Can your employer change your hours worked from 40 to 13 hours worked if you worked everyday and completed 40 hours on commission pay? My husband is 58 and he is having trouble keeping up with the other younger mechanics. He is working so hard and even trying to work 7 days a week just to make a descent paycheck.

What are the things related to your shop that bothers the SH*T outta you?! Or things that gets in the way of your success? By all means, this is an opportunity to vent! But after reading these posts, I think that's the point of this sub. So other than people, what other things bother you and/or prevent success as a mechanic or shop owner?

I've got a few stories that have a common theme, even though they are all unrelated. I got paid for diagnostics for every last one of them (whether or not the customer paid for said diagnostics isn't my department), and all of them could have been fixed if the customer had remembered 4 simple letters. RTFM. Read The Fucking Manual. Here they are, in no particular order.

Story #1, Transit Connect

Customer brought in their Transit Connect with a complaint of a whirring noise above their head when the engine was running. I get in and start the engine, sure enough, I can hear a whirring noise coming from above and behind my head. It sounds just like a blower motor (aka the HVAC fan). I bring the van inside and look at the back of the center console to see if it's got rear HVAC controls. Sure enough it does. I turn the fan control on the back of the center console to the "off" position, and the noise goes away.

Story #2, Subaru Outback

My (now ex) wife called me up and asked if I could check the windows on her car when she came home for the weekend since they weren't working. I thought this was rather odd, since Subaru window regulators never go bad (at least I've never had any complaints about them in the 20+ years I've been doing this professionally) so I doubted that there was anything wrong with the windows on her car. I asked her if she had hit the window lockout button by accident. She assured me that she hadn't hit the button by mistake. I asked her to go outside and check it just to make sure. I heard her go outside and open her car door, then I heard the click of the lockout button and the whir of the windows working. She got mad at me for making her feel stupid by diagnosing a car from an hour and a half away over the phone.

Story #3, Ford Focus

Customer brings his 2016ish Focus to my shop. His concern is that the "wave your foot under the rear bumper and open the trunk" feature doesn't work. On certain models (The C-Max, Edge, Explorer and Expedition come readily to mind, there may be others) there was an optional extra you could get that would put a sensor in the rear bumper so that you could wave you foot under it and open the rear hatch. Ford has only ever put that on cars that had rear hatches that would open all the way up electrically. The Focus never had that as an option, and I'm not sure if such a thing could even be adapted to a Focus chassis. The customer got angry with me when I explained that Ford never gave the Focus that optional extra.

Story #4, Toyota Corolla

Customer has her Toyota Corolla towed to my shop with a crank-no-start condition. We push the car inside and I notice that the fuel gauge is on empty. As a test, I get the shop gas card and the gas can, go and buy a gallon of gas and dump it in the tank. After a slightly extended cranking time (since the fuel system had to repressurize itself), the car started and ran just fine. I happened to overhear the conversation between the service adviser and the customer when he told her how we fixed the car; "Ma'am, your car's all fixed, it just ran out of gas. We only put in a gallon so you're going to want to go directly to a gas station and refuel it". She responded "You mean I have to keep buying parts for this piece of shit? I thought Toyotas were supposed to be reliable. No one told me that I had to keep buying parts for it. This is ridiculous. I'm going to sue General Motors over this." She took her keys and left, never to be seen again.

As I review these posts, I'm wondering if/how do you get your repair data (repair instructions, trouble codes, TSB, labor times etc..)? It seems that this info. would help answer some of these posts or make things easier? Please elaborate if I'm wrong?

So we do a lot of work for a local car lot. They bring a ton of incoming cars to us and have us check them over. Most cars they fix whatever it needs like tires, brakes, wipers etc. A few need more than they want to sink in and those go back to the auction to get resold. Some have major components needing replacement and in those cases they go into arbitration with the auction to see what will happen. It's a good steady stream of business right now.

So the other day a guy shows up with a 2017 Ford Escape. He bought it from the car lot months ago and he has seen a leak. We put it up on a rack and see that the outboard axle seal is leaking on the side of the transaxle. I take him back there and show him.

His first question is are we going to fix it for free? Umm, why exactly would we do that? He says it is clear (to him) that it was leaking six months ago when we inspected it, that we clearly missed it and should step up and fix it.

I tell him that A) No it is not clear we missed anything, if it were leaking we would have heard about it long ago. B) That we did not do any work for him, our ticket is with the car lot and they apparently do not have an issue. (They cover stuff for thirty days and we will work with them on problems) and that C) he signed an AS-IS when he bought that car and it did not have a warranty. Every used car in our state is sold with such. And D) we aren't going to do anything on a Escape transmission anyway, those have a reputation and we send all such out to a local transmission shop anyway.

The guy comes unglued and starts saying how when he was in the Coast Guard if he inspected it and it wasn't right they would take care of it. I started to point out that he was not personally writing the check, rather the taxpayers were taking care of his bill, but whatever.

It got better, he was going to tell every one of his friends not to come to a shop he never spent money with in the first place, he was going to get all over social media (never happened) and give us bad reviews and he was going to contact his lawyer and call the local TV news channel. I gave him my card and told him to do what he needed to do and to have a good day.

I haven't been on the news for a long time, hope they get my good side when they come!

I have a 2013 Hyundai Sonata that needs a tow to a town 10 minutes away and then a repair for a new alternator. I wanted to know if this quote sounds reasonable or not because I’ve called around to a few other places and they either only fix auto body, or they don’t have a tow truck or it’s just gets really complicated where this place has a tow truck and a repair shop all in one. They said the tow would be around 150. Then the repair around 550 for a new alternator and the labor and this was just a rough estimate to me. The seems pretty pricey because the alternator is around $100-$200 so just wanted to see if this sounds like a fair price to everyone else?!

Yall tell me the truth…. Do the mechanics mess tiny things up so I can go back 🫢

I recently had a customer bring their 2023 F-150 in for a check engine light. The truck has almost 8000 miles on it. There are codes for a misfire on cylinder 4 and an oxygen sensor voltage stuck low. I open the hood and find a critter nest on top of the intake manifold. I take a picture of the nest, put on a mask (I already had gloves on) and remove the nest. Into the trash can it goes. I use compressed air to blow the rest of the debris out from under the hood. I found several chewed wires, one of which is going to necessitate replacement of the connector for the number 4 ignition coil since the wire is chewed off right at the connector. The other broken wires are repairable.

I write up the estimate with a bunch of pictures to show that I'm not making this up and charge 5 hours to repair all the wiring. Several of the wires are nearly inaccessible without disassembling half the engine first which is why I'm charging so much.

I send the estimate off to the parts department who price out the connector I need, then they send it off to the service adviser. He then calls the customer, emails them the estimate and the pictures, and then he gets complained at by the customer because "It's a new expletive truck, it should be fixed for expletive free. You all are a bunch of expletive expletive rip offs who should all be arrested for scamming people"

Of course, the service adviser is an absolute legend who simply let the customer whine and moan for a while then they said in a very calm voice "Sir, Ford didn't install the mouse, so they're not going to pay for the damage to your truck."

The customer declined to have us repair their truck and insisted that we give it back to them. I'm guessing that they're going to attempt and repair it themselves, or they're taking it somewhere else for repairs. Makes no never mind to me, my car runs great and I really didn't expect them to have us fix their truck anyway. This customer has bought a bunch of cars from the dealership where I work over the years and has spent <$100 on repairs in the last 5 years. All they ever come in for is recalls/warranty work and the occasional state inspection if it happens to be due when they're in for something else.

What’s the hardest part about taking your car into the dealership for any repair?

Back about 7/8 years ago I worked in a Backstreet garage in a village that was adjacent to my home town. We was always busy and had a good reputation. The boss was called Blue. He was an awful, chain smoking, 6”4, miserable, reprehensible bully, just all in all a vile man.

Anyways one day a local lady brings in her diesel Vauxhall vectra claiming it was low on power and not sounding right, we deduced it was a blown boost pipe, while I was rooting my hands around the engine as it was running I couldn’t find the source of the leak. The boss being his typical awfulness responds with something along the lines of “useless cunt”

He proceeded to get in the car revving it, increasing the revs each time with a sour and angry expression on his face, not quite sure what he was trying to achieve but I took some steps back whilst thinking to myself “this isn’t going to end well”

The noisy diesel engine went from sounding like a diesel to a broken diesel (later come to conclusion he over revved the engine and slipped the timing belt) anyways with he car running albeit terribly he sped it off the ramp and put it behind the building, went to the office to sulk and rang the lady that it “broke on the ramp”

She had to buy a new car at her expense

We get a call at the Auto Repair shop. "Hey we are just across the street from you" (not actually but not far) "and my moms car won't start. Can you come start it? I think it just needs a jump"

So of course they don't have the keys with them so we have to wait until the next morning for the keys to be with the car. We send a guy over and the car will not jump off at all.

I call back and tell them the car will need to be towed. We will do minor repairs off site but that is as far as it goes.

The customer agrees and a few hours later the car is towed in. I get it pushed in to a bay right before closing Thursday and there it sits.

Friday we play with it some more and the guys are about to call it a starter but something still bothers me so I want a few more checks. I was asking for a guy to verify voltage to the starter when you hit the key but we were so busy Friday that never happened. Been burned before over something stupid like a fuse or relay.

Monday the shop manager is back in after being off Friday and he gets right to the heart of the issue. He plays with the car and finds the correct diagnosis. The car is flashing a security code when it won't start. If you flip the key around and hold it just right the car will start. Looking at the key it is easy to see the issue. The key looks like they ran it over and zip tied it together. It must have a chip hidden somewhere in it and if you get it close enough it will start.

I call the customer and give them the update. I give them a range of prices based on past costs but emphasize that the car will need to have a new key built if they don't have a spare key. They do not and give me the go ahead to call in the mobile programmer that builds keys for us.

The key guy shows up and looks at the mangled key in all its glory. "Yeah, I can fix this"

He gives the shop manager two options for building the key, a cheaper option or a more expensive option with more bells and whistles. The shop manager and he both pause and look at the customers car. It's a 06 Mazda 6. The bumper cover is held on by zip ties. The only panel without a ding, shallow dent, scratch or damage is the roof. It's leaking some fluid on the floor where it sat since Thursday.

"I'll build the cheaper option"

"Good call"

Well, I'm writing a much longer story about my first project car, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought. Thing was a real pile. Anyway, before that, I have some stories from the college shop.

A student walks into the auto tech shop and asks for the instructor. One of us gets him, and he goes into his office with the inquiring student. A few minutes later he comes out looking a little frustrated and we get the story; apparently this student's car wouldn't start and it sounded funny while cranking. Just started happening after her classes this morning. He pretty sure it's a timing belt but the student wants to be sure.

