2023-06-30 — Goodbye June. 🙂

Hey guess what?

Progress! 🙃

Not a lot, but some. And some is… great! 🥳

June is done! Crazy how time just keeps flying right on by. I thought I was more on top of my journaling. But I guess not. 😅

Oops!

So let’s see, let me get you caught up on the last handful of days.

The 27th wasn’t work today. I did three cars. For the first one, I drove out to an RV campground way the heck and gone out by the lake. The customer had an issue with his belt tensioner: The belt tensioner pulley had blown through the bearings and part of it seized on the little tensioner shaft, and the pulley itself went flying off who knows where. 🙃

It’s supposed to be a pretty basic repair. In fact, all you normally do is take the belt off, and then undo one bolt to take the belt tensioner off, And the belt was already off because it did fallen off when the pulley flew apart.

So all I had to do was pull out one bolt, and both the new tensioner back in. Easy peasy, right?

Right.

😶

As luck would have it, apparently, whoever put it in last time he maned the bolt in so tightly that It was stripped out somewhat. It took me probably 30 minutes just to get the bolt out of the engine, going very very slowly as best I could because it felt like the bolt itself was going to break, and that would have left him in a world of hurt.

I explained the situation to the customer, and he gave me the go-ahead to try and get it out even though there was a chance it could break.

So I worked at it and worked at it and worked at it, and I finally got the bolt out without it breaking in half and leaving the other half inside the engine.

🥳

The problem from there was that the bolt was damaged and the threads inside the block had been fairly stripped out.

What to do. What to do.

I grabbed my tap from my tap and die set, matched up the right thread pitch and diameter, and very carefully and very slowly recut the damage threads inside the block, crossing my fingers that by the time I got it done, I would be able to torque down the belt tensioner.

It was very slow going.

Little by little, I worked at it and worked at it, and when the time came for the moment of truth…

It worked!!! 🥳🥳🥳

The new belt tensioner went on, the bolt screwed in, and I was able to torque it to the least acceptable torque in the torque range that was allowed for that bolt. I didn’t dare torque it beyond the minimum allowable, as I didn’t want to risk damaging what was left of the threads inside.

But we fired it up, and it worked just fine. 🥳

Yay!

I didn’t charge him anywhere near as much as I should have for all that work, but he gave me a tip anyway, so that was nice. He told me he’d give me an even bigger tip later, he just didn’t have the money right now. That would be nice if he gives me the $100 tip he said he was going to. 🙃

Car number two was a repeat customer with a 2014 Nissan Titan. He’s the one that I had put the radiator in for in the AutoZone parking lot in Rogers. His brakes had gone out on him, so I went over and put on new pads and rotors in the front. It took a lot longer than I would have liked for the brake job, but that’s what happens with me and brakes. I’m just incapable of doing anything other than an OCD perfectionist job. 😅

The last job was a 2012 Toyota Camry that the people had left at AutoZone with a possible alternator issue. I went to AutoZone, and I confirmed that it was indeed a bad alternator, and so I went ahead and slapped one in for them.

And that was my 27th. 🙂 I don’t remember what I did in the evening, but I almost certainly just veged out and then went to bed.

It’s been a little while that I’ve been starting later in the day and putting in basically just a full day’s work instead of the extra long crazy days.

Of course, I had planned to take five days off in a row because it was supposed to be crazy hot, But I didn’t end up taking all those days off. I worked Monday and Tuesday, as you already know, and took Wednesday off.

Honestly, I don’t remember what I did on Wednesday.

Oh! I think I went and mowed all the places that had gotten really tall around the property! I probably worked a little bit at cleaning up the garage and whatnot.

I think Wednesday was also one of the days where I started making meaningful, albeit small, but meaningful progress trying to go forward and make decisions in my life. I’ve started listing out My goals and my hopes and whatnot, specifically in relation to how they correspond to my choice of where I live.

I don’t have the money to have what I really really want, so I’m trying to work through what which of the things that I want are actually doable, and how I can be smart about it all.

