Whoops!
Sorry!!! I keep forgetting to write. I’d even missed a couple of work days. 😬
Of course, work days have been a good bit crazier lately than usual, and having long ago broken my once nearly perfect habit of writing every night before I went to bed, I just seem to keep… slipping.
So, Frenetic Friday the 18th. Here we go!
It was an eight-car day, starting with that 2007 Ford Escape that needed the power steering done on it. It was supposed to be a 2.75-hour job, but it absolutely kicked my butt. He was going so well. I had everything apart so much more quickly than I expected, and then it…wasn’t quite a nightmare, but it certainly went sideways multiple times.
They designed the power steering pressure line to go in through the bottom of the pump, but then they made everything so insanely tightly packed into the engine bay that I couldn’t get my hands in there to undo the super tight fitting that connects the power steering pressure line to the power steering pump.
When I was taking it apart, I realized that there was enough play in the power steering pressure line that I could disconnect the power steering pump from the block, and then disconnect the power steering pressure hose from the pump while it was out from its tight quarters.
That all worked great.
But it was getting it back together that turned into the sideways adventure. 😅
First of all, the foot pound torque was 48, but I had to figure out a way of doing that without the pump mounted to anything, so I had to hold the pump in my bare hands with both hands, well at the same time pressing a torque wrench with my chest, trying to keep the pump in my hands from rotating until I reached 40 foot pounds of torque.
That wasn’t easy. 😅
In the process of doing it, I noticed that the nylon crush washer had split into multiple pieces, and I thought I was completely hosed. 😬
Gratefully, enough of the crush washer remains for it to still be effective, so I finished tightening, fighting with everything to hold the pump in place while I torqued it down.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until afterward, all of that effort to try and properly torque the pressure line fitting caused the aluminum part of the line to bend in several different places.
Lovely.
It’s not that huge of an issue, overall, as the lines can easily be bent back without any issues. It’s just a trial and error process because I didn’t want any additional strain on the fitting with it being pressed to one side or the other. So I had to bend it a little and then try and put it on, and then bend it a little and try and put it on and on and on and on. Eventually, I finally got it and got everything back together, and it seal just fine and didn’t leak, so that was good.
Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the power steering pump to stop whining. It was just a tiniest little whine, and it would only happen here and there, but I could still hear it, and it’s not a good thing.
I tried to bleed it like four or five different times before finally giving up. It’s either going to be a pump that just whines a little bit out of the box, or I can’t get all the air out of the system. That’s one thing that I hate about Ford’s is how much of a pain in the butt they are to get the air out of the power steering system.
Anyway, after 4 and 1/2 hours of being there, on my first job of a schedule that started off with minor 10 cars, it was not looking so good for the rest of the day. 😅
So that…. Was car number one. Car number two was a 2012 Ford edge that was a no crank no start. I quickly found that the main starter fuse was blown. On those vehicles, there is a battery terminal fuse assembly, and the fuse to the starter was blown.
In the past, I ran into an issue where I didn’t realize the starter was the cause of the blown fuse, so I replaced an $80 fuse, only to have that expensive fuse blow the moment I tried to start the vehicle again.
Well, little me learned his lesson, so this time around, I went to the effort of digging my way into where the starter was, and then trying to jump the starter directly.
I’m glad I did, because the starter was not working, so I spent the rest of the service call our cleaning off ridiculously corroded battery cables, and scheduling a return time to replace the starter and the battery fuse assembly. The customer also decided she wanted her battery replaced at the same time, as it was a very old battery that would probably be going bad in the near future anyway (My tester said that it was a bad battery, but it probably could have lasted a few more months.)
Car number 3 was a 2012 Honda pilot That wouldn’t start. They had recently replaced the battery and alternator, but it was not starting. I did my diagnostics and realized that it looked like the issue was that they just didn’t tighten down the battery cable.
