It was a pretty rough morning today. I’d hoped for some respite, even maybe an improvement upon waking up, but I didn’t get much sleep, and I woke up worse than I went to bed.
I was pretty much in full-on crisis mode (faith stuff still). It was rough.
But I did my morning routine as I have, not making really much of any progress spiritually, but at least making a decent little bit of progress on my servicize efforts clearing out the vines and brush down by the deck.
I haven’t decided yet whether I think doing that kind of stuff is helping my back or hurting my back. I think doing car work today might have actually been more helpful than hurtful? I don’t know.
I’ve done only a tiny bit of research so far into local back surgeons. Gratefully, it looks like they’re may well be a fairly good number of them who are super solid. I think there were at least four or five back surgeons just in the local area that were 4.9 to 5 stars in their ratings. Something like that. So I need to make an appointment. I should probably start calling and seeing schedules, as oftentimes their scheduled out months in advance. Such was the case for my ENT person. Now I guess, given everything that I’ve been learning about what’s going on, or feel like I’ve been learning at least, I think these issues with my stomach may well be related to all the back issues.
That would be nice, in some ways, to have my stomach and acid issues and my back issues and my hip knee and ankle problems all stemming from the same basic issue.
Maybe I could get everything fixed in one fell swoop. 🙃🤞
My mom was having a rough time this morning as well. Not the greatest when both people are having a rough go, but we try and help each other, so that’s a plus, and our struggles right now are in different areas, so That probably helps us be able to help each other a little more.
Today was my first day back at work and over 2 months. Not my first day working on cars, mind you, as I’ve been helping family and friends on the road trip and since being back, but my first day actually going out to help customers and making a few nickels from it.
I chatted with My friend Cory as I was going down to Fayetteville for the first job. He’s super supportive, but he also doesn’t have personal experience with testimony struggles, as he’s never dealt with those before. He’s always had a solid foundation, which is super cool.
I had three job scheduled for today and figured I’d get a bunch more calls during the day today, but two of the jobs that I had scheduled canceled on the drive down to Fayetteville, and the one job that I had left that was in Fayetteville called me to let me know, after I arrived at the address that he had given me, that he was actually not there but was back up in Bentonville.
Ugh.
So I drove all the way back up to Bentonville, spent about 2 and 1/2 hours with the gentleman. It was a pretty complicated situation. He talked about white smoke out the tailpipe, lack of power going up hills, and coolant disappearing from his reservoir.
That’s classic blown head gasket.
And when I got there, I noticed that his coolant pressure tank was full of oil.
So that confirmed it in my mind. Blown head gasket. Not to mention that it was a Chevrolet Sonic, and I think y’all know by now what I think about Chevy cars and how… ridiculously crappy they are, in my opinion.
So a blown head gasket just made all the sense in the world.
So why was I there for 2 and 1/2 hours? Well, he had over filled his oil. There was no coolant in the oil, and the darn thing passed its block test (even though every single sign was pointing toward a blown head gasket, I don’t like giving catastrophic diagnoses without confirming the diagnosis. Hopefully, I haven’t made that mistake in the past.)
So it passed the block test, but all signs were still pointing toward a blown head gasket (block tests aren’t definitive if they come up clean).
So I decided to do a compression test to verify for sure. He had also massively overfilled his oil, and I found metal in the oil, which clearly was not a happy sign.
Very good chance that the metal and the oil was caused by having been massively over full on oil, is that causes the engine to be starved of oil. I think I’ve explained that before, but… If I haven’t, you can just Google it for an explanation of why it does that. 🙃
Then I threw my scan tool on the car because he mentioned that when it was losing power up hills is check engine light was flashing, which told me that he was having a dead misfire. A dead misfire could be a symptom of a blown head gasket, but it could also be an issue with spark plugs, or the coil, etc. And these particular engines had lots of issues with those coils, so there was another possibility.
When I pulled out his all-in-one ignition coil setup, the ignition coil came out broken, and all four spark plug wells were full of oil.
So here we were with all signs at the beginning pointing to blown head gasket, but the further that I dig into it trying to prove the blown head gasket, the more things are popping up that are making it look like maybe it’s not a blown head gasket.
If you had asked me in the beginning given his description, and everything that I was seeing, I probably would have said that the chances of it being something other than a blown head gasket were tiny.
But here we were. Now it seemed much more likely that the misfires were being caused by either the broken coil tips or the massive amount of oil inside the spark plug wells, or both.
But there was white smoke coming out…
(It didn’t happen while I was there, though)
With all that oil in the spark plug wells, in order to do the compression test, I had to clean out the oil first. So We know we’ve got oil getting into the engine, Still quite likely a blown head gasket, but not as confident now. We’ve got a blown valve cover gasket and a hissing coming from the valve cover, indicating on this one, I believe, that the valve cover itself was bad, the PCV valve having gone out on it, which necessitates having to buy a whole new valve cover.
