I am so slow to get my little butt back to work. 😅
I’m just dragging. I just feel… done.
These next 10 days or so might make it even harder because it’s going to be so cold that I’m not going to be working anyway. 😆
Thursday will be my last work day until probably, at the earliest, the 18th, and possibly not until the 20 somethings of the month.
During which time, I will hopefully make some progress on getting rid of my stuff and getting non-profit stuff going, as well as getting out of the funk that I’ve been in since going to Utah.
As for today, I didn’t even get out of the house until after noon, I think.
I headed over to the DMV armed with some new information in the hopes that I might be able to find some way to get this resolved quicker. I was able to get the title number for the most recent title, and I was hoping to find that it was indeed listed as being for the person I bought it from, but no, it wasn’t. So I still have to go through whatever rigmarole it’s going to take to get this all resolved.
After that, I headed down to Fayetteville to do a pre-purchase inspection on a vehicle, which went fine. It had some issues and at least one big red flag, but the guy who owns the dealership seems like a pretty good guy. He’s going to take a look at the red flag that I found that wasn’t so obvious If you’re just taking it out for a normal test drive. I always drive them a little hard during the test drive to see if I can catch anything, and I did– Very concerning noise in the engine if you rev quickly. Likely something to do with lifters or timing, I think.
In this particular case, the owner is also a Honda mechanic, so he should be able to get it figured out and fixed.
The second car was in Springdale, and it was a crank no start. Based on what he was describing, it sounded like it was going to be a fairly simple issue to deal with, a common problem with those Ford fusions.
Usually, when you have the codes that his particular car was throwing, it comes down to just a bad fuel pump relay. And yes indeed, when I looked at the fuel pump relay, it was swollen just like is super common. And when I tested it, my scan tool kept showing failures with that relay. And when I swapped it with the horn relay, my scan tool no longer detected any failures with the relay.
So it wasn’t open and shut case.
Accept it wasn’t.
Putting a good relay in place of the bad one didn’t change anything. It’s still just cranked and cranked and wouldn’t start.
Total head scratcher. All the codes went away. It now had a good relay, but it was still the exact same problem.
With no codes to point to what the issue might be, I just started doing the normal diagnostic steps. He had done some work on his own to try and fix the issue, but it didn’t look like anything that he had done would have caused any problems.
I disconnected the fuel line and verified that he was indeed getting fuel, at least up to the engine. So… If it’s related to the fuel system, then it’s going to be a problem with the high pressure pump or the injectors.
But it could also be an issue with spark or compression or timing. The compression sounded fine when cranking it over, and I don’t think the timing was likely an issue. So I’m guessing the issue is either with the high pressure fuel pump or a spark issue of some sort. He had changed the spark plugs himself, but spark plugs are pretty hard to screw up.
Anyway, after being there for an hour and a half, and with the temperature getting rather cold with it being well after dark and whatnot, I decided to call it. I only charged him half my normal service call, even though I’ve been there for an hour and a half, and I gave him some suggestions for where to go from there given that I wasn’t going to be available for a couple weeks or so.
It’s still a total head scratcher. The issue was clearly just a bad relay, and it was all swollen and messed up and testing badly to prove it, but no dice. No fixy.
From there, it was home and bed, getting to bed later then I should have yet again.
I’m getting back on the wagon, though, so that’s good.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 