Guages

Well this week at lawson's we were actually quite busy, my grandpa decided that it was time to replace the heads on his 1970 gs. So we went ahead and decided to do that the other night. Which overall that took us most of the night, taking us about 3 hours. But it wasn't that bad of a job, just time consuming. But then once we had that done, we went ahead and started working on my truck. This week we went ahead and hooked up my pod guages that are in the custom holder for the ;pillar on the driver side of the door. And to be completely honest, it wasn't very fun at all. First we had to hook up the water temp guage, which i had to pull out the whole dash face just to get to the hole in the firewall to run the cord, to the rear end of the block to plug the core plug in for it to work.
Then we had to work on the fuel guage which also runs all the way through the dash from left to right, but instead of running through the firewall, we had to drill a hole in the floor board just to get it to the position to hook it up the the reeling pod. Then once we had it hooked up to the reeling pod, we could then reroute it through the firewall to run to the oem fuel plate plug. which that is when it got hard, we had to try to splice, and burn, and twist, and turn just to try to get it to finally go in to where its suppose to, but it never worked. So we finally just tied it, i know its not the best way to deal with it, but after dealing with it for the long i was sick and tired of it.
Lastly, i had my oil pressure guage, which was the worst one of all. It was this guage, that made me never ever want to hook these dumb things up ever again. Like the other three, it ran through the dash all the way out the back of the firewall through a little hole down by the gas pedals, which is where i decided to ground the guages in the first place. Then once i made it through the fire wall i ran the pump and cord down the rear left side of the block all the way around the bottom, and up the other side. Once i had gotten it there i had drained all the oil out of the block and removed the oem plug. Then i spliced to to wires together, oem and the aftermarket guage ones and regrounded them and ran them to the battery again.
After that all i had to do was put the guage pod right back up on the pillar, to the left of the driver side seat, then i had to put my dash all back to gether, and we could call it a good night. But i had forgot to ground and wire all of the lights for the guages so i went ahead and did that really quick and go them working and called it a night.

A/C problems.

Well this week at lawsons Jerry niece Stephanie went into an auto repair shop with a common complaint of the car ac not blowing cold air. They took their Chevy cavalier into a franchise type shop and asked for an estimate to repair the air conditioning.
The facility provided a whopper of an estimate for replacing almost every component in the ac system. The shop wanted to replace the ac compressor and almost all of the parts that attached to the compressor. Stephanie got us involved before any repairs were approved.
After making some notes on what the Stephanie was told we called the auto repair shop. The service adviser notified me that the ac compressor had internal damage and spread metal through the system. This was believable and we've had to fix this before have seen this happen before.
But Jerremy decided to ask a few questions before he recommended that stephanie approve the auto repairs. He asked the service adviser what the pressure readings were on the high and low side. The adviser stated he would find out and call me back. Two hours latter he called back and notified us that the system was empty and the freon had leaked out. The red flag went up. When an a/c system is empty the compressor will not come on and testing is not possible. The standard procedure would be to test charge the system and with the compressor running to properly diagnose the failure.
Jerry asked the auto repair shop how they determined the compressor was bad and spread metal through the system without having run the compressor. He said that his technician was familiar with this make and model vehicle and that ac compressor failures are common on this type of vehicle.

At this point Jerry called his niece and recommended to move the vehicle. He informed Stephanie that this shop did no diagnosis and was planning on replacing all the parts and hoping the vehicle would be fixed. she agreed and moved the vehicle to an a/c specialty shop. This is what made me laugh about this whole thing. The ac shop test charged the system and found a leaking evaporator.
This was the one part that the first shop left out of the estimate. The first shop would have replaced all of those good parts and left the one bad part remaining. Why did they leave the evaporator out of the estimate?

The reason is that the evaporator is hard to replace. The first shop was only interested in doing the easier repairs and hoping it would fix the problem. Now  that we've fixed the car which allowed stephanie to avoid replacing $1500.00 of ac components that were not needed.

Now steph. is back on the road with cold A/C, and that's just one less thing we have to worry about. Hopefully here soon we'll be able to figure out why all my lights and electronics in the truck are being backfed, but we'll save that for another day. But mostly because we still have 3 more vehicles to fix first.

Drag season.

