Just another day, really. I went down to Farmington to look at a car first thing this morning. It was a 2015 Jeep compass that’s supposedly was just in limp mode with a couple of codes, but when I went down there, I found that It had been in an accident both front and rear that was repaired decently but not Well enough to have matching gaps at the body panels. I also found that it had a blown head gasket.
I didn’t buy it. 🙃
The first service call was actually for a 2021 motorcycle. Someone had stolen it, and he had purchased it from the auction as a theft salvage, and they had damaged the ignition. So he bought new ignition parts, but he couldn’t remove the old ones because they had those safety torx bolts, and he couldn’t get them off.
So I went over and figured out how to get the bolts out.
The next car was a 2012 Chevy Cruze that wouldn’t start. I got there, and the battery was drained down, and the spark plugs were all missing.
😶
Nobody mentioned anything about someone else having worked on the car…
With a spark plugs out, and finding no coolant in the car, I decided to do a compression test as well. The compression test found that the compression was low on all four cylinders.
Good gravy, the Chevy Cruze has to be one of the worst vehicles ever built.
Car number three was a 2003 Chevrolet TrailBlazer that had some wacked out weird electrical issues. The car wouldn’t start, and if the ignition was turned on, the electronics all over the car would just flip out.
After an hour, I figured out that the electrical wacked outness was caused by the ignition switch.
That diagnosis kicked my butt. I had wires attached to wires and testers all over the place.
And it was brutally hot. 🥵
After I installed a new ignition switch, everything seemed to be fabulous. All the electrical issues stopped. The vehicle started right away, and I thought we were good to go. I texted the customer, and he came out, and when I was showing him that it was working, all the sudden, it didn’t crank over.
Then it started on the next attempt just fine.
Then no crank.
The more I tried to start it, the more frequently it wouldn’t work. After a while, it wouldn’t work at all again. I figured it out that if I held the ignition lock cylinder a certain way, sometimes I could get it to start– wiggling it and putting pressure randomly.
That was super frustrating. I spent 2 hours fighting with it trying to figure it out after that, and finally had to throw up the white flag. I could prove that it needed the ignition switch that I put in, but I had no idea what was going on. Was the new ignition switch bad out of the box? When that happens, it can be an absolute an absolute nightmare.
Was there a problem with the lock cylinder? Or the internal housing?
If I had the gas, I would say there must be a problem with the internal Lock cylinder housing. But I don’t know. I showed the customer multiple ways of starting the vehicle, bypassing the problem, and I showed him how to replace the ignition switch, should it turn out to be bad out of the box, but I was definitely stumped.
The last car was a 1998 Ford mustang that wouldn’t start. It had really nasty battery cables, so I took them off, cleaned everything, so that it could have a good connection, and reinstalled everything. The car fired up with a jump, but I noticed that the alternator was going out. Sometimes it would put out voltage to the battery and sometimes nothing.
The alternator was from O’Reilly’s and was several years old, so I let her know that the alternator would be under warranty and she could get the replacement from O’Reilly’s for free if they could find it on her account. I pulled the alternator out for her and taught her how to install the new one when she got it.
That was it for the day, work wise–just four cars, and just over five billable hours.
Dinner. Veging out a little bit. And bed a little bit earlier than usual.
Another day in the books. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 