So we push this 2001 Kia Rio into the shop and just from looking at the thing, you can tell that the most maintenance it's ever seen was an oil change. It's been in the student's family since about 50k and it now has almost a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. Student had never gotten the timing belt changed. Sure enough, you can see an end of the belt poking out if you look underneath the car.

Student still wanted a new timing belt just to see if the engine was okay, because it happened while cranking. Instructor agrees but warns that this is an interference engine and it's likely dead. Mike, Dan, and I go ahead with the replacement. I was pretty much just moral support because as it turns out, it's really difficult to jam more than four hands into one side of the engine bay of a car with a transverse engine. In the span of two classes, the timing belt is duly replaced and we're ready to crank it over.

We're rewarded with a repeating zwee-pop-THWOOMP-zwee-pop-THWOOMP as the Rio skips two cylinders entirely, fires on one, and blows hot, fresh combustion out of the throttle body on the fourth. Student, and a particular classmate, had neglected to mention that they just kept cranking on the thing in the parking lot when it wouldn't start.

We briefly considered yanking the engine out of the school's 2003 Rio, but decided against it as we didn't see much point if it was going to get the same treatment. Props to whoever made the original timing belt, though, because it was original to the car at something close to three times its replacement mileage and nineteen years past its date of manufacture.

We are watching a truck pull up. It is one we know we have worked on before. I recall it needed a ton of work and they did part.

So we speculate, is he here to get the rest done or is he here because something is wrong?

We learn the answer when he comes in and complains that we did a lot of brake work and now the truck is beeping at him and the brake light stays on.

The service manager goes out and releases the parking brake. Which we did not set. Noise and light are now gone.

Just another day......

I know we must have some crossover. 🙂 Any Fleet folks out there? Feel free to chime in over at r/talesfromgovernment.

Sunday morning dawns. Another gorgeous Wisconsin morning. We arrive after buying enough fuel to make it to the end with extra as well. The team gets to getting the car ready again. Everything is checked again, the hub bearings, the brakes, the fluids, tire pressures, it all gets a look. We go over the car looking for loose bolts. After a discussion we rotate the rear tires side to side. When you go through the chicane that is designed to slow the cars through the kink it really unloads the chassis and you spin the rr tire. It's the first time I have really wanted a limited slip rear differential in the car as it sucks when you are spinning the tire and cars are pulling away from you.

I had originally thought we would start with Chris but he and Manny trade out. Manny wants to drive and Chris is good with whatever.

Manny is making an adjustment to the rear wing angle and the front wing mounts both break. They are aluminum and no one is surprised. We are pressed for time and break out the heavy duty zip ties. The front wing mount braces hold the wing up and the zip ties hold it down. It should work right?

We get Manny out on the track and while they are getting the cars out there I dash off to the gift shop. I bought a set of matched old Murray bicycles his and hers to ride with the wife when she is able too and started taking one to the race track. It helps as some days my feet still rebel after a lot of steps. It is part of the after effects of chemotherapy. Neuropathy is no joke. But I am still alive to tell the story. I ride down and buy Road America sweat shirts and get back to the trailer to monitor the racing.

Manny is running some fast laps and we are watching the car as it goes by. The wing looks kind of funny but it is holding in there. Until it wasn't!

I radio Manny "Hey you are losing your wing!"

"What?"

"You are loosing your wing!, Can you make it two laps?"

"Ok"

The wing is barely holding on but now three of the mounts have let go and it is flopping around.

Manny radios a half lap later, "Coming in, they are black flagging me"

Darn. We had hoped to run a bit longer and do the fuel stop all at the same time. Manny first must go to the penalty box to see about the black flag. He reports he has to come back after we remove the wing. We meet Manny at the trailer and remove the wing. We also remove the tall wing brackets that FabGuy built, no need for those to be flopping around with no wing attached to stabilize the brackets. We also take a battery sawzall and trip the flits which attach from the air dam and go up in front of the front wheel wells. The reasoning behind this is to try and balance out the down force as we reduced the rear downforce by taking off the wing, we want to reduce the front to balance the car and also remove a bit of drag.

Then Manny goes back to the penalty box and makes a lap while we hustle down to the fueling area on pit road. He comes in and we are waiting on him and we fuel the car and put Alvin in the car. It is a popular time for fueling and we struggle to get a spot, Manny has to wait for a car to finish so we can pull in.

Alvin goes out and he is running fast consistent times and even gets down to 3.26. Just off the average we are running for Sunday which is a little faster than the day before. Less cars and more familiarity with the track.

Then another team meets with misfortune. A team running a older Volvo, (like 60's model, rounded but very fast) looses control and hits a wall coming out of the carousel. He flips two or three times and ends upside down. An announcement is made as the track goes full yellow then they flag all the cars off track. "Driver is out and ok" A collective sigh of relief is made. No one wants to see anyone hurt at these events ever. The driver will actually post later on FB. The car is a total, they will be building a new one. Lemons has a rule that if you flip over, the driver cannot race again in their series for a full year. It sends home the point that you are to be in control and not over the edge of your abilities. I am not sure how they enforce that rule on incidents that the driver did not cause like someone hitting you causing the roll over.

All the cars are on the pit road and waiting as they clear the wreck and do a repair to the wall. Even the teams that were on pit road have to leave their cars and stop the fueling process until the red flag is lifted. We look at how things are situated and think hmm.

We radio Alvin. "hey if they let you turn hard right and let's fuel and change drivers. If not go make a lap."

If we can stop right there we can make up some valuable seconds. Will they let us fuel or will they make us go around. A few other teams have figured it out as well. We all line up and look at each other wondering if we can pull this off or will there be too many teams for the open stalls.

Finally the red is lifted. We jockey for position and another team and we make an arrangement right at the last second for who goes where but it works! We get Alvin out and pull off a fuel stop and driver change. The only thing that goes wrong is that one of the crew inadvertently burps the fire extinguisher. You have to have one for every stop and a crew member pointing it at the guy hold the gas can from a safe distance. After the stop he was setting down the fire extinguisher and it went off for a half a second. I look at the gauge and that little bit was enough to put it in the red. I toss it and grab a new one out of the trailer for the next stop. Good thing I ordered a few new ones for the race. They don't check but you would feel pretty stupid holding one that was dead if you ever needed it. A little extinguisher is only enough to get the fuel guy enough time to run away anyhow, more would be needed if it was a big fire.* See bonus story

When Manny came in we dropped to 48th Since then we have been floating around that 45-46 place position all day. I'd be happy with that but it is in our nature to always want more. I would love to leave here in the top 40. Out of 142 cars that would put us solidly in the top third of the field.

Chris puts in a solid run and while he does not beat Manny's fast time of the day he does beat mine from yesterday by several seconds. I am torn between being mad that I am now third overall fastest in my own car and thrilled on how much he has progressed in only his third race. I still have one more stint, maybe I can catch him yet.

Chris comes in 44th overall and we knock out a good stop. I leave out 46th. There's few yellows and some knots of traffic but I run a very consistent stint and keep putting laps down. I battle with several cars including a red Honda that I am faster than but keeps blocking me every time I get a run. With a Miata it's hard to power past him, I need a run into a corner and to keep my momentum up. But he blocks me several times. I try not to get frustrated and run my race. No need to do anything stupid. I get a few clean laps in but the best I put down is still two seconds slower than Chris. I know I can run some of the corners faster, it is just hard to put everything together and run them perfect. That is the joy of racing. It is you versus the track. And every lap is a different story. If I brake earlier, shift later, turn in later, it all matters. Sometimes it is hard not to bleed off too much speed rolling into those corners at Road America.

Only too soon I get radioed that time is counting down. By my count I get two or three more laps. I come up on the red Honda one more time and he has slowed. Don't know why but I power past.

"Checkered in the air, bring it home!" I love to be in the car to see the checkers. It's the end of a fun day and I had a great run in the car. They radio that we finished 39th. We are pumped. I take the cool down lap and wave at the flaggers. Can't race without the great support crews like them and the track workers who go out and tow our stuff back off the track when it breaks.

Coming back in I go through the gauntlet of the Lemons crews who are lined up giving the cars and drivers coming off the track a ovation. I high five Eric and a few others on the Lemons staff and a ton of the other crews as I drive through.

We load up everything and I learn I picked up that last spot on the last lap. We are happy with where we finished and can't say enough good things about the Miata. It ran perfect this race. Best of all I learn the racing software we installed lost most of the days data where everyone else had raced. I restarted it when they were belting me in, so it recorded my top speed of the day at 110mph. The day before with the wing and extra downforce was only 108 and we did not see any real loss of lap speed without the downforce. It's a learning process to be sure with the down force. I'm just glad I get to have bragging rights about something even if it was due to loss of data.

Manny and I head south through Milwaukee and then Chicago. It will be 12 hours until we arrive home at 5 am. We will switch off driving and make our way south, stopping for a second to pick up my wife and leave off some tires my nephew ordered for the farm.

Going through Chicago I see the red Honda ahead of us on a trailer being towed by a F150. I pass them again.

​

***BONUS STORY

So my Dad is a mechanic now retired. He used to be the night shift at a truck stop off 57 in corn country. He was there one morning and witnessed this happen.

A guy in in a hurry and drives off from the pumps with the hose attached to the car, pulling it in two. A fire breaks out and another employee runs up with a fire extinguisher. He empties it and another guy tosses him a second. He empties it and the same guy tosses him a third. After it was all said and done the guy tossing the extinguisher said "I sure as h___ wasn't going to jump in there and fight that fire and risk the gas blowing up, but as long as he was going to stand there I would throw him fire extinguishers all day long" It's all about perspective.

Another story from those days. A guy jumps in and drives away with the nozzle still in his truck, pulling the hose in two. This time no fire. He rolls down the window without stopping and yells "send me the bill, I'm in a hurry!"

We are up early Saturday morning. Race day! We gather everyone and head to the track. Again driving through that part of Wisconsin is so nice. Apparently there is a ferry where we are too, but I never see it. I am locked on race mode and I am not sure if I ever saw Lake Michigan the whole time I was there. It's par for the course, there is always something to be done. I have been to Barber twice and never saw the museum which I hear is really cool and I have been to NCM over a dozen times and have yet to see the Corvette museum.

