Thats the bidniz,,,

Day at Da’s doin’ domestic stuffs. Tam and her sis were there cleaining house for the old guy and Tam asked how much I would charge to ‘fix her brakes’. Hubby had done rear calipers but had no clue how to bleed the brakes on these new fangled cars. I didn’t quote a figure, just said, I would need to see it and would be ‘fair about it’.

2011 Found on Road Dead Soccer-mom type toy. She also asked me to look into why her horn doesn’t work. (here we go!!!)

took toy down road for test run to verify soft pedal: Yup! Scan tool running and this poor beast is flat mess in the CANBUS arena. 17 codes, mostly communication errors, and 11 of them for the “Steering column computer”

uurrrrkkkkkkkkk!!!! the WHAT?!?!?!

Yup, you read that right. There is ONE computer that does nothing but monitor AND CONTROL the steering column. It’s one of those that will ‘push you back in your lane’ when driving on roads with marked lanes and shoulders. Theres another computer that monitors the 6 cameras on board. Those two computers ain’t talking to each other. No back up camera, turn signals work, but a couple of the other features do not; like radio controls on the wheel, nor the horn. I can tell this is an Insurance Job used car: I haven’t seen the title, but I would lay money down it says “salvage title’. I won’t be doing a whole lot of digging around in things to figure out the CANBUS issues.`

I used the scan tool to bleed the ABS motor, and that was about it, other than peeking into the system. Car runs like a scolded cat, and now the brakes work great: good pedal and put you through the windshield if you ain’t strapped in. I did a physical bleed at each wheel too, just to make sure. And wrote copious notes about all of it. She really needs rotors and calipers on the rear. Hubby did a padslap and took the calipers off to mount in a vice to compress them. Thats why he needed the system bled. I noted this as well. I won’t be held responsible if those calipers fail because he crushed the adjustment threads inside. I probably left some of you in the tall weeds just now. Rear calipers have to be screwed back in: you can’t compress them like the front ones.

Thats is one lesson I learned over the years in the shops: document document document!!! Saved me a couple of times. And those two times were enough to hammer it home.

Funny how I get sloppy on my own stuff though,,,,

I was fair. $20 for the bleed, another $5 for materials (fluid and cleaner) and $30 for the scantool work. (I gotta charge something there, that machine is not FREE to me, nor will it be to customers.) I was probably overly fair to be honest, but this thing is just kickin’ off. I need to eat a little to grow a bit.

Back to the J.O.B. tomorrow. BadCuz is supposed to be dropping a C-note on me tomorrow in compensation for that transmission he pulled from Donortruck. (had to wait for his SSI check.) Tam will be paying me tomorrow, and the only bill due this week (that hasn’t been paid yet) is Car Insurance. So long as BadCuz honors his debt, I’m good. He doesn’t, I’m still OK, just not as happy about things, and he WILL be pestered, I promise.

A’ight, thats about all I have today,,,

oh,, wait a second,,, Something I did want to mention. I made mention that Peter Theil ran to Argentina with his fam in a recent post. I made some guesses as to why then. I saw this today,