Howdy hi, my lovelies. 😊
It’s the fifth, but I’m writing this entry for the third as though It were still the third because my brain just… Works better that way. 🙃
It was back to work today. Not very productive as work days go, but I was fine with it because I’m sort of easing back in.
I did four cars today. The first was a 2016 Honda Civic that was a no start and just needed a battery. So that was a great way to ease in. 🙃
Car number 2 was a 2006 Toyota 4Runner that also just needed a battery, so that was doubly a nice way to ease in to working again. 😁
Card number 3 was a 2001 Dodge ram 1500 that was stranded at a grocery store. He said his belt had come off and started shredding, so, as y’all know by now, that means almost certainly something else was wrong, and lo and behold, it was another busted water pump pulley.
Early 2000s Dodge water pump?
😅
Umm… no.
That’s an all-day job I’m not going to make any money on and don’t want to try and squeeze that mass of the job into this day.
Fortunately, and incredibly, Firestone quoted him a very reasonable price to do the job, and he had already talked to them because I’d taught him how to diagnose his truck over the phone, and he was doing the diagnosis while I was en route.
So I got there, I put the belt back on for him, so that he could drive the truck over to Firestone. I explained to him that as long as he didn’t rev the engine up, he should be okay to get there. I followed him about halfway there, before he waved me off and told me he was good to go the rest of the way without me following him.
From there, I went and stopped by the junkyard in Rogers because my seat belt stopped working in my work van, and I had been driving without a functional seat belt for a little while. Having time, I decided to slot myself in over there at the junkyard and see if I could come up with a seat belt to replace mine with. Gratefully, I was able to find a van there that had the same seat belt as mine, so I went ahead and pulled out the one from that one. While I was there, I decided to check and see if they had a work van there that might match up with my 2010 Ford, as I’m contemplating swapping that back to a gasoline vehicle instead of having the natural gas setup.
Amazingly, they had a 2011 Ford E350, and mine was a 2010, so I was super excited. I went over there, and it had everything that I expected that I would need except for the gas tank itself. It had the gas tank, but those self-pole junk yards drill holes in all the gas tanks to drain out the gas. EPA regulations and what not require that they remove all the fluids, and it’s a lot cheaper for them to just drill holes and drain out gas than it is to hope to sell a gas tank.
So I went to town pulling off parts from the injector rail all the way back to the fuel filler neck. I was there for probably an hour and a half, dropping the fuel tank to get the parts that are attached to the fuel tank itself, getting all the hoses and everything, and then… I had a realization. Even though a 2011 is only one year removed and almost certainly going to have all the same parts, I decided to double check.
Can you believe it? The 2011 uses different parts. Good freaking gravy. That was totally unexpected. I had thought that it was this awesome opportunity that was so unlikely to find, there being a work van at a pull apart junkyard that new.
So I basically wasted an hour and an hour and a half or whatever it was taking parts off that van. There’s a possibility that it wasn’t a complete waste. The fuel tank and the fuel pump are definitely different parts, but it’s possible that the fuel lines might be the same, but I just don’t know. I’m going to have to look up every single part, part by part, to make sure that I don’t get anything that doesn’t match up.
Gratefully, though I was disappointed, I wasn’t angry. So that’s progress. 🥳
After that, I headed over to pick up some more things for Haven Hill Creek Park. I was able to get a few of the things that I needed but not all of them. They had told me they had everything I needed, but when I got there, they didn’t. Apparently, someone had stolen one, and they had one fewer than they thought they had anyway. So I still need at least a couple more.
I’ll end up getting those another day.
Car number 4 was a 2020 Buick encore that had a coolant leak. When I got there, I looked everywhere but couldn’t find the leak. I looked at all the normal places that that awful 1.4 motor generally leaks, pressure tank, the thermostat water outlet housing, the heater hoses, the radiator hoses, etc. But I couldn’t find the leak. Finally, after looking and looking and looking and looking, I was finally able to see a little bit of coolant below the water pump. I’ve never had to do a water pump on those, and I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. It looked like a bigger job than I wanted to take on. Those engines require you to take the motor mount off to access the water pump. Heck, you have to take the motor mount off just to change the belt on those stupid things.
General motors junk.
Being that it was a 2020, however, and seeing that you had super low miles on the vehicle, I suggested to her that instead of paying me to fix it, she double check with the dealer to see if it was still under warranty, by chance. I mentioned that to her father as well, and he ended up calling me later and letting me know that it was indeed under warranty, so they should be able to get it fixed for free.
That’s a win for both of us. 🙃
I went home after that, I went into my room at a relatively decent hour with the intent of getting to bed and trying to get up early to Get back on my routine, but I couldn’t fall asleep.
And after an hour went by, I still wasn’t sleepy.
And another hour went by, and I still wasn’t sleepy.
I finally was able to fall asleep sometime at or around 1:30 in the morning, which led me to turn off all of my alarms before 6:57 a.m., so I could get some sleep.
While I was lying in bed not sleepy, I just spent a whole bunch of time on Facebook Marketplace looking at about 80,000 different things for sale. 😅
I might or might not be slightly addicted to Facebook Marketplace. 🙃
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 