We fill our gas cans up on the way to the track. I am driving first but make the decision to risk eating a breakfast bagel. Most times I forgo eating as nothing sucks more than having heartburn in the car. I drove once with terrible heartburn from a Blueberry muffin that Gill made of all things. (Gill is battling a bone spur in his foot which will require surgery so he has had to miss a few races) Normally I don't have issues but in a race car with everything going on, it is a different world. Youngest won't eat for hours before he gets in the car either. Chris had to cut his first stint in the car short due to not feeling well and takes antacid before he gets in now with a couple other things. Learning how to manage your issues takes a race or too. All the adrenaline, g forces, fumes and vibrations affect you differently when you are belted in the car for a hour or two. Today this choice works out, Sunday I will forgo lunch as I am getting keyed up to drive later in the day that day.

We get to the track and get to work. We unload the car taking out all the parade items, strip the lights off, and put it up on jack stands. We have a routine for race day and this is no different. Different crew members check for loose parts, check the brake wear, check the wheel bearings for looseness, check all the fluids and then today we swap back to the race tires from the set we put on the day before to parade. We top off the fuel tank and install the radio and Go Pros. Everything is done and the torque wrench is brought out to tighten the wheels. The last step is to set air pressures and we are waiting for a team to return our air pump.

We go to the mandatory drivers meeting and get mostly the same information as we always get, paddock speeds, what the flags mean, where we are exiting and entering the track today. Trouble is brewing and no one knows what is about to happen.

We get back and still no air pump. I go to the team next to us who is rocking a cool patriot theme with a S10 Blazer and borrow their air tank. We get that set, strap me into the car, start the Go Pro's and check the radios. We are running cheap radios which only reach part of the track and we usually end up "repeat that, we did not understand" Some teams don't even use radios, just tell their driver to come in at X time. We do that as a back up as well, we tell the driver to be back on the pit road at a certain time.

I am driving first for a few reasons. One being we thing the start will be a bit crazy with 142 cars out there. That number is dropping fast however, a few ran into issues on practice day. Some more literally than others, a Miata with a Caddy engine found a wall somewhere and are trying to bolt enough parts on the car to get back out there. A Mini Cooper that came all the way from California is putting a engine they borrowed from another Mini team in their car, a job that they worked late into the night on. They will make it back out after lunch. The Miata will only make a handful of laps all weekend while the Mini will run all weekend after the engine swap.

I pull out to grid the car and they check that I have all the required stuff. The sticker on the car shows it went through tech. The sticker on my helmet shows I went through gear check for all my safety gear. My wristband shows I am registered to drive. They also check my seatbelts and make sure my neck restraint is hooked up properly. Lastly they check to make sure someone pulled the safety pin on the fire suppression system so that if I need it it will work. I then get a fist bump for Eric and tell him to warm up the penalty box. He laughs and promises to be ready.

I am in the early bunch of cars so we sit there while more and more cars filter out and get checked and then grid. The Lemons staff is on it and they have two lines of people checking the cars to get out to grid due to the high turnout for the race.

Finally it is time for us to roll out. Lemons starts are always challenging, you go out and circulate and when it gets to the appointed time on the clock they drop the green whether you are on the front stretch or not. That is one thing you want the radios for so someone can call the green. Nothing is worse than getting caught and being passed by a few cars before you can recover. We get the green and we are off.

As expected the start of the race is crazy. Cars start breaking from the very start. I take the green and don't even get back to the flag stand before getting a yellow flag for a car broke down. There were times where there are two or three cars off track at the same time, mostly all from mechanical issues. Then we get all black flag which means leave track, something is broke. I pull off and about half the cars do, the other half keep going. I hope they did not get a lap up on us due to the fact we know what the flags mean and the other drivers went another lap before they figured it out. Turns out a car a Ford Thunderbird by the looks of it, has put down a ton of oil and they want to clean the track properly. I shut off the engine so I don't have to ride the brake and can relax. After about 15 minutes we get the word to crank up and go again.

That first stint wasn't anything to write home about. It was incredibly difficult to get a clear track to run a entire lap without catching slow traffic or having to make room for the faster cars. Later we download the data and find out our top speed attained was 108mph. The Miata was running great, just that we don't have the top speed others do. I hear of top speeds of 131 and 141 from other teams on the long straights, and I can tell you some of them were catching us in a big hurry on the straights. You learn to make sure you are clear before setting up to pass a slower car lest you pull right in front of a car doing twenty miles an hour faster coming up behind you. I run a 3:22 and for most of the day that stands as fast time.

I come in and we fuel up the car for Chris. We realize then our math is all wrong. The car is taking way more fuel than we planned. It has to be the long straights where we are on the gas so long. Many tracks you do a lot of on and off the gas but this track has several parts where we are on the gas in fourth gear and are holding it against the rev limiter for several seconds before you lift. Manny experiments with trying fifth gear but reports at times it's hard to get back into fourth and third. I don't need the distraction, my driving is bad enough so I limit my shifts to third and fourth gear with the exception of the chicane they installed to limit our speeds around the Kink. Rolling up on that I brake hard, slam the car into second and turn into the chicane. Not a few cars miss that turn and end up out on the grass during the day. After the hard left you turn back right and it's a slight right turn to get back to the track. The Miata does not have a limited slip and it really shows here, I am hard pressed to get power down in second as the car is light on the right rear and wants to spin.

Anyway we look at fuel usage and do the math and realize that if we did not have the 15 minute stoppage and all the yellows we would have ran out of gas. We will need to adjust things for the rest of the race but we dodged a bullet there!

Chris runs his stint and he runs clean. I am pumped for a few reasons one being I still have the fastest time of the day.

Then it's time to put Alvin in the car. Many times we only run rookie drivers 50-55 minutes for the first race stint. But we just refigured everything and really need him to run about 25 minutes more. He's up for the challenge. I look over and he is eating chili cheese fritos with thirty minutes before he gets into the car. Chris and I both had told him about not eating anything that might upset his stomach before getting in the car but he isn't worried a bit.

Alvin goes out and proceeds to show us there was nothing to worry about. He soon is running race pace laps only ten seconds slower than what the rest of us were averaging, a huge improvement over the day before. It's exciting seeing how much he has progressed. He runs a clean stint and comes in without any issues, car or stomach.

It's Manny's turn and we watch the lap times as he slowly gets faster and faster. It's a combination of him being more aggressive and also there are fewer cars on the track than any other time all day. I hold out hope my time will stand but Manny proceeds to tie it then beat it by a few seconds. He then gets pushed off the track enough to get flagged avoiding contact. He goes to the penalty box and usually a first time offense gets you a short talking to then permission to return to the track. He later recounts that they were seemingly too busy to bother with him and he just sits there for a couple of minutes. Something is amiss.

About that time I get a call from FabGuy. He has found a livestream of the race and has been watching from afar. He tells me that the livestream also has a monitor of Race Control where you can hear the calls for cars to be pulled off the track, debris on track, any wrecks and the black flags when someone messes up. This livestream is from another team and FabGuy can hear them discussing the record number of teams who have gotten black flagged and sent to the penalty box for passing under yellow. He is calling to warn us before we get busted for the change in procedure.

Here is what happened: Lemons has typically ran the rule where when you see a yellow flag you immediately stop racing, try to get in single file until you clear the incident. Most times it is easy to see what the yelw, car off track, parts fell off car, track truck hooking up to pull car in etc. Once you are past the incident you are clear to resume racing unless you can see a yellow at the next station. What gets you in trouble is when you fail to see the yellow and you pass a car or two that did see the yellow and slowed up. That will get you flagged and a good talking to in the penalty box. Typically I wave out the window when I see a yellow to let the car behind me know not to pass or hit me when I slow up.

What happened at Road America was that the flaggers were under the impression they were running on a different set of rules Saturday. They were flagging you if you passed before the flag station after the incident. We never got busted because our car is not fast enough to pass cars in that short distance, it takes us a while to speed back up. But I heard through the grapevine there were a ton of teams that got flagged for that issue and were very upset about it. I think Lemons got caught unaware of this until it was going on and I believe it was fixed by Sunday as I did not hear anything more about it. But for some of the teams who got caught I can understand why they were upset. Typically the flagging crew are independent contractors who are hired for each race and live locally. The practice day which is ran by the track used the different rules and no one followed up to make sure the flaggers knew apparently. Good times.

Anyhow Manny comes back after finishing the day. The car ran great. The drivers all did great. One black flag but that happens. We are all excited how things went, so far it has been a lot better than the last two races. We gather up Chris's and Alvin's parents and Alvin's family and head out to eat after checking the car over to make sure it's ok to race.

Before we can leave another Miata team comes over. They are a fellow NA team and somehow they came up to Road America with no spare brake pads or rotors. We have the carbotech pads on the car which are wearing great, plenty of friction material left for Sunday, and a spare set of brake pads on the car. Then I have an entire tote of stock 1.6 Miata brake parts including new Hawk pads and Centric rotors. I pull the tote out and they nearly come to tears of happiness. I end up selling them everything they need except one caliper for whatever I paid for them. They do not realize they need a caliper until the next morning. I have one but it is rusty, they loose several hours getting it fixed and get out there Sunday. It's great to be able to help another team, that's how Lemons rolls.

to be continued....

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Road America. Wow. We pull in and even though I am prepared, I am still impressed. This is one of the biggest tracks we have ever raced on. And it is both the largest and has the most amenities of any place we have raced to date. The gift shop is huge, there are many concession shops all over, (only one was open) and the whole layout is open and so user friendly. They are also hosting some sort of fright night events at a part of the grounds we are not using for the race. It's Thursday and we are waiting with a huge crowd of racers to get in. We are 91st in line but not everyone ahead of us has a truck and trailer, that number accounts for every vehicle in line. Manny and I get signed up for the practice day Friday, our other two team members are not here yet.

I wander around the crowd and meet old friends and talk to some new teams as well. One guy I only know through FB and I have been picking his brain over our new build which might get finished someday, so it was good to see him in person. He races with his wife and they are racing a new build for them this weekend with a great theme. They brought a camper full of their kids and the theme on their Trans Am was "failed contraception racing" Later at the block party they will have a person dressed up in an inflatable condom costume. Good times.

We get released to go into the track and they start sending in three vehicles at a time. We wind our way in and find a really great spot to set up, just almost across from the start finish line and right on the fence where we can watch cars go down pit road and watch them go past on the front stretch on one of the faster parts of the track. I wander around and see a few other teams we know and think again, this place is huge. Manny points out there are interior roads to different places in the track, he learned the layout when he was there spotting for the Xfinity race. It makes for some great spots to go view from the inside of the track where most places we race you are limited to a few spots from the outside only to view the racing action. Part of this is the fact that the track itself is so long. Over four miles, the longest track we have ever raced to date. NCM full course is 3.15 and this is 4.048 nearly a full mile longer. We look around and try to get a feel for where the important things are like drivers meeting, track on entrance and track off and where they will do the inspections and have the penalty box, hopefully we will not visit said penalty box at all this race!. We unhook the trailer and chock the wheels, not in that order and head to the hotel at the end of a long day.

