2023-06-16 — Pretty Packed

I decided at some point during the day today that I was going to take Saturday off. With that in mind, I decided to pack the day a little bit more than I have been recently– just to help out financially a little bit.

I did five cars, though I didn’t even start the first one until I think maybe 10:00 or 11:00?

The first vehicle was a bit of an impromptu job. I was at the Rogers AutoZone to pick up some parts, and I noticed a couple of guys in the parking lot standing next to their truck that was badly leaking coolant. You could see it just pouring out of the truck. One was on the phone, and the other one was leaning over the engine. They were towing a work trailer, and it was clear that they were in a bad spot.

Since my first appointment of the day didn’t have a set time, I decided to drive over to them and ask if they wanted some help. They certainly did, welcoming my assistants, and super grateful that they had a mechanic show up right at the moment they needed help.

It took a good bit longer than I had hoped, because it was a Nissan, to get the radiator replaced, and the rain came in and poured a little bit while I was working on it, so I had to stop to get my canopy out, but I got them running and got them going, and they were super grateful. I even gave the discount, which I didn’t tell them about.

The next job was in Fayetteville, well, all of the rest of the jobs of the day were in Fayetteville. I had one customer, a father from down south whose daughter was up there, and he was stressed trying to get help for his daughter’s car which wasn’t starting. He had sent his son up with another car, and his son’s car had broken down just as he was getting to the girls house.

So the customer made a second appointment for me to fix his son’s car as well. I diagnosed his son’s car, but 2013 mazda3, first, as it was easy to tell that the belt was missing, and that was the reason the charge light had come on even though they had already replaced the battery. What was odd, was that there was no sign of the belt at all. As you know, it’s not normal for belt to just come off. There’s going to be something else wrong in the system, unless the belt was so old that it shredded off, but I couldn’t find any problems anywhere, and after replacing the belt and letting the car run for while, there were still no evident issues.

The belt was an absolute nightmare to get back on, though, because of the way they had designed the tensioner. The space to get your hands in there was tight, and I needed three hands, but I only had, well, just two. 🙃

Because of the way the tensioner was designed, every time you tried to slip the belt on the tensioner, it would pop off one of the other pulleys. I tried again and again and again and again, the belt popping off every single time. Finally, the only way that I was able to get it done was by smashing my hand such that I could hold the ratchet and belt in one hand, and the ratchet and belt with the other hand as well. I had to simultaneously hold the belt on one pulley, while pulling the belt tight to make sure there was no slack, while pushing the ratchet counter clockwise to release the tensioner.

Phew!

After probably maybe a dozen attempts trying to get the belt on, I finally managed to do it by wedging my hands in such a position that they got a pretty gnarly bruise on one hand, but at least I got the darn belt on.

The daughter’s car was a Chevy Impala that wouldn’t start, and it just needed a starter. Normally, that’s a super easy job on those Chevy Impalas, but with the redesign that they did, they decided to put the starter a little higher up in the engine, making it much more of a challenge to get to. It used to be that you could just pull the two bolts out, a few other little things, and you were good to go. You didn’t even need to jack up the car sometimes, but nope, not this one. With the redesign, I had to remove the exhaust and the knock sensor in order to be able to get the starter out after I’m bolting it, and because of the way they designed it, it made it nearly impossible to properly torque the bolts down. I had to get really creative and use multiple body parts yet again in order to hold parts out of the way to get things tightened.

Really annoyed by modern engineers. I would imagine, perhaps, that it’s not their fault. They are probably instructed to design things in such a way as to make them a pain in the butt, since there’s absolutely no need to do it that way. And if you’re an engineer, you’re probably pretty darn intelligent, so… yeah…

Anyway, I got that one done and was able to fix both cars for them, which made the dad super happy and grateful that his kids were taken care of When they were both far away from him.

Car number four was a 2016 Honda CRV to the customer said how to smoking alternator. He had it towed back to his house, and I went over to take a look at it. Sure enough, I smelled the powerful smell. But the thought occurred to me that before I swapped that alternator out, I had better check to make sure, for a 100%, that it actually was the alternator, as the AC compressor was right below the alternator.

I fired up the vehicle, and I checked the alternator, and the voltage was coming out just fine. At first I was thinking that I guess I would probably just tell the customer that the alternator was currently working, but I would recommend changing it given what had happened with the smoke and everything, not wanting to risk failure or fire.

By the way, if I haven’t mentioned it before, you see lots of stories in the news about electric car fires, making it look like electric cars aren’t safe. Statistically, however, internal combustion engine vehicles have fires at a higher rate than electric cars. It’s just that electric cars are the ones that get the press because of all the intense feelings around them.

Anyway, squirrel.

But then I decided to turn the AC on, and when I turned the AC on, I heard a good grinding noise, and I looked at the AC compressor, and the AC compressor clutch was sparking and then started grinding badly.

Problem found. Not the alternator.

What that meant, unfortunately for the customer, was that I wasn’t going to be able to fix his car. The AC compressor was not something I could get right away, and I still generally don’t like to do that big of an AC job, especially when I hear grinding, as if there’s any metal in the AC compressor oil, then it should be flushed, and then the car goes from being able to be driven but just without turning on the AC, to needing to be towed because it’s been pulled apart and needs to be taken to a shop where the whole system can be flushed with a flush machine.

Anyway, so I gave him a discount because it was a pretty quick visit, the way I ended up staying longer to check his brakes and to teach him about how the car mechanic industry works. 🙃

The last car was a 2013 Dodge charger that wouldn’t start, and I went out to it and found right away that the starter ignition wire wasn’t fully seated down on the starter because someone had broken the connector.

Once I got it back on, I also noticed that the starter was grinding against the flexplate (flywheel, but for an automatic), As if it were engaging a little too quickly and screeching against the flexplate before aligning with the gear teeth on the flex plate and turning it properly.

Someone had put in a starter, so I recommended that I simply rig the ignition wire so as to hold it on the starter for certain, and then they see what they could do about getting a warranty fix.

It was an interesting conversation. There were like five women there, from late teens probably into their 40s, one of them drunk, and apologizing for being drunk. 😆

Nice people. 🙂

I decided to only charge them half my normal service call, and then headed home. Five cars in the books.

My energy and drive for making meaningful progress on my nonprofits stuff is increasing still.

🥳

And I’m taking Saturday off, so maybe I’ll make some progress!

Despite not putting in my normal 6 days of car repair work, and despite sleeping in pretty much every single day, I still did really well financially this week, which helped in the decision to take Saturday off.

I’m kind of excited to see what Saturday is going to bring. 😊

🤞

Love and hugs. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen