It was just a three-car day today, the first two going relatively well, and then the last one giving a good bit of grief.
The first car was a Cadillac in the downtown Bentonville Walmart neighborhood parking lot parking garage. It was a no start that wasn’t responding to the keys. Grately, it just turned out to be a bad battery and a couple of bad key fobs.
I had to pick up the keys from the lady at her town home and then drop everything off when I was done, but it was relatively painless, gratefully.
Car number two was a Ford fusion alternator replacement. I had helped the gentleman with his car probably a month ago on a fairly complicated issue that I wasn’t confident I had diagnosed properly, but this time I was off the hook because he didn’t want any diagnosis. He just wanted me to bring an alternator and slap it in.
So that’s what I did. 🙃
The last car of the day was going back to the Sam’s club parking lot to work on that Toyota Sequoia that was a no start that I had briefly looked at late Saturday night when coming back from my Oklahoma adventures.
In the process of trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with it, leaning toward it being a starter issue, but not being sure, I found out that it wasn’t even possible to test the starter directly without removing it from the truck.
😶
And how hard was it to remove from the truck?
Oh, it’s like a 5-hour job. No big deal.
😶
Thank you, Toyota. Yes, I’ll give you kudos for the fact that the Toyota Sequoia is one of the most reliable vehicles ever made, but ouch!
The starter tucked underneath the exhaust manifold, in a place where you have to remove transmission line brackets just to even get the hope of getting a socket around one of the starter bolts. And then because they tuck it literally directly underneath the exhaust manifold, it has a heat shield wrapped around it to try and protect the starter from the massive heat output of the exhaust manifold.
And that heat shield blocks your ability to test the starter connections. So you have to remove pretty much everything just to be able to test it.
Yeah, so talk about a few nerves of anxious anticipation hoping that My tentative diagnosis of it being a bad starter was correct. 😅
Man that starter kicked my butt. I fought with it and fought with it and fought with it, finally getting it apart and out, and to my relief, it was indeed a bad starter.
🥳
Unfortunately, in the process of removing the starter, the ignition wire clip was damaged, the plastic crumbling and breaking off in my attempt to remove it from the starter.
That meant that the finalization of the repair was not going to happen that night.
I think part of me was actually a little relieved that I didn’t have to finish it because there was a lot more to do, and part of me wanted to just get it done.
So I left the customer know that it was going to have to sit in that parking lot one more day, and I called it a day.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 