About the hotel: Manny booked it and faced with staying closer or driving a bit farther for a nicer place we opted to drive another ten minutes or so and stay in a place with higher ratings. For some reason I think he booked us into a place in Fond Du Lac when actually we are in Manitowoc and it throws me for a loop the next morning when we are bearing south and west when in my mind we should be heading south and east. It's like Saturday before I figure that out and get straight in my mind.

Friday morning we are up early and headed to the track. The countryside in this part of Wisconsin is absolutely beautiful, rolling hills, farms with corn ready to harvest and more than a few dairy farms. The leaves were turning as well. Another plus was I went all weekend and only saw one person wearing Packers gear. Now before you start I grew up in the era when the Bears were actually good and watched that Superbowl with Ditka, McMahon, Refrigerator Perry, Walter Payton, etc. Another thing I was happy about was the local Mcds has those Steak egg and cheese bagels which we don't get at home. Probably a very good thing considering how greasy they are, you can nearly hear your arteries hardening with every bite.

We get to the track and start unloading the car. Chris shows up with his younger brother Alvin. We had an opening for this race when Youngest decided he needed to do something with his long term gf. He had made plans with her long before we finalized this race date so he thought it might be in his best interests to not come along. Needing a driver and being somewhat pressed for time I ask Chris if he wanted to bring his brother along. I can supply gear from Oldest son to solve that issue if they can get him registered at the last minute. The other option was to advertise on one of the sites for a driver, which we could have done, lots of interest in driving Lemons at Road America. The turnout for this race is huge. 142 cars have signed up for the race, the largest field we have ever competed against.

So Alvin was all in and we got him signed up no problem. Here is the beauty of Lemons: you don't need to have any experience to race. You literally can sign up pay the fees and race. You do have to have a current drivers license and get a license with 24 Hours of Lemons. That's just another thing to think about when you are out there with potentially 141 other idiots who have no prior race experience.

Alvin had never driven in a race before. Which is nothing new for us, this is race number 9 for us and to date including Alvin we have had ten drivers in the car and 9 of them had never competed in wheel to wheel racing before, though several of us did a track day or two before.

But to give someone their intro at Road America with it's super long straights, and higher top speeds is going to be a real baptism of fire for a first time driver.

You might think it's as easy as driving on the freeway in rush hour, but it is very mentally taxing those first few times out. There is so much to process, shift points, brake points, finding the line into the corner, passing slower cars, trying to make room for the faster cars, watching the flagging stations, there is a reason why you don't put a rookie out there for longer than an hour at a time. Their brain is in overload when they come off.

But we have a plan for Alvin. We go to the mandatory drivers meeting for the practice day. The majority of the track days are hosted by the track and not Lemons and this is no different. We paid an additional 395 to practice this day. Some teams elect to save that money but we want to get some experience on this track. It's worth the money to get a feel for where the corners and what the speeds are going to be like.

We send out Manny first then Chris then Alvin. Every driver is given the same instructions. Go out and run three or four laps and get a feel for the track. I often tell people "you can't win the race on practice day, but you can darn sure loose the race" No need to run over your talent level, keep it on the track and make some laps.

Alvin goes out and he is terrible. I mean he is running laps a full minute slower than anyone else on the team. But he is doing exactly what we need him to do, not overdriving the car until he gets the hang of it.

I go out and run around. I am running like 80 percent. Wow, this track is fun, but those straights are so long. Once you run the front stretch, you run a short turn then hit the downhill part which is not as long as the front but in a reverse of the front stretch this one is a downhill run. You can get a big run going into turn 5. Like we can hit the rev limiter in fourth long before you hit the brake point. Unlike many tracks where I drive more by feel, I really have to watch the corner markers where they say 400,300,200 etc at several points on this track, particularly turn five and Canada corner. The front stretch is different, the markers are in a different spot where you don't see them so I was watching a Youtube video for track tips and the driver coach there advised using a access road as your brake marker for turn one. It really helped me on that corner. Some people are using high dollar racing sim rigs to practice for the race but we aren't that high dollar.

After lunch we do it all again, Alvin is quite a bit faster during the afternoon session than he was during the morning. The plan is working. Before we send Manny out for the last practice session, we swap out the tires. We practiced on the tires from the last race at NCM but we want some laps on the tires we are going to race on. The last few races we have been running Falken 615, we have used Dunlop Direeza, but they are going to be discontinued. I think the Falkens are a bit faster but the Dunlops seem to be more consistent. The Falkens need a lap or so to recover if you get them hot in a slide or anything of the sort.

Right after Manny comes off for practice, it is time to tech the car. Typically they tech and then do the BS Tech where they class the car. This event is different, we tech then they will class the car later. Manny drives the car up and they look it over. Since it is our fourth race of the year and the same people tech nearly every race they look things over and pass us. With the large amount of cars this race they have additional people helping out and it shows. We also get our gear inspected, helmets, gloves, shoes, driving suits etc. I love how Lemons checks all that stuff, I literally raced on a track before with the wrong gloves, shoes, helmet and a driving suit that was held together with duct tape. Yeah it was incredibly stupid but I guarantee others with the same desire to race are doing that today somewhere.

Then we change the tires again to the used tires. Like I mentioned before we are doing things a bit differently. To get our classing, we have to drive the car into town for a parade/block party. Details are kind of hard to pin down on the particulars of this but Lemons really wants a good turnout. So we take off our new tires and put the old ones back on. We think we are doing a parade after we get into town so we take off the roof for more riders. Which was a mistake. We give the car a wipe down to make it look as good as possible and throw most of what we need in the trunk of Chris's Caddy so the rest of the team can meet up in town to get ready for the judging.

So I line up for the parade. We have added some magnetic lights for the parade the fronts are on the top of the windshield and the rears are hung on the wing high up but very visible. After we all get lined up, which was quite a sight, we get a police escort into town. We find out that the mentions of only one person in a car was only a suggestion, but it doesn't matter for us, we don't have a second seat. But other cars have two and sometimes four people loaded up. We get to town and it is very nice, downtown Elkhart Lake turns out. There are people everywhere waving at us as we go by. We finally get where they want us and park. I finally figure out what the plan is, we are parked here doing a block party and the parade part was just where we got the police escort into town. Cool, not exactly what we were thinking but we can adapt. About then Eric comes by in his role of head judge wanting to start judging for class. I politely explain my team was still making their way in with the parade traffic holding things up and I was missing a few things. He understands and goes on to say he was in the dark about as much as anyone and would come back later. Just then the team shows up and we get things set up two of us don our dinosaur costumes and work our "get checked or go extinct, Beat Cancer theme" the other guys get Eric when he finishes a few cars down. He comes back and gives us B class zero laps. We have now been B class for three races. The first two have been frustrating with lots of lost track time. Hopefully this race will go better. Eric finishes up and advises us to circulate a little in the dino suits. No problem. Chris and I work the crowd. I'm not sure how many of the 142 entries are here, but it is a vast majority of them. It's a very impressive line up that goes down the street on both sides then wraps around a corner all the way to another corner. The turnout from the town is great and the police were great about closing intersections and blocking things off for the event. We give numerous high fives through our long walk through the crowd, with kids, random people, other team members, etc. We pass Eric working one side of the street and another team of judges working the other. At one time we get to a team playing Margaritaville and we both break into a dino dance and the crowd starts clapping. Good times.

Finally we make our way back to our car. We take turns getting out of the dino suits. There is a nice little place across the street advertising the best sandwiches around. They are also doing a business in adult beverages and have live music. I go over and find the line to use the restroom is 15 minutes long. The wait for food is over an hour so we send a few guys out in search of something faster. They return with some great subs from a local place down the road. It starts to rain, which kind thins the crowd. We planned ahead to a point and brought the roof so we put it on. It's aluminum and held on with five Dzus fasteners. Which we forgot to bring. But we do have lots of zip ties and duct tape.

Finally the rain ends and the police come back. I am first in line going back and it's easy following the police escort. After they get back on the track grounds it is a bit harder finding the path as they route us off the main gate through a smaller road. My parade lights are not aimed well for this so I struggle a bit then make it back to the paddock. Fun stuff. Next year we will have a better plan if we do this again. Tomorrow is race day!

To be continued....

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Road America?

Manny: "We have got to go! It's incredible, I was just there spotting for an Xfinity team and it is an experience you do not want to miss."

HK: "Umm, I am not sure I can get approval for another race. Let me see.."

Wifey: "You can drop me off at my parents and pick me up in three days? Sure"

Well heck yeah, we are heading northbound to the land of cheese to race on one of the iconic race tracks in America. There were lots of obstacles to overcome, one being that Fabguy lost focus and put the Miata up against the guardrail at NCM the race before. https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromAutoRepair/comments/1775ywu/a_short_lemons_tale_race_8_the_miata_runs_into/

I literally told Youngest as he was going back out post wreck that I plan on racing this car in two weeks and please do not damage the car anymore. But we have two weeks to the race. Wait, we have a week and a half to get the car ready? Hoo boy, we got to get busy

Day one:

Monday the day after the race we are surveying the damage. Our shop foreman who is amazing and Bear who is a fix anything guy dig right in hammering and bending the rear quarter straight. They love backyard body work. Manny is on the road to a local guy who sells Miata parts. We already bought later model brakes off the same guy so Manny knows the way. He gets a right tail light, a bumper cover and a trunk lid. The trunk lid is white like the car so that is good, the bumper cover is blue.

Day two:

I think about it and go into my storage unit and find I actually have a white rear bumper cover. Pretty soon the rear of the car looks somewhat presentable. You can tell it was wrinkled but it's a race car. Gives it character.

Day three: We get some paint and touch up some of the area of the damage. I even take a sharpie and touch up some of the decal where it got damaged. It sounds cheesy but unless it's Daytona or Talladega, many of the cars you see on the track are not as slick as the camera makes them out to be, especially in the lower tier divisions.

Day four:

Fabguy makes up some new wing brackets and they are much taller. The thinking is that the airflow on the back of the car is all dirty air right above the lid and if we want to get any downforce we need to get the wing up to roof level, In an attempt to be funny I write a note on a small piece of paper and tape it to the quarter near the tail light "fabguy was here" before he shows up to mount the wing.

He laughs it off, we get to work and mount the wing and do a few other tweaks on the car.

Day 5 and 6: We don't actually touch the car, instead we do something needed. Youngest and I sort all the stuff in the race trailer. It is slowly getting better, Youngest built a nice rack in the front of the trailer before NCM to hold the totes. We sort through every tote, label them and take about a thousand pounds of things out of the trailer, mainly new and used brake parts from the original braking system we used. I would replace the rotors and put the old parts in a tote. Same with wheel bearings. We weed it out to where we have only one set of new pads and rotors for the old system which was a stock 1.6 Miata brake setup. I figure we could use these parts in a pinch or we could help out a fellow race team in trouble if need be.

So we get it down to where we are taking a complete suspension set up, a spare rear center unit, a spare transmission, two spare engines because I was too strapped for time to pull the one that was in the trailer for the one that is a better match to the engine in the car. We found that out at Autobahn when we wanted to rob a cam sensor and realized it was very different. Not sure what exactly that engine is but I just strapped a second engine into the bed of the truck to take them both. Four spare mounted tires and then lots of stuff like tape, zip ties, tools, torque wrench, fluids, etc.

Day 7 and 8: we are hopping busy at work and nothing gets done on the car. Pressure is slowly building. At home I make sure all my gear is loaded as well as borrowing Oldest sons racing gear. He has missed all the races this year. He started his own business and is doing that and some other things but says if we go to Gingerman again he wants to race with us. So we should see him in the car again, if he wants to race Gingerman we will try to make that happen. But for this race we are using his gear with his permission. I also load the radios and charge the GoPros.

Day 9: It's go time. I bring the trailer with me to work. We need to get the car prepped and loaded as we are going to be on the road by 430 the next morning. I have researched the drive and been advised we need to get through the 294 in Chicago by 2 and through Milwaukee by 4 to avoid the worst of the traffic. I am not looking forward to trailering through Chicago with a trailer but I have done it before.

We get the car on a rack, change the oil, set the trans fluid correctly where they overfilled it at the prior race, change the brake fluid, change the rear diff fluid which is nasty. I can't recall the last time we changed it so it was needed. We also change the front hubs which I try to do every other race or so. Then we check the rear wheel bearings and also check the brake wear. We used to use Hawk Blue pads but now that we are going faster and using more brake the upgrade was needed. The larger rotors coupled with the Carbotech brake pads and the cooling ducts are holding up great. They did not get in a full race at NCM but the pads show virtually no wear. We are happy to see how great they are wearing. We put the car on the alignment rack and find the rear is slightly out which is expected after the guardrail incident, at least nothing is bent on the suspension and the front is out a bit too? Not sure why but all was easily fixed.

Finally we wipe the worst of the dirt and grime off the car and load it up. There is always something more to do but time is running out. While we were messing with the last few things on the car the guys were checking over my 2500 to make sure it is all ready to go. I still have my 2003 cat eye but recently bought a 2011 with a mere 120,000 miles for some of these long distance adventures. After all the fun we had with our shop owned 2012 Duramax that only cost me a mere 4000 dollars to fix so I could sell it, I went with another 6.0 gas engine. For all the trouble the diesel gave us I can buy a whole new motor if this acts up. Not a fan of DEF and deleting them is getting to be a risky proposition anymore. Seems the EPA made a circuit of all the local diesel shops and promised if they ever did another delete and the EPA caught on, they would pull enough paper and do 10,000 fines for every truck they could prove the shop had ever done. We never got into that deal but I am sure not going to be asking anyone to delete a truck for me anytime soon either.

Day 10: We are up way too early and on the road. I gassed up the truck the night before. I throw Christy's bag in the bed of the truck and Manny throws in his bag and we are off. One thing this truck came with is a bed cover that rolls up if you don't need it. For this trip it is super handy as we can drive and not worry about things blowing out or getting wet. At the hotel I will lock the tailgate and no one will run off with anything we have there. Yes someone could cut through the vinyl but the combination of not being easy to get to and not being easy to see is great.

We drive up I65 for hours and hours. Manny drives part of the way through Indiana, which is good. I have seen it all many times and try to sleep. I can sleep during some of the boring parts which is everything north of Indy for sure. Instead of going all the way up to Interstate 80 we cut over on 24 to start making our way up to meet up with the inlaws.

We catch up with them in Kankakee. Actually Bourbonnais where my SIL was taking them to a appointment. By a huge stroke of luck they were next door to my most favorite pizza place on the planet so I call ahead and order to go. We drop off my wife and pick up the pizza, reset the anti sway bar that popped loose in the parking lot and fuel up and head north to Chicago.

We are still on schedule by some small miracle and heading north on I57. Traffic is not bad so far and I know the route. I regale Manny with stories of growing up in corn country and he tells me of race teams he worked with and races they should have won. It makes for some great stories and the miles pass away.

294 is not bad to start but as we roll north the more we go the heavier traffic flows. Another truck and enclosed passed me and I start to chase then decide I really don't want to run 80 the rest of the way and I ease back to the 72-75 mph pace I was running. There's a few times where some idiot chops across our nose but pretty typical for Chicago driving.

We cross the border and keep heading north. Most of this now is unfamiliar ground. Several years ago we went to a Cubs game with my sister at Wrigley North (Miller Park) in Milwaukee and tailgated then watch the Cubs play. I don't remember going down this particular road then but I was not driving then. My sister and brother in law might have taken a different route then too, who knows?

We run into Milwaukee and traffic gets heavy again. Not helping is construction that is causing narrow lanes which is fun with the trailer but finally we make it through and find a nice four lane headed northbound to Elkart Lake. Manny is on the lookout and has us to stop at a nice cheese shop just a few miles from the race track. He is gushing about the place, seems he stopped there last time he was in Wisconsin. He treats and I get a cone and then we jump back in and keep heading north.

A few turns and we arrive. Road America. We check in and get our wristbands and pull into a large field already a quarter filled with Lemons people. There are trucks, cars, campers, car trailers of every shape and size including not a few UHaul car haulers. We are given a sticker of the order we are pulling in when they open the gates. It's 430, 45 minutes before the gates open and we are 91st in line. We can see cars on the track from a track day event that is going on. We drove 12 hours nearly exactly to get here. This place is huge! Road America we have arrived!

to be continued

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So many of you already answered the question. Should I race on my wife's birthday if she doesn't want me to?

Yeah, I might not be the brightest guy but even I picked up on this one. I did not race this next race. Instead I was in charge of putting on a party for my wife's birthday and it was a big deal. I think I nailed it, she was very pleased. I even snuck in her sister from out of state. We were watching TV and eating and her sister drives up our long driveway. I can tell she did not recognize the car and ask her if she was expecting a delivery from Amazon? Then I go out back to grab our lab from bothering the Amazon driver. (she already has some trained to throw her ball) I start hollering back into the house that I need a hand with the puppy and my wife comes out back and is totally surprised to see her sister. Perfect. The rest of the weekend went great and as planned with spa day, bonfire, cake etc.

In the meantime..

Youngest, Fabguy and Manny have taken over the car. They asked if I had any objections to trying a few things out and I approved. So they installed a air dam and splitter and flicks in the front of the car, as well as air ducts to the front brakes in the hopes it will cool the brakes and result in longer brake life. Both Fabguy and Manny have hands on experience with NASCAR Cup, Xfinity (then Busch) as well as ARCA and Truck teams and have taken part in real world track and air tunnel testing. So we are doing a few things they learned from those days. Will it work on our application with lower speeds and hp? You never know until you try right?

Also upgraded is the brakes. We go to a bigger rotor package off a later model Miata with some high dollar race pads. I have been using Hawk pads and the stock rotors which are very small. The car gets new rotors, pads and calipers all around and a manual proportioning valve installed that was getting bled seconds before the car was loaded up.

All that front grip needs some sort of balance on the rear and a cheap wing is found and installed on the rear trunk lid.

No one else likes the steering wheel angle and placement and so they drop the column a inch with a spacer and put a spacer in the steering wheel as well. I guess some of these guys have shorter arms and want better angles to drive more comfortably.

Also addressed were a oil leak and a new clutch. Fabguy had reported he felt it was slipping at Autobahn so a new clutch disc and pressure plate were sourced and installed.

Another thing we do is to put the car up on the alignment rack and check. We were shocked to see how far out the rear had gotten after 7 races. Both rear wheels were pointing to the right which would account for how good the car felt turning one way but not the other. That was easily fixed.

Doing the math they decided they were going to run a bold strategy at the next race. Kind of how NASCAR teams run the road courses they wanted to only stop twice per day. They crunched the numbers and I did too and it could possibly be done. The X factor was that the three drivers they were going to use instead of the normal four we typically take are three of the faster drivers who will have higher fuel consumption. For several days we debate the fuel tank size, gallons per hour used and length of time each driver will have to do to make it to the checkers without running out of fuel. Can it be done? We will see.

Finally the day comes. Youngest and Manny take off with two of my trucks towing our camper so they can stay at the track, the enclosed trailer and the race car. In turn I get to drive home from work in Manny's Prius. At least it isn't blue.

NCM Day 1

They got the car out for practice day and made a few adjustments. The new brake pads require break in so they did two sets, going out and running laps hard on the brakes and then swapping out pads. Also they dial in the bias. After it is dialed up all the way it still could use a bit more rear brake. But it is drivable. They tech the car then go out for practice again. I get a call, the throw out bearing is making a terrible noise. I find another clutch kit and send it up to Bowling Green with Youngest when he drives back down. He had to make a marathon drive to attend a wedding. They work late into the night but the car is running in time for the start of the race.

NCM Day 2. They start the race and the car is good. All the parts and pieces seem to be working great. Then they have to stop as the new air dam is not letting enough air into the radiator and the car is running hot. They also remove the thermostat. They send the car out again.

And that's about when things start going wrong. Manny spins the car and goes into the penalty box. After getting his talking too for poor driving he goes to put the car into gear and realizes that the clutch is acting up again. Awesome. They put the car on jack stands and start pulling the transmission for the second time in two days.

They finally determine the clutch slave was applying pressure all the time to the throw out bearing. I have never replaced that part yet, but apparently after we changed the clutch before the race it decided it was no longer happy. Keeping the throw out bearing slightly applied was causing a quick failure when we are running laps and constantly hitting 6-7,000 rpm. They replace every part of the clutch system, master, slave, line, pressure plate and disc and of course add the torched throw out bearing to the pile of carnage.