These kinds of experiences with cars don’t happen all that frequently. When they do, it’s a challenge to figure out what’s going to be best for the customer. The only thing I can really do is tell them everything that I’m finding and thinking and let them make the choice. At first, it was so clear that it was blown head gasket. But as you dig in, which costs more money because it takes more time to dig into all these different things, the possibility that the catastrophic diagnosis is being reduced. So I gave him all the options that I could think of.
I cleaned out all the oil out of the spark plug wells, and then I did the compression test.
It passed. Flying colors. 😶
But the oil in the coolant? The white smoke coming out the back? The coolant disappearing over time that he’d have to top off…
The customer had a money limit of $200, and I was already well over that limit, so I was just staying there for no additional charge to help him out, teaching him about how everything worked and what was going on.
When all was said and done, the point that we were at was that the oil in the cooling system was almost certainly because of a bad oil cooler gasket. The metal in the oil was likely from his having way over filled the engine and oil starved it, and the lack of power was caused by the misfires which were caused by a severe oil leak into the spark plug wells and broken coil assembly.
I couldn’t give him an answer for the smoke out the back, yet… But basically what I said was go get yourself a couple of oil changes right away to get as much of the metal out of the engine as you can. And get yourself another coil to put back in. If, when driving the car around, the power is back and it seems to be driving fine, then let’s get that oil leak into the cooling system fixed and go from there.
So that’s what he’s going to do. He was super appreciative of how much time I took and how I explained everything.
Nice guy.
The next job was going back to a customer that I had been to a few months back, I think in August. Back then, he had a 2012 Honda Civic that wouldn’t start, and turned out that it just needed a battery. Well, he actually owns 2 2012 Honda civics, and guess what? He called because the other one wouldn’t start, and when I went out there, what did it need?
Battery.
I love Honda civics. Honda civics, Toyota Corollas… Those are two of my favorite cars to own.
I have the choice to do more jobs today from people who called, but with his heavy as Things have been for me the last couple days, and with nothing left on the schedule that was promised to anyone, I chose to go ahead and just head home.
Instead of going right up to the house, I went back over to the deck over the creek, and I started to clear more vines and brush away.
I saw my mom heading back home, I flagged her down, so she drove through the field to the deck, and we chatted for a while. I sort of just verbally threw up all over her all things that were going through my mind.
She listened and shared some thoughts. I’ve got a great mama.
I had a bit of a scare while I was doing all that because I realized that all these vines that I’ve been pulling for I don’t know how long, turned out to be attached to What looked exactly like a thick poison ivy root up the side of the tree.
[gulp]
We spend a few minutes trying to identify for certain what we were looking at. It didn’t look like poison ivy with the leaves in the branches that were coming off. Usually poison ivy is super easy to identify when you see the leaves and branches coming off the main vine. But that main vine was classic poison ivy. Classic.
I got Mom a little sample, and she drove off to a couple of nurseries to try and identify for sure what it was, while I went home, chucked my clothes in the washer, and jumped in the shower. If it were poison ivy, then I almost certainly would be breaking out in a rash a few days from now, but at least the shower would wash off whatever oils I had gotten on me, and I wouldn’t keep spreading them around.
After my shower, with my mom still gone, I spent some time watching some videos that were helpful for me in getting me grounded a little bit from all of my fears from yesterday and today.
Once again, as It’s now evening, I’m feeling much better than I was in the morning.
Crossing my fingers that tomorrow won’t be another repeat of the last two mornings. 😅
Mom got home, and we chatted a little bit more, and now here I am writing in my journal.
Earlier today I noticed something happen that I didn’t expect…
Expect… there’s that word. Having expectations about things I have no control over is just… not helpful for me. 🙃
I guess I just watch and see where things go from here.
Gratitude.
- I’m grateful that it’s 8:06 p.m., and that I’m finishing up my journal. I think I’m actually going to get to bed a little early tonight. 🥳 I’ve really struggled falling asleep since changing my schedule. Even though I’m tired, I think my body’s circadian rhythm is still trying to figure out what the heck I just did. 😅
- I’m grateful to feel a lot more grounded right now. I’m not as concerned as I was yesterday or earlier today. Just like last night, the light seems to be poking through the clouds just a little bit. I hope I can hold on to it.
- Despite how challenging a lot of this is, I am at least grateful to know that truth is the most important thing to me. I’m finding my way. It’s messy. It’s painful. It’s hard. But I think I’m going to come through the other side stronger for it.
- I’m grateful for my wonderful mother. 😊 Wish she weren’t getting old.
- I’m grateful that despite The challenges of the last few days, The anger that I was carrying for so long doesn’t seem to have returned with the fear. That’s really… really nice.
G’night, y’all.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 