Last work day of 2023.
Gratefully, it went relatively well… until the last car.
The first car was a 2007 Toyota Camry that had a coolant leak. Turned out to be a blown radiator, and the radiator that they needed was in a different city a little ways away, so it wasn’t realistic to try and fix it right away, so I ordered the part, only charged him half of a service call for the first visit, until tomorrow I’d come back in the evening to fix the radiator. The job booked at something like 3.6 hours, but it looked a lot easier than that, so I quoted it as 3.6 hours, but I let him know that it might end up being less because it looked to me like it was clearly a poor engaged to go off of given what I was looking at as needing to be done to do the job.
But, still, not knowing what I might run into, I gave him the initial quote based on what my system told me to quote.
Second job was a 2006 GMC Sierra that I was told was having an electrical issue. When I got there, however, it wasn’t an electrical issue at all, it was a transmission that was blown. He had issues with the RPMs going up but with the transmission not shifting into the next gear automatically like it should. I checked the transmission fluid, and it was burnt, and the color might as well have been a black silver metallic.
He needs a new transmission… Or to rebuild the one he’s got.
Car number three was a 2000 Chevy Silverado that the guy wanted me to put an oil pressure sensor in. It was a little bit of the pain because it was super dirty back where the oil pressure sensor was, and I didn’t want to get the oil pressure sensor dirty while I was installing the new one, so I had to find a way to hook up my camera so I could see where the oil pressure sensor goes so I wasn’t just doing it by feel and scraping the tip of the pressure sensor across all the crap that was on the back of the engine, which could cause the sensor to plug up immediately. That took a good little while, but it still wasn’t terrible. Definitely annoying and a frustrating pain in the butt, but not ridiculous.
Car number 4 was a 2010 GMC that needed a battery replaced, so I went ahead and did that for her. She had just gotten back from Spain, and it turns out that she is from an area nearby where I was in back in 2003 when I backpacked through the northern part of Spain. We spent a day in San Sebastian, and I Guess she grew up relatively near there.
Car number five was a 2005 Honda Civic that wouldn’t start. It seemed like it was going to be a battery or starter issue, but after cleaning off all the cables and tightening the connection to the starter where the ignition wire clips on, it started just fine every single time. So I told him that if I had to guess, it might have a bad starter, but it was running beautifully every single time we tried it, and I didn’t want to replace the starter on a gas. So I showed him what to do, and he’s confident that if it happens again he can replace the starter himself, so he should be good to go. While I was there, I also diagnosed his other vehicle for him, that one definitely did need to start her. I could see this Sparks flying out of the rear of the starter as he was cranking the engine over. The whole assembly was loose and sparking. It still started the car, but… 😅.
Car number 6 was a 2014 Chevy Captiva that was overheating with the coolant leaking. He said that when he put new coolant in, it just poured right back out immediately. So I started looking around, and I saw that a radiator had recently been replaced. I didn’t see any immediately leaks, so I hooked up my pressure tester, and lo and behold, the lower radiator hose was completely disconnected from the radiator. 😶
The friend or brother or whoever it was that he had replaced the radiator for him hadn’t realized that the spring clamp had locked itself in the open position, so when he went and put it all back on, the spring clamp wasn’t actually tightening the hose around the radiator, was just sitting there in the locked open position. So I put the hose back on the radiator, fastened the spring clamp on as it should be, filled the system, bled the system, and it looks like he might get away with not having a blown motor. 🤞
The last car on the docket was going back to that ’07 Toyota Camry that needed the radiator. I had picked up the parts earlier in the day, and went and did the job. Everything went smoothly until I had to put the radiator fan assembly back in, and it wouldn’t line up with the new radiator slots. I probably spent a half hour to an hour working just on trying to shave off the plastic on the radiator fan assembly so that it would slide on to the little clips that hold the radiator fan to the radiator.
That was a bit frustrating, and took absolutely forever to shave off the plastic and figure out exactly which parts of the plastic needed to be shaved off in order to get it to fit properly.
I let the customer know of the… Modifications 😅… To his radiator fan assembly, and he was fine with it.
I got done after dark, somewhere around 6:30ish, I think. It was definitely a decently productive day, so that’s a good thing at least.
Home. Bed.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 