Also somewhere during the day before the final clutch shredding, they also managed to run out of fuel and had to be towed in. They are all puzzled as the numbers showed they should have had enough fuel, but the car was dry sure enough. They did use the opportunity to verify how much fuel is in the car when it stops picking up. Turns out that is about 10.5 gallons. So we were trying to run stints of over 2 hours like two hours and twenty five minutes but with a five gallon per hour burn rate of fuel that isn't going to work. Some tracks have less full throttle time and take less and some drivers burn less fuel but as I said, this is three of the fastest drivers we have and none of them are saving anything on the track.

They work into the night and get the car put together. It's given a short slow drive through the paddock to see if everything is right and then they call it night.

NCM Day 3

It's the final day of the race weekend. Typically Lemons does tech and optional practice the Friday of the race. Practice days are not included in the entry fee and often are put on by the tracks for an additional fee. The race starts Saturday morning and usually we race 7 hours on each day. So really it's the 14 Hours of Lemons not the 24 hours as advertised. Sounds like false advertising to me, Where's Lionel Hutz when you need a good attorney anyway?

Sunday a subdued team rolls the Miata out. Many, many laps down they are still battling. Really we enter these races not planning on winning anyway, it's the sheer exhilaration of competing wheel to wheel at speed with all the other cars out there. It is so much fun to be out there battling and mixing it up with the other cars, especially when you have one that is about your speed and you can pass them after having to work on it for many laps.

After lunch I get official permission to head up to the track to retrieve the camper. I had one of the trucks so I needed to go anyway right.

I get there just in time for the worst part of the weekend. One of the other racers asks me about the car, I had just seen it out on the track? He tells me it was sitting backwards against the wall just a minute ago. Great I go back to where we are parked and find the team looking at the Miata.

Fabguy was going up the hill at the fastest part of the track when the car started getting a little loose. He saved the car from wrecking, got it straight then totally lost focus and failed to slow for the next right hander. When he finally realized his error all he could do was lock up the brakes and hang on. He backed the car in and got the right rear against the guard rail. He drove the car back in and was explaining what happened. He apologized for wrecking the car, but I can't get too worked up. I have had the Miata way out of shape many times just managed to avoid hitting anything with it. Not that we want it torn up but that is the risk you run with any race car when you take it out on the track.

Looking at the Miata it isn't too bad. Caved in the quarter behind the wheel. No visible damage to anything besides sheet metal. The rear wheel looks perfect. No suspension damage. RR tail light is mashed, the wing mount got torn up on that side and the trunk lid is bent up but somehow still opens and closes.

We send Fabguy to penalty without the car to serve his time for messing up. He reports back that without the car they made him don a plastic car shaped hat and reenact the wreck. I wish we could have video'ed that!

I check with the officials about if the car is legal with only one working brake light and it is, we thought so. We remove the broken pieces of the other one, remove the wing which apparently hit the wall pretty hard trashing some of the mounts and bending the trunk lid. Surprisingly the side plate of the wing is bent but the rest could be saved.

Youngest gets in the car and for a second I smell fuel. I think it must be due to the wreck but we do not see any problems. I go tell him that I intend to race this car in two weeks and please do not wreck it again!

A bit later he radios in saying he can't drive and the car is full of fumes. He makes his way back and we look again. This time the fuel smell is stronger.

Turns out they had installed a fuel pressure gauge and where they had spliced the part that sends the signal to the gauge was leaking a fine mist of fuel. This would probably account for some of the record poor mileage that they had been experiencing including one time where the car ran dry after only a hour and a half with Manny driving.

After fixing the leak we test it and it is completely dry. It's fortunate that it did not ignite and burn up the car. It's funny how often you find ways to beat yourselves at this. Youngest however wants a bit more time so Manny takes the car out to see how it handles without the rear wing for a few laps and brings it in. Finally after a bit of air Youngest gets back in the car and finishes the race. I don't even go down to watch him get off the track, we load up and head home. It was a tough weekend and while we think we have the car all fixed from all the issues we now have wreck damage to fix. Fabguy apologizes again and promises to fix the damage. I assure him we are all good and we will get it fixed.

As we head home we are already working hard on repairs. In a show of understanding on how hard it was to watch and not race, my wife approved that we need to make the next race. It's a haul but I go right past my wife's parents both ways so she gets dropped off and picked up after spending valuable time with them. Manny has been lobbying for this ever since they added it to the schedule.

Next stop Road America!

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So no I haven't been posting lately because things have been super busy. Lots of stuff going on mostly good things!

Where were we? oh yes, I get in the car, go to get out on the track and instead get sent to the penalty box. I haven't even gone out on the track yet, what in the world?

Turns out Fabguy spun the car and never got a flag due to a big wreck. Lemons tells you to come in and self report when you do something like that. Sometimes we do. Sometimes if you think it wasn't too bad you might try to see if they saw you. He kept racing to see if they flagged him in or not. There was a bad wreck that took their attention and they simply waited to catch up with us. So we changed drivers as they towed in a much shorter Fiero and then when they saw our car, oh hey send us that one, we need to have a chat.

I pull into penalty. The Judge starts in on me. I stop him. "I just got in the car, I haven't been out on the track"

Judge: "Ok, who was in the car?"

Me, showing zero loyalty: "Fabguy"

Judge: "Just how good a friend is this Fabguy?, can you call him up here?"

Me on radio: "Hey guys I need Fabguy to penalty box"

The Judge goes on to tell me that this is our second black flag of the day and that a third flag will result in the car being parked for an hour or more. I guess they had the word out to crack down on the teams and keep things in hand.

Finally the Judge releases me and I go out on the track. I was running some great times but not record setting times to be sure. After hearing that we were on the edge of being parked I ran just conservative enough to make sure I had a near perfect stint and came back in with no problems. Not to say I never got out of shape, there were a few times I got invested in racing with another car and nearly missed my line or once I got to drag racing a car down the long back straight and was sure the Miata was going to end up fifty feet past the hard right corner before I slowed enough. Once again the Miata bailed out my poor driving skills and we made the corner. It is so much fun to drive that car.

I bring the car back and we put Youngest in the car.

While I was driving Fabguy was busy. He had to answer why he spun then did not come in. Knowing that we were on our last flag of the day he went ahead and bought some insurance. Lemons will give you a one time pass if you donate to a charity. There are only so many free get out of jail passes available for each race. The charity that we see at most of our races is Lemons of Love https://lemonsoflove.org/

Check them out sometime. As a survivor I highly endorse cancer charities and Lemons racers have donated around 250,000 dollars to helping send care packages to people currently undergoing chemo.

So when Youngest went out we had one more flag to use before we were parked. An hour being parked would have been bad since we only had two hours left in the day. Turns out we would need that black flag...

We are in the paddock and keeping an eye on things while packing up when Youngest radios in.
"I hit another car, I am coming in"

So we watch as he comes off and goes to the penalty box. He clears the judges and comes back to us slowly. Between the brake failure and our new get out of jail pass they let him off the hook, making contact with other cars is a serious issue in Lemons. We apologized to them later, no visible damage and they understood it was not intentional.

Turns out the car is out of brakes literally. The front brakes are completely worn out. He was pushing hard as he normally does and the car just would not stop. We jack up the front and carefully pull the front wheels and swap out brake pads. It was very hot so we had to work carefully as it was hot as blazes. But we got it done and put the car back out on the track with about 15 minutes to go to preserve our record of running at the end of each race.

We loaded up after long and somewhat frustrating weekend. We found some speed but were also down in the standings after significant time lost. The car was much faster than the year before for every driver who got it. We have never used a set of brakes up before but we account that for the fact we were all driving faster and using more brake.

One thing I love is getting to see old friends we see at some of these races. We made new friends too, the fuel pump we took out of our car ended up in another Miata and they got to finish their race. A third Miata team also was there and we had fun seeing the differences in their car. I found I could pull them on the straights which was odd as they should have had an identical car.

We left out that night with plans on how to improve the car and make it better for the next race. I won't get to drive in it however. Seems it's my wifes birthday and she told me "it would be a very poor decision" if I were to race on her birthday. Hmm, should I do it anyway?

I bought some on eBay. China ones and 7 months later, about 3k miles on them one side of my truck is supper sagging. Anyone replace there oem struts with these? They had very good reviews. You can see the driver side is normal but passenger side big difference. 2016 Sierra 1500 Denali.

August 2023. We are way behind schedule but we have a race to get ready for. It's time for our second trip north to Joliet IL home of Autobahn Country Club. The team was pushing to get the new car done but realized that was not happening. So we pull out the Miata and dust it off and get it ready. We only had since Feb at Barber to get the car fixed so this is on us.

Once concern is that the car felt flat at Barber. It pulled at higher rpms but if you lugged it it would not pull hard. Youngest son thinks it's the fuel pressure regulator. We also located and swapped in a new (used) ignition coil. We also have one of the mechanics take a look at the timing belt at the shop and he thinks it was off and that he got it right. The shop manager checks the fuel pressure and it is fine. Also we check voltage on the alternator, Youngest thought it was not putting out great voltage when he tested it. All checks out fine. I'm feeling pretty good that the issue was fixed as we run out of time to get the car ready.

Thursday morning comes and the car is ready. New tires, oil is changed, fluids are checked and new brakes are installed and fluid is changed.

I upgraded the race team and now we are going to haul the car in a new to us enclosed trailer. I used to make fun of those guys hauling their cars around in big shiny haulers but it just makes sense now. We carry a good amount of spare parts and tools to these races, all of which got very wet the first race we went too. I lucked into a small enclosed that would haul all our race stuff but not the car, so we were taking two trucks and trailers to every race. That was working ok then we bought a camper. Hey we could not only go camping but this would be handy to use to take to the races and we could save a ton on motel rooms when we are racing. I was talking to my wife and mentioned we would need to take three trucks and trailers to the next race so we could tow the car on the open trailer, take all the race gear on the small enclosed, and take the camper to stay in and save money. She said that was crazy. I agreed but mentioned that last I brought it up she had told me I could not buy a bigger enclosed trailer. "I never said that" was her reply. I was on the road going to buy a trailer within days. We got a 26 foot trailer with upgraded axles from a fellow Lemons racer who had it south of Birmingham. It was 11 years old in pretty good shape, except it needed a wash terribly. The seller cautioned me the trailer still had two of the original tires on it, I don't think either of the previous owners used it a whole lot. The seller had a spare but it had a bad valve stem. We pulled out a tire hammer and a tire bar and installed one right on the spot to his amazement. He'd never seen it done like that before, without a tire machine. We eased it home at night in the rain which probably helped the old tires live, Birmingham in August can be a bit hot and hard on trailer tires.