I’m sure I also veged out for a bit, and I might have taken an app? I haven’t been sleeping well of late

The 29th was a work/ shopping day. 🙃 First thing in the morning, I drove down to a used car dealership in Springdale for a Honda cross tour that was super cheap. When I got there, I realized why It was super cheap. 🙃

It had a clean title, but it had been t-boned, and the repair work was done by a backyard mechanic probably with a sledgehammer and Bondo, so the doors couldn’t really close without slamming them, leaving A huge gap.

It was pretty awful. 😅

After that, I headed back up to Bentonville where I did a pre-purchase inspection on a 2018 BMW 740E. The BMW dealership wasn’t comfortable with me jacking the car up in the parking lot, given that it was such a nice car, so they brought me back into the service center, and put it up on a lift for me. 😁

He asked me to give my honest opinion about whether or not I would buy the vehicle, and I sort of chuckled and said I’m not the right person to ask that question to because I hate debt and never want to go into debt for any reason, so I wouldn’t buy it because I would be in debt. 🙃

I think that made him think a little bit… Don’t know if they’ll decide to buy it or not, But it seemed to give him a little bit of pause.

The second car of the day was back down in Springdale, a 2012 Ford E350 box truck that had pulled into the gas station and wouldn’t start after filling up.

So I went down there, and gratefully, all it needed was a battery. 🥳

It was really nice at the first job was in the BMW shop and the second job was simply a battery job at a gas station because the temperature was scorching, making it rather miserable to be outside.

After that, I drove all the way to Siloam springs to look at a Subaru that had a blown engine. It was an excellent price to be able to swap an engine out and resell.

Unfortunately, the photos that made the body look absolutely pristine were taken it such an angle that they completely hid accident damage.

So that sucked. I drove all the way to Siloam springs, waited in the Walmart parking lot for him to get home from work or wherever, and then went over, but it was definitely a no-go. Too much bodywork needed.

While I was at the Walmart, I did buy myself a pair of shoes, a new hat, and some insoles for my new shoes.

I haven’t had a clean pair of shoes to wear when I’m not working unless I wear my cheap basketball sneakers.

I didn’t get anything nice, because I always destroy all of my shoes regardless, but at least they are clean and unmelted. 😅

From asylum springs, I drove through Gentry and whatnot to get back to Bentonville. I had one more job on the schedule, but at first I didn’t answer, so I thought that maybe I would get to go home, but as I was heading home, they called back, so I turned around and headed back to the job.

That job was a 2006 Chevrolet TrailBlazer that was having issues where the key wouldn’t come out and the fan stayed on when it was not supposed to.

Originally, I had hoped that it was just going to be a quick job because they made it sound like all they needed was a battery, but when I got there, not only wasn’t it a quick job, it was a mini rabbit hole. I think I ended up spending 2 hours there chasing down different electrical issues trying to figure out what was going on when I finally figured out that the problem was the ignition switch.

At least I got it figured out. 🙂

Went home And then drove almost all the way to Springfield Missouri with my mom because somebody was selling a car that I thought would be good for one of my customers, and they were selling it super cheaply. Well, turns out that the customer

A little less than honest. He had said that it was a clean title, and it wasn’t. It was a prior salvage title. He had said that he had been driving it as a daily driver and that his son had just driven it to church the night before, but the battery was completely drained down, and in the battery tray compartment there was the nest of ants, complete with eggs and everything.

😶

That… Doesn’t happen with a daily driver. 🙃 They’re not going to survive a cooking engine compartment.

So, after wasting 4 hours of the evening and getting back late, and a big thank you to my mom for being patient with me the whole way with that unfortunate situation, we were home.

I don’t think I had eaten anything all day, so I went ahead and quickly shoved some food down my throat, vegged out a little bit, and conked off.

Oh! Miguel had found a Subaru XV Crosstrek for dirt cheap that supposedly needed a transmission, so I arranged to meet the person in the morning to look at it.

And that… Was my 29th. 🙂

On to Friday.

Friday morning I drove down to the towing company in Rogers where the 2014 Subaru XV Crosstrek was.

