How did retirement lead to fixing cars??!!

I'm already considering another solo trip to Africa in May to help at the radio station there that I helped build. I have a Zoom call with them scheduled for tomorrow morning. Travel with the missus is definitely one of our ambitions.

 

Prepping an auction car, getting it ready to put on the front lot. Found a way to make felt cylinders I had never thought of. Harriest car I've ever seen. Solid coating of long white dog hair on the floor mats and exposed carpet. Stinky, too. Had to take out the seats and carpet so I could pressure wash the carpet. Thankfully, it had leather seats so they were not too hairy. How do people drive in cars this nasty?!?! I felt like I needed an immediate shower after that.

 

Hmmmmm. I may give that some thought. Or not. LO!!

I'm with you on the tower climbing! I don't mind 20 feet or so, but I'm not a tower climber at all. We bring in the pros for that stuff.

 

It's official. I am once again a "gentleman of leisure." I turned in my key and uniforms yesterday at Tampa Hybrids. What a year it's been. It about wore me out but I sure had a great time. Those guys really blessed me. And what a send off! They ordered in BBQ and a cool looking cake for lunch and even snuck behind my back get my wife there for the party without me having a clue. Besides eating, I spent most of the day doing and EGR replacement, fixing a very rough running 2009 that almost sounded like a broken connection rod. Turned out to be spark plugs even though there was no misfire (or any other code) triggering a dash light. And I had a chance to show them how much better an analog multimeter is than a digital for measuring ignition coils. Now I need to send them a link so they can get one.

 

Cleanings or replacements?

I'd guess I cleaned somewhere around 350 of them. (coolers, pipes, valves, and intake manifolds) The last couple months, Rodney (the new guy) took over most of that, but I still gave him a break now and then.

Replacements, I'd guess to be around 20-30. I did one on my last day and did two the previous week. So three out of my last four days.

 

LOL!! This thread won't die.

Just before my sinus surgery last week, Todd asked if I'd like a gig job helping them with a project. They want to create SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for most things done there. They range from headlight bulbs to head gaskets.

I'm pretty well recovered now, so today I went in and videoed the Gen 2 headlight job and the replacement of the Gen 2 inverter pump. The headlight is written up and ready for review.

Obviously, I'm considering the contents of the SOPs to be confidential property of Tampa Hybrids. But Todd is considering making them into a YouTube channel once the written ones are done. That'll be fun!!

 

The SOPs will include the Gen 3 head gasket. That's one of the most complex things they do, so there's a lot of potential for time savings with a standard, efficient procedure that gives a quality repair in the shortest time. (We want to send the customer's car back to them ASAP, but don't want them coming back to have the same thing fixed again. And we don't want some other shop saying, "What a bunch of hacks!) But, being the most complex, we'll save it for later after we've honed our SOP skills on shorter jobs. Todd is still developing the list.

Right now, Todd seems pretty enthused about the YouTube angle. We'll see how he feels when we get all the written stuff done. I'll be writing up the inverter pump SOP today. This will be a lengthy project.

 

Hmmm... So far, we're tackling Prius specific things like HG, EGR, hybrid battery, etc. I wonder if Todd will put brakes on his list. They are a little different. We don't usually do brake repairs, but it does happen.