Without much time to sort we loaded up most of the race gear and then it was time to load the car. One of the shop guys gets in the car cranks it up and reports its not running good. Hmm. We throw on the new fuel pressure regulator. Surely that will fix it. Test drive it. Nope. I think its the plug wires, we order some, all the while the trailer is setting out back, waiting to load. Wires come in, nope. We change coils back to the one that was originally on the car, surely that will fix it. Nope. Finally we load the car and head north, we will deal with it when we arrive.

The drive up is thankfully uneventful. We stop at my favorite pizza place and meet the in laws and have dinner then make it to the track and get the camper set up about dark. This race will be myself, Gill cooking as usual, Chris who drove with us last year at this race, Youngest son who towed up the camper while I towed the race trailer and then FabGuy. Fabguy who was originally mentioned in one of our track day stories is an old friend. We first met during my circle track days in the 90's. He was doing fab work at a local race car shop, then went on to work for Brewco a NASCAR xfinity team. He did a ton of the metal work on the Casey Atwood car that barrel rolled at Daytona if you want to watch the video on Youtube. He tells how horrified he was watching that race knowing that he had mounted the seat and belts, worrying the driver would be ok. Thankfully he was. Another thing he mentioned was that before the wreck of Dale Earnhardt NASCAR had never sent out any guidelines on mounting seats and belts, preferring to let the drivers do what they liked. Afterwards they sent out guidelines that had enough detail that it was clear they had researched this and chose not to share it. Fabguy walked away from all racing several years ago but Manny and I got him into one of our cars and he was instantly hooked again. He's building a car and helping us do fab work

Fabguy is a great racer, very fast but sometimes he pushes the car over the line. It may not matter much this weekend because this car is running like bleep. Early Friday morning I am up and working on the car. Fabguy gets up and we start in. I have a new fuel pump so we install it. We notice the car had maybe a quart of fuel in it. Surely it couldn't be that easy, what if the car was just out of gas? We put everything together with a new fuel pump and then get Youngest out on the track. He reports the car still isn't running good at all. So much for the fuel issue. We work on the car all day, changing out the wires and plugs and ignition coils again, we clean the mass airflow sensor, each time we send the car out and it might be a tiny bit better but still runs like something is off and is down on power. At least one if not two parts runs are made out into the great Chicagoland area, each one taking time out of our practice day.

We get through tech and then BS tech. Three of us are in dinosaur costumes, still pushing the get checked or become extinct message. Youngest even drives to the tech line in the suit which is challenging to say the least but hilarious to see. We finally get assigned b class after sucking in A. Maybe we can do better in B We are thrilled but the car is not fast enough to run with anything.

Finally after we have the Lemons potluck which Gill does a masterful job of putting on with us doing grunt work like setting up tables and coolers, we get back to the car. Youngest and Fabguy tear into the car and determine the timing is off. They spent a ton of time carefully setting the timing as it's off one tooth and its apparently super easy to get off one tooth. After a very long time of setting it and then rolling the engine back and forth they pronounce it good. Surely this is what was wrong with the car?

Race day and it's a beautiful day. After hours and hours of work on the car it should be all good right? We load up Youngest in the car and send him out. The start of the race is uneventful. Youngest radios in, the car is perfect! Yes! we finally fixed our issues. The lap times are good and he is running great.

But not too fast. Youngest radios in, the car is overheating. Great. One of the things the Miata has been good about is never overheating. He comes in and we are debating on what is wrong. Is it the radiator cap? Is it the timing that we were adjusting the day before? I actually go and take some timing back the other way and then we notice the belt is missing. You know the one that runs the alternator and the water pump? Yeah that one. Even better we don't have one. I have totes and totes full of spare parts and not a belt to be seen. Chris is sent out on another parts run for a belt. While he's at it, we instruct him to get a radiator cap as this one has seen better days and the seal is looking rough.

We install the new belt and it runs great for a short time and then he comes back in with the car overheating again. Another belt down, they get to work and realize that the tensioner is not staying tight. They fix it and the only other belt we have is a bit too wide to run, it is the right length but it is too wide and won't set into the grooves very far. In either a moment of inspiration, desperation, sheer brillance or utter stupidity I go borrow a file and take turns shaving the belt down to where it fits the groove better. Mind you I did this while the engine was running. Not the smartest thing I have ever done, but hey in a little while I was planning on strapping into this car and running at speeds over 90 competing with some very sketchy cars and drivers. So it's kind of relative. As the man says we are experienced idiots.

Luckily the repairs all finally end for the weekend. We are 61st out of the 61 cars that have taken to the track. One poor team has not even taken a lap yet so we are marginally better than them.

What happens next is every driver getting into the car and turning faster laps than they turned the year before. Slowly we climbed back up the leaderboard. Were we going to win? No, but we were going to finish!

Sunday they started out with Chris spinning the car, then Fabguy spins the car but never gets a black flag because a Fiero wrecked and it took a long time to get it loaded and hauled off the track. We saw it go by on the roll back and the wheelbase on the right side was a good foot or more shorter than the left side. Due to the long caution we change drivers and I get in. I go out to the track official who checks to see if I have my driver wristband, my gear sticker showing I had it checked pre race and the sticker showing the car is all set to race. About that time her radio crackles. I can't make it out, but I get told to head straight to the penalty box. And I haven't even driven a lap yet....

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Hi, so my car was covered with saharan dust the other day cause for some reason it reach the North of the UK. I tried scrubbing yesterday and..... used dishsoap on some parts( I didn't know you can't use it on cars that's why) and now I'm left with these stroke marks. Any advice on how to get rid of these?

Reading a story about negligent discharge in a gun magazine reminded me of this

I had just come back from a field job and, since all the overhead doors were closed, it being winter, I was headed to our walk-in door. Nearly there, I heard a boom! and the whole building shook. I rushed in, looking around for what happened.

We have a big shop with offices and parts room on the North end, 6 bays that are big enough for tractor/trailers to pull in with plenty of room to spare, and a separate wash bay just as big as one of the other bays on the South end. I saw one of our graders and a service truck from one of our equipment vendors but no people.

While I was looking our office manager came out. I asked what that sound was. She didn't know but thought it came from our tire room, which is attached to the main building with a walk-through door in the East wall of the third bay and is about two bays wide with it's own overhead door to the outside.

I yelled. No answer. I charged to the tire room door, expecting to find "blood and guts and gore and dead, burnt bodies," to steal a line from Arlo Guthry. What I found instead was three stunned-looking guys in a haze of dust. When I talked to them they all said, "What?" They were momentarily deafened. When they could hear enough to answer I found out what happened.

The vendor mechanic had come down to do warranty work on the grader when he noticed a flat on one of his duals . Our shop foreman and the grader operator decided to help him fix it. It had blown up in the tire cage, which is where I came in. Luckily only their nerves and short-term hearing were hurt. I don't know if you been around a truck tire going off but the noise is impressive, even on the other side of a big building.

Finally, both Jack, our shop foreman, and Ralph, the grader operator, passed a few years later with-in months of each other. I've mentioned Jack in comments before. He said about preventive maintenance that oil is expensive but not as expensive as steel. So long Jack and Ralph. It was good to know you.

One of our guys who is a bit special is a general service tech, lets call him Loudmouth. He does mostly tire installs, patches tires, oil changes bulbs, all the light stuff that the entry level guys do.

The issue is he is incredibly vocal and you can hear him all across the shop. He is always talking and loudly about everything. Car too hot when he pulls it in to do an oil change? You bet you are going to hear him moaning and complaining about it. Tires bit and heavy to lift? You would think we sentenced him to lifting weights an Olympic contestant would struggle lifting. Everyone knows his business if you want to or not. It's a constant verbal stream which has led to more than one altercation with co-workers that nearly turned physical. He just does not know when to shut up and work quietly.

So today he gets to hollering and I go see what the issue is. Seems the car he is working on, whoever did the last oil change left the drain plug loose. It wasn't terrible as the car had made it the entire time from the last oil change until this one was due and no leak. But he demanded we go see who did the last oil change "because I don't want to be blamed for someone else's screw up"

Since we are on the worst point of sale shop management in the world I literally have to walk back into the back room and pull the invoices which are stored in binders and find the one. I look up the invoice and go pull the book. I kind of know where this is most likely headed but I grab the book and flip open the invoice.

I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it was to take the book out there and show Loudmouth right where he had written his employee number down when he had serviced the car last a few months ago. Classic case of open mount insert foot, and he has very big shoes. Some people....

Back in April I had blown the engine in my vehicle during a road trip. I took my vehicle to a shop which was owned by a guy we will call H. H told me I needed to replace the engine and that if I found and bought the replacement, he would install it for $1000. My friend found an old vehicle that matched and we purchased it. H agreed that he would put the engine from the old vehicle into mine and he could even have the old vehicle for spare parts since we didn't want to haul it 300+ miles to get it back home. We signed a contract that it would be completed in one week. A week went by and nothing, then two weeks, three months.

When I finally got ahold of him I gave him an ultimatum and said I was coming to get the vehicle. He told me it was running and ready to be picked up. When I got there (it was a 6 hour drive) my vehicle was still in pieces and pouring oil. Gauges were not working, headlights were in upside down and not even plugged in. I didn't have a way to tow it at the time and was forced to leave it there again. H assured me he would bring it to me the next week, despite me living so far away. He then went silent for several more weeks and refused to return calls/texts again.

We finally had to get the police involved. The police showed up and informed me that my vehicle was nowhere on the shop lot, neither was H. There were some mechanics in the shop and they told the Police that H would be there the following day. The next day, the shop was closed and everyone was gone. No vehicle either. I guess the mechanics told H what had happened because he quickly called to say the vehicle had the tires cut off (not just slashed, literally cut off the rims) and that he was busy trying to replace them. He asked for money to replace the tires! He also admitted at that time that he was using it as his personal vehicle because he "didn't have his own." He said the tires were cut off while it wasn't even at the shop, it was while he had been using it. He disapeared again for another two weeks after being told no and that he has to return it. This time I told him I was pressing charges for theft if he didn't at least send me a picture of my vehicle to prove it was in his possession. When he finally did I noticed the buildings in the background didn't look familiar. I started asking around, did street views in that town to match buildings, etc and found out he's now working at a job that repairs oilfield trucks.

At this point I had had more than enough. My family helped me rent a truck and trailer and I headed back to that town. When I got there the shop was still closed. There were no vehicles I could see on the lot nor in his little "scrap yard" next door. Everything appeared to be gone. I drove by his house, nothing. Then I drove by the oilfield place and noticed the main gate was open, there were not any No Trespassing or Stay Out signs, so I went in to look.