It had 200,000 miles, and they were listing it as having a blown transmission, but it was a pretty orange color that I actually liked a lot. 🙂 It had some minor dents and dings and scrapes and whatnot, but overall, it was a nice looking car, inside and out.

Good find. 🙂

The towing company apparently doubled as a mechanic shop, and they had it up on four Jack stands when I went to see it, so I couldn’t test the transmission. I just fired up the engine with a jump start and listen to it run. Engine seems to do fine, so I went ahead and bought the car.

Even though the engine was good, since we were already going to be replacing the transmission, I figured we might as well replace the engine since it had 200,000 miles, And Miguel agreed.

I didn’t have any way of getting it back to Miguel’s shop after buying it because I don’t have a trailer that can haul cars safely, so I paid for the car, got the title, and they said they would bring the car out to the parking lot in the front, so we could pick it up if they were closed by the time we came back with the trailer.

So I headed home from there.

It was nice to finally have a winner after going to three other cars that were all… not winners. 🙃

I don’t remember what else I did during the day. I think I mostly spent the day doing to-do list stuff and vegging out a little bit. It was definitely a hot day, mid-to-upper 90s, I believe.

When it got close to time for Miguel to be finished up at work and to come down to pick up the Subaru, I headed down and got there first.

In fact, Miguel found that the person he had loaned his trailer to had Left a huge tree trunk on it, left the batteries for the winch dead, and left the winch not working.

Ugh.

I told me y’all to go ahead and bring the trailer anyway,. That I was sure we could figure out a way to get the car on the trailer without the winch.

Well I was waiting for him, I decided to try and test the transmission, so I put the key in the ignition, jumped the car off, put the car and drive, and heard a nasty sound coming from the transmission.

Yup, definitely problems. But then… As I was putting the gear shifter back into park, I heard the rapid clicking/grinding sound that I’ve come to recognize as not a transmission issue.

Could it be to the transmission wasn’t actually bad?!?!?!

Being that it was a Subaru, I crawled underneath, and what did I see? The CV axle was sticking out nearly an inch from its fully seated position inside the transmission!!! There was transmission fluid all over the bottom of the transmission, like it had been leaking for a long time, because the fluid was mixed with dirt and not just soggy.

So I grabbed my jack and tools, jacked up the Subaru, pulled the suspension components apart, and pulled the CV axle out of the transmission.

As I inspected the end of the CV axle that went into the transmission, I noticed that all the splines for maybe a half an inch at the very end of the CV axle had all been ground  down.

Someone had installed the CV axle improperly and didn’t get it fully seated into the transmission.

😶

That resulted in grinding off the tip of the CV axle, making it so that the splines on the CV axle couldn’t fit in the grooves inside the transmission because over time with the CV axle improperly installed, it had slowly ground down all those splines to the point that there was nothing left to grab onto.

There were metal shavings all inside the transmission from having been ground down, so that certainly wasn’t good, but that awful sound and the reason the car wasn’t going to gear was almost certainly because of the issues with the improperly installed CV axle.

So I called Miguel and told him to go to the parts supplier and pick up a CV on his way to me, which he did, and which he brought over and helped me install.

Once installed, I fired up the Subaru with The help of my jump box, put it in drive, and it moved forward!!!

And when I shifted it to reverse, it went in reverse!

So I decided to take it out for a little drive and what would you know, but it drove around just fine! Sounded like it might have a bad wheel bearing in the back, but it seemed to drive just fine!

So the next step is to flush out the transmission to make sure there’s no more metal inside. I don’t know if any metal actually got into important places, but we need to be sure. And if everything works fine, and if we can get all the metal out of the transmission, then we can just sell it as it is and maybe give a little warranty on the transmission in the possibly unlikely scenario that it’s life span might have been reduced.

We got a winner!

After getting the trailer all loaded up, moving the tree trunk from the side of the bed of the trailer to the front and winching it up, Miguel and I and Koven all went out for dinner at a restaurant in downtown Rogers.

The food was good, but there AC was out, so it was stiflingly hot inside, but we enjoyed the meal, in the conversation, and then bid our farewells for the evening.

And that… was the 30th. 🙂

Love and hugs. 😊

Lift the World

~ stephen