Back at it again today. 6 more cars.
The first one was a 2009 Toyota Camry that needed a battery. I also found that it had an oil leak and really low oil, lower than I could safely start it with, and it also had a coolant leak at the radiator.
So I topped off the oil, replaced the battery, and went to top off the super low coolant, but realized that my distilled water jugs were frozen completely solid. 😆
And in the process of freezing solid, the jugs were damaged and no longer watertight.
But I needed distilled water to mix with the concentrated coolant that I had, so I put the jug of frozen water with the leaking part of the jug facing up and let it sit in my van’s engine bay with the engine running. I probably had to do that for like 20 or 30 minutes before I got enough melted water to fill the reservoir and radiator enough to be satisfied.
That’s definitely a first for me. 🙃 I’ve never had to unfreeze a jug of distilled water to be able to complete a job. 😆
Card number two was a 2005 Dodge Dakota that had the key stuck in the ignition without being able to turn it. I disassembled the steering column beauty covers and was able to, gratefully, get the lock cylinder to finally turn so that I could remove it from the housing. Once removed from the housing, I was able to verify that it was indeed the lock cylinder and not the ignition switch or the intermediate pieces in the housing.
So I replaced the lock cylinder assembly, grateful that his truck was old enough that it didn’t need to have a program to key, then poured in four quarts of oil because The engine was massively low on oil, and he was good to go from there.
Card number three was a 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee that she wanted me to replace the battery in. So I bought two batteries, because her car had two different size options, and I didn’t know which one she was going to need. When I got there, the battery was in drained down, but I also found that she had an auxiliary battery in her system as well.
I didn’t want to just guess and replace both of them, because that would have been a bill somewhere between 6:00 and $700, wish she was not up for. So I charged the system a little bit, tested the auxiliary battery, and it tested good, so I figured then it would have be the main battery that was bad, so I finished charging everything up, tested the auxiliary battery again, and it again tested good, and then I tested the regular battery, and it tested good as well.
🤔
That was a bit of a head scratcher. I even turned the brights on for like 10 seconds to take off any surface charge, which should have then revealed the bad batteries, but nope, they still tested good.
So I told her that I still suspected that one of the batteries was bad, most likely the main battery, but I couldn’t prove it because every single time I tested, they were testing good. Being short on funds, she decided not to replace either one of them, so I gave her a list of tools to buy so that she could figure it out for herself next time without having to call me. She was grateful for that, and so I just charged my service call, giving her a discount because I was there longer than an hour, and called it good.
Card number four was a 2018 Honda Civic that wouldn’t start and that she said had all sorts of weird issues. I went out there and found that the main battery was drained down to about four volts. The odd thing, though, was the battery was only like a year and a half old, and the girl that was there said that they had changed the battery like three times in the last 2 years.
🤔
I disconnected the main battery from the car all together, so that I could bypass it and use my jump box only, and with my jump box, the car fired right up without any problems whatsoever. The alternator was reading fine, and everything on the inside of the Civic was good to go, no lights of any real concern, with the only message that was actionable that I was concerned about as far as making sure the car would start and everything was a message letting her know that the battery in her key fob was getting low.
But that wouldn’t explain why the battery was down to 4 volts and not an old battery, and with this being the third battery replacement in just a couple years, something was up.
So I started doing a parasitic draw test, and did indeed find a parasitic draw, but it was a weird one. Instead of being a steady draw with maybe a 0 -01 fluctuation, it was fluctuating significantly up and down. It would get as low as .047, which is an acceptable draw level, but then it would bounce up all the way as high as 0.6, which is many times the acceptable level of draw.
With it fluctuating as badly as it was, there was no real way for me to properly isolate the draw.
I ended up isolating it as best as best I could to the middle multi-fused fuse assembly. Unfortunately, with that design from Honda, it’s a fuse assembly that has built into it six different main circuits. Where as a normal vehicle would have a separate fuse for each circuit, Honda developed theirs to have one fuse assembly with six internal fuses.
That means there’s no way to isolate those individual circuits, at least not in any way that I’m aware of.
Anyway, by the time I got to that point, I’d already been there quite a long time, so the next step was just to let them know their options, either taking it in to a shop to try and isolate the draw to the particular circuit and component causing the issue, or to install a battery quick disconnect fitting to the battery negative terminal.
Vehicle number five was going back to a 2016 Dodge ram diesel that I think a couple years ago I had spent several hours fabricating a steel mesh cage to wrap around his huge air intake assembly, as well as another metal mesh dealie to go around his washer fluid reservoir.
He had had squirrels chewing through his intake assembly and his washer fluid bottle, and the dealer it charged him like $1,200 or $1,500 or something like that to replace his air intake boot. So he paid me I forgot how much to fabricate a metal mesh thingy to keep them out.
This time around It wasn’t anything half so complicated. He just needed batteries, and again, since it was a diesel, he needed two batteries.
Those particular batteries are $250 each, so after two batteries, my regular service call, is I didn’t even charge him the diesel price, it was still nearly $700 after tax and everything.
😶
Gratefully, he didn’t even blink, and even gave me like a $45 tip. Even though it’s super expensive to me, I think he knows it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than what he would get charged at the dealer or a diesel repair shop. So he was happy, and I was happy, and there was peace on Earth.
Or something. 🙃
The last car of the day was going back to my friend John’s widow. I brought the alternator to replace the one that I had removed last week, installed it, put the belt back on, used my van to charge his battery while I was doing the repairs, fired up the truck, and left her with instructions to leave it running for at least 20 or 30 more minutes, as the battery had been drained down to basically nothing.
And that was card number 6, and that was the end of my work day. I may not work again until next Friday, depending on the weather. We shall see.
I ended up billing nine and a 1/2 -ish billable hours for the day, so that was a super productive day. 🥳
That helps bring in a few dollars for all these days that I’m taking off with the weather the way that it is.
Love and hugs!
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 