Kind of funny because they had replaced their own alternator, which is not a simple alternator to replace, and they had done a good job other than forgetting to tighten down their battery cable. So they ended up spending money to have a mechanic come back out anyway.
Poor guys. They had done such a great job on a fairly technical repair but just missed something simple right at the end.
Car number four was a 2012 Ford flex that needed a belt and belt tensioner installed. They had already removed the tensioner and the belt, so I was a little puzzled as to why they would need help installing the new tensioner and belt, but they wanted my help, so I gave it. 😊
Gratefully, it was super straightforward. No broken bolts, no issues. Just three bolts to install the new tensioner, and then wind the belt around in its proper course, and I was done.
🥳
Car number five was a 2007 Infiniti G35. Aaaaaand… I’m drawing a blank. I can’t remember this car but vaguely. 😅
Car number six was a 2011 Chevrolet avalanche that needed rear brake pads and rotors. I seem to always get amnesia, so I always forget that I absolutely hate brake work on Chevy SUVs and trucks.
I hate doing breaks anyway, but Chevy SUVs and trucks are easily my least favorite, at least of those I do regularly enough to remember.
And if it weren’t annoying enough with how they design them, it seems like the brake pad manufacturers always screw them up. I end up having to get my metal file and file down the brake pad backing plate in order to be able to even get the brake pad into the caliper bracket.
It’s so annoying. They take so much longer than they should just because of crappy vehicle design and crappy parts.
One of the things that makes the vehicle design so stupid and frustrating is that the proper guiding boots are pressfit in instead of just a regular little rubber boots that you can just take off.
Since the boots are made of rubber, I can’t just spray brake cleaner all over them and all over the inside of the caliper bracket like I would normally do to clean all the old grease out. Brake cleaner can make rubber swell up, and a swollen guide pin boot is not going to keep the dirt out of the guide pin holes in the bracket.
Anyway, so I have to get really creative on how to clean the old grease out in order to apply fresh grease.
I’m probably the only mechanic in the world who takes time to do all this.
So it ended up taking a really long time, that was really frustrating and annoying, but I got it done, and that was that. She’s a customer who’s used me multiple times, so I don’t really want to say no to something as “simple” as a brake job. The more services you don’t provide, the less incentive they have to use you.
Car number 7 was a 1997 Ford mustang that he wanted a new fuel filler neck tank seal installed on. I had never even seen a vehicle that had a seal between the filler neck and the fuel tank. Every single one that I have seen, that I can recall, simply has a molded tube that’s part of the tank itself, and the fuel filler neck hose simply clamps to that molded part of the tank. But not on this one. Believe it or not, there’s actually a seal that holds the gas inside. Super weird. Never seen anything like it. Have no idea why anyone would ever do anything like that.
It was definitely more complicated than I expected it to be, taking longer than I was hoping for, and especially when you’re trying to keep dirt from getting in the gas tank. But eventually, I was able to get it done, and I think I kept the vast majority of the dirt that probably would have normally gone into the tank on such a repair, out of the tank.
The last car was going back to a 1997 Toyota RAV4. It was the one that I had been to before where they had a blown mega fuse or whatever, and they decided they wanted to replace it themselves.
So they replaced it themselves, but the vehicle still didn’t start, so I went back out there to try and help them figure it out, after walking them through some tests over the phone. Over the phone, we had narrowed it down to a 95% chance that it was a starter, so they had replaced the starter, but that hadn’t fixed the issue.
When I got out there, I found that their battery cable connector was one of the ones that’s painted, and they had connected their battery cable to the painted part and not the bare-metal part.
So they were getting the proper voltages to the starter, which is why we suspected 95% chance that it was a starter problem, but they weren’t getting the amps that they were supposed to get. Unfortunately, that’s not something that I could really help them with over the phone.
So I replaced their battery cable and, cleaned up the connections, and she fired right up. 🥳
18th in the books. Four Fords out of eight cars total. 12.2 billable hours.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 