounding out.
Lovely.
Engine wiring harnesses aren’t just Super easy to access. They’re usually all covered up in layers of protective materials and are buried often times all over and hard to get to.
And this is a Nissan, so bet you can’t guess how easy it is to access. 😅
Anyway, I started digging in, and I found that the main cable that went to that fuse looked like maybe it went to the starter, so I removed the battery and battery tray and the whole bunch of crap so I could access the starter, and I tried to jump the starter externally, but it wouldn’t jump. That pointed to the starter most likely having an internal short and being the cause of the problem, so I pulled the starter out of the pathfinder, bench test of it, and yep, blown starter.
I managed to find another supplier that had the fuses assembly, and for a better price even, so I got another fuse assembly, got a starter, replaced both, and the gentleman was on his way.
After 3 1/2 hours. 😅
After that, I headed back to the Hyundai Elantra that I had such a hard time getting the parts for. I slapped in a coil, and that solved all of her problems.
🥳
Lots of drive time, but it worked out.
It actually worked out pretty well all the way around because while I was fixing the Pathfinder, I got a call from a customer who needed a starter swapped out as a warranty job, and it was back up in Bella Vista where the Hyundai Elantra was.
So I picked up a starter, went back and fixed the Elantra, and then went over and replaced the starter as a warranty job for the gentleman.
So that was car number three. It was a Ford F-250 pickup truck.
The fourth and final car of the day was an old Chrysler Concorde that had me having flashbacks to my college days when I used to buy and sell cars with my buddy Matt. We had bought an old Chrysler Concorde that he put a motor in.
Anyway, I got down there and realized pretty quickly why it wouldn’t start. The shifter was halfway between park and reverse, and there’s a safety switch that makes it so a car can’t start if it’s not in park or neutral.
The battery had died as well, likely because they had not put it fully in park when they turned it off. Anyway, I put it in park, fired it right up, and then I spent probably 30 or 45 minutes charging up the battery to see if the battery would be good for them.
After spending all that time, the battery tested bad, but it was still starting the car, so they elected to not change it out. I showed them how to change the battery in case they needed two later. It’s not a simple battery change like most cars. In this one, you have to take the wheel off, undo the fender liner, and then pull the battery out from behind the fender.
Stupid design.
It’s so funny how ridiculously common it is for cars to have terrible engineering–just stupidly easy stuff that they make stupidly complicated.
Anyway, got that one done and headed home for the night.
And that… was June 1st. 😊
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 