There was my vehicle, tucked under a shed and hidden between two larger vehicles. Since he had been using it as his personal vehicle, I knew it would run. I jumped out and ran to it, jumped in and took off as fast as I could. I had brought a friend with me and he used the truck and trailer to block anyone from coming out after me. The vehicle started pouring smoke and broke a few miles down the road, my friend met me there and we loaded it up on the trailer and brought it home.

Not only did he turn the inside into a literal dumpster (cigarettes, ashed everywhere, tons of trash, spilled drinks, old food, and AN ENEMA under the driver's seat.) but he busted massive holes in the dash, crushed my bumper on one side, broke out my tail light and stole two of my original rims. He replaced the front left rim with a mismatched one, the other was a full size spare that was in the back and he didn't even bother to replace that one at all. The engine was even worse. He had completely taken out the air filter and housing and was driving it that way for months. He stuffed rags where plugs should go. He used some sort of melted plastic for a head gasket even though there was a brand new head gasket sitting in a box in the back seat. Several bolts on the main block were missing and some that were the wrong size had been shoved in to the point they stripped the threads. There are more loose and cut wires left hanging than I could count. None of the gauges even work.

I will never understand what this mechanic was thinking. I'm super happy to have got my vehicle back but paying to repair all the stuff he destroyed just sucks.

Anyone else ever have something batsh*t crazy like this happen?

One of my cousins brought in a friend of his. He likes 99 S-10s for some reason. We dig around on his and find out that pretty much this engine is toast. They know way more than we do so they opt to get a engine from a parts store and pay some hack to install it. We are a little picky on who we buy engines from as we have been burned before.

Soon enough it's back. Whoever installed this engine should have been shot for criminal negligence. After paying us to fix all the issues the installer made we are able to dig a little deeper and soon realize this reman engine they got is terrible. Blow by, pushing oil out everywhere and misfiring. They go back and forth with the provider, we supply a written statement and they get another engine coming.

Not wanting to make the same mistake again, they hire my brother to do the r and r this time. He takes his time, cleans the oil and grease off everything, fixes even more issues that the original installer made and gets the truck running like a top.

But this guy has not had enough fun yet apparently and shows up with a second S-10 with a 5.3 stuffed in it. Nice toy but it too needs a few loose ends tied up. He wants it not for drag racing but to tow with.

So we fix a few loose ends there, including putting heat shields so it doesn't burn the plug wires (again) and install heavier springs in the front and rear.

Currently we are waiting to see if it needs a new pcm or a complete wiring harness as it will not stop flagging knock sensor codes even after we installed a new harness and two new knock sensors from GM.

But all this time I can't help but wonder. Why not just buy a 1500 and be done instead of trying to build a HD S10?

Guy calls in this morning. Nissan Frontier and the brake lights are staying on. He wants to know what the possible problems are. I tell him it's either the brake light switch or the little plastic part that activates the brake light switch. Get the truck in and sure enough we have a happy customer with a easy repair completed.

Then another customer comes in complaining of no power and driving strange on his daughters car. Hmm, this is odd. We have a pile of work so we hang the work order out in the shop to get to when we can. Then I happen to be walking by and look over at the car. I call the shop manager over. Brake lights are staying on all the time. There's your sign...

You see if the brake lights are on a newer car the computer picks up on that and to try and mitigate issues it pulls the power out of the car through various methods, transmission shifting and engine timing etc. We fixed the brake light switch causing this issue and soon enough they were on the way back to college with the car.

Then there's the 91 Toyota here that will not leave. It's probably just a crappy parts problem with repeated parts failure but this should be an easy one. I think we are on distributor number four in two weeks. Good times

If you have any knowledge in this area, please take a minute to read. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

My 2017 Genesis G80 has never given me any issues before this. In April, I attempted to crank it and it was completely dead. After replacing batteries and having my local auto shop look at it, they recommended to send it to a genesis dealership to run a diagnostics tests on it. 4 months and $3000 later, my car is STILL at this Hyundai dealership. It has been a complete nightmare, at this point I believe they are just blindly plugging in parts in hopes it will fix it. If you know anything in this area, and have an idea of what may be causing this, please share! I will do anything at this point. Any advice would be so appreciated.

Timeline at Dealership

1. First day, diagnostic test came back “clean” with no draw found.
2. Dealership replaced battery due to it not being an “authentic genesis battery” after I told them that a new battery was put in 1 week ago. 2 days later I went to pick up car and it was completely dead.
3. More “tests” ran.

4.Trunk fuse box replaced. (They said it was faulty and drawing power but didn’t know exactly where) 5. Car went dead 2 hours later. 6. More “tests” ran 7. Dealership requested to replace the Amp behind radio since draw went away when unplugged. (I denied due to it being $3300).

Note: When questioned about the fuse box they replaced, they advised that my “faulty” Amp fried the trunk fuse box which is why that needed to be replaced anyway.

8. They unplugged the Amp and advised that the draw has completely stopped, as long as I kept that unplugged. I was asked to pay and pickup the vehicle.

9. 2 hours later car was back dead again. 😡

10. Latest update today, they said that the draw is found to be coming from the inside dashboard fuse box and the box needs replacing along with the Amp.

They noted that the car is dying in about 1 hour and the car doesn’t go dead if the keys are left in the vehicle.

At this point, I am thinking of picking up the car and troubleshooting myself. I’m at a complete loss. Help!!! 😩 What do you think is the issue?

I’m so sick of working with self-proclaimed vehicle Gods. Those guys that have the, “I’ve been doing this for 35 years. Do as I say,” mentality.

I was handed an A/C job. I was told “client says their A/C isn’t very cold at times, likely a low system.” “Yup. I’ll check it out.” I found the system low, and found a leak at a compressor case bolt. I installed a compressor, filled the system, pressures were good at idle, and let the client take the vehicle.

Client came back a week later; A/C wasn’t cold. Found system low again, looked for leaks, and I found the leak at the compressor safety blow off valve, and dye blasted onto the fan shroud. I filled the system up and found that pressures were hitting 450psi on the high side, and low side pressures would suck down to 10-12psi at 3,000 RPM. At 450psi the compressor would do a safety blow off. The fans were working in both modes, and there was no restriction of air over the condenser. I sucked the system back down and wrote it up.

Recommend: A/C kit with flushing hoses and evaporator.

I was immediately approached by my manager, “we just did an A\C kit a few months ago.” “Okay then let’s do the hose from condenser to evaporator, and replace the evaporator.” “No… We’re just going to do another kit.” “Whatever you want boss.”

I did the kit with a full gallon of A/C flush blasted through the evaporator and hoses.

Same problem.

Did two more compressors because the manager swore up and down that it had to be the problem. Even after I pulled out the ASE study guide for A/C systems and showed him what the pressures meant.

Manager then took the vehicle and tore the A/C system down a bit, flushed the evaporator and hoses and had the same results. High high pressures, low low pressures.

I approached him. “So, I’m a bit lost here. Why are we doing this? Like, we know there is a restriction in the system between the fan switch and the evaporator so why are we playing these games?” “Because I’m buying all this. “What? Why? Why aren’t you warranting this kit out? I’m confused. Why didn’t we just talk to the client and explain that the old compressor must have tossed debris into the system and we need to get it out?”

“Well, I just do what my tech tells me.” “What!? What is that supposed to mean?” “You told me the compressor was leaking.” “The first compressor I did? Dude, that’s still sitting on my work bench from last week. Let me grab a black light and show you.”

I think he was shocked I kept the proof.

I began to walk off to grab the compressor. “Wait. Wait.” “Nah, this will just take me a second to prove this to you and then we can move on to what the problem is now,” I said while still moving across the shop. He started to yell my name, “[Smoke]! Stop! Stop!” I yelled back, “don’t worry let me prove this so you can get that out of your head.”

I returned with the compressor in hand with a black light. “Here you go.” “I don’t care about that.” “Then I’m confused. You do think the first compressor case was leaking?” “It’s not that. It’s just that we need to make this right.”

“Okay. So we need to do what I recommend when you told me we already did a kit. We need to do an evaporator, the hose, and flush the rest out.” “The evaporator with labor is $2,500, and I flushed it and I didn’t see a blockage.” Again, why are we doing this for free if we never did an evaporator or hoses?”

“Because, I sold him a compressor.” “Okay… whatever.” I walked away.

A hour or so went by and I saw a parts delivery and a A/C hose assembly for the vehicle come in. I laughed to myself.

I walked inside and asked the manager if he wanted me to put the hoses in and flush the system. “No. We are going to do another kit. I just don’t see any clogging in the evaporator or the hoses.” “Okay. Want me to tear it down now?” “Yes, please.” “On it.”

Tore the vehicle down again, and the A/C kit came in the next day. He decided to do the hoses. I replaced the A/C system again, with a huge bulk of the system’s hoses. I took pictures of EVERYTHING. How much oil came out of the compressor. How much oil I put in it. How much oil I put in the condenser and the hoses. I flushed the remaining hoses and evaporator out again. Had the same results. I took pictures of the pressures, and a video of a blow off.

I re-approached my manager. “Same thing.” “It must be a compressor then.” I smacked my forehead and dragged my hand down my face. My other manager was sitting at his desk, and asked for a debrief. We broke it down. “Yea. I agree that it must be a compressor then,” said the second boss.” I sighed.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I ran back to my bay and grabbed the ASE A/C study guide again. I returned and flipped to the diagnostic section, and pulled out the picture of our pressures and set it right next to the book’s picture. They were nearly identical. “These are our pressures. We have a clog between the fan switch and the evaporator. That’s a FACT. It can include the evaporator. We have replaced EVERYTHING but the evaporator.”

“But I have never seen a clogged evaporator,” said [boss two]. [Boss 1] was nodding his head, in agreement. [Boss 2] continued, “the debris would have to make it through the condenser, then the incandescent, then the hoses, then all the way to the evaporator. That doesn’t happen.” “Look,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you guys want to do but I’m advising you to do the evaporator.”

The subject shifted to sucking the system down and getting the vehicle out of the bay so I could move on to other work until they decided what they wanted to do.

After doing that, I re-approached [boss 2] and wanted to hammer home that the vehicle needed an evaporator. “…well, [boss 1] said he flushed the evaporator and didn’t find it clogged.” “If we had a full, 100% restriction, we would see, at idle, the high side would shoot to blow off, and the low side would suck into a vacuum, right?” “I’m not so sure of that.”

“Well, I am. Anyways. If you had a 50% clogged evaporator how would you know while you were flushing it if it was 50% clogged?” He shrugged. “You wouldn’t. 120psi in. 120psi out. Think of a radiator. If you flushed a radiator out how would that determine a clogged radiator?” “I see! I see. No you’re right…”

The vehicle sits in the parking lot. We will see what happens.