Well, as most of you don't know Jerry and Jeremy Lawson. I came to the conclusion that you dont know that they are big drag racers in the community. Along with my grandpa, but he retired from it a few years ago. But anyway, since there wasn't much buisness coming through the doors this week. We decided to go ahead and get Jeremy's 1970 chevelle ready for the strip, along with a couple other small things around the shop. This year's new rules and regulations, which i'm not to fond of, were just a pain to abbide by. But we ended up getting it done anyway. after fabricating a whole new cage, and after Jeremy had his whole chassis redone for the new regulations, which was done a few weeks ago. The chevelle was ready, along with some new tires which he put on a couple days ago. After we finished with the chevelle, we went ahead and did a motor swap in two of Jerry's cars. Which if your wandering, he has an 82, 86, 96, 97, and 98 chevy truck for plowing snow, a 70 gold gs stage 1 like my grandpa's, and a 71 white and red gs. Along with a 79 regal, an 06 duramax, 82 Ford Van, and a 7.83 second quarter-mile s-10, which is what he races. But anyway, we swapped the 455 big block buick motor out of the GS and put it in the regal, and took the 350 SBC out of the regal and put it in the GS. Which wasn't fun at all. It ended up taking most of the night, so by the time we got done. We had missed dinner. So we finished up what we were doing and went ahead and and headed out to the family restraunt to eat a bit before we headed back to the shop. When we got back it was around 9 o'clock, and Santana and Aiden were there waiting for us. So of course the first thing that happened was Aiden was running to his dad yelling daddy over and over again. Which then led to him asking me what this and that was, which is funny because he likes to call me brandy instead of my actual name because he really hasn't figured it out yet, but I really dont mind. After we sat down and talked for a little while, we realized that we still had a few more things to do before we could call it a night. So we went ahead and threw a tub of oil on the forklift and moved it over the furnace, where we undid the cap and flipped the lever to let the oil drain out. After that we went ahead and started to clean everything up and put all the wrenches and tools up, along with the welder and all the left over sheet metal and brackets that we used to build the roll cage for the chevelle. Then since we hadn't done it in a while, we sprayed down the floor and the lift with the hose that's ran into the building, then we swept all the water into the drain. Then we said our goodbye's and called it a night.

Air hose and the super bowl party.

Well considering this post is a few days late of when it actually occured, we'll just pretend that the super bowl is tonight. The day of the superbowl, I was at Lawson's at about  9 a.m. helping work on Jeremy's salt truck putting a king pin in the front drivers side. Which to be completely honest, is probably one of the messiest and meanest things to fix. Considering the fact that the truck is an 79 ford dually, and that the brakes hadn't been changed in almost 10 years because we just got it running about a month ago. It was pretty dirty due to brake fluid that had built up, along with all of the brake dust from where the shoe was gone. But anyway, after we had got the king pin fixed. We had to put the tire back on, which all'n all is a normal routine thing. When people think of putting a tire back on a vehicle they think its simple, which it is. But this time there was a complecation. As soon as Jeremy started using the impact wrench, he noticed there was air leaking out of it. Which wasn't happening when we took the tire off. So he didn't think it was that big of a deal, so he went ahead and went on doing what he was doing. Then right before he finished up the next to last lug nut, the air hose popped off. Throwing itself everywhere, back and forth almost like it was alive. So there we were 4 grown men, and me, stomping and reaching and jumping trying to get ahold of this air hose. Only to get it a few seconds later when Jerry stepped on it. When that was all said and done, we got the air hose shut off. We heard Aiden in the other room just a holleran an screaming. So Santana went and got him and when they came back in he was yelling SNAKE!!! So we then realized why he went running into the other room. AFter that settled down, we went ahead and ate lunch at about 12 o'clock. Which ended up to be beef 'n noodles.

It was about 4 o'clock when people started showing up  for the game, which was right after we got back from renting a huge t.v. from Best Buy because they're was going to be quite a few people there that night. So as people started to show up, we went ahead and pulled out the corn hole boxes and the corn bags to play a few games before the actual game started. So we all played for about an hour, then we all went in the back room for dinner and to sit down to watch the game which was just about to start. For dinner, all'n all there was chilli cheese dogs, cooked cabbage, left over noodles from earlier, dips, chips, well. Anything you can really think of was there. So we all ate and watched the game, then afterwards we all just ended up just talking and eventually started a bags tournament. Which of course i ended up losing because Jeremy's almost to good at it. But the night had to end at somepoint, so shortly after I lost. I went ahead and headed home, (but only because i had school the next day, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever).

Lost Contacts.

This week at lawson's was full of fun, excitement, and a big pain in the rear. Normally when I get to lawson's they are usuall working on an oil change, or a simple brake line replacement. But not this time, when I arrived they through me straight to work helping them replace the entire exaust along with a fuel pump, and a water pump out of a 2001 Ford Taurus. So right away I grabbed the saw and started cutting at the exaust, trying to cut it lose. I swear I was cutting at it for atleast 15 minutes until Jeremy finally came up to me and handed me a plasma cutter and told me that they just wanted to get a laugh out of me before they had to get to work. So I went ahead and cut the pipe clean off from the front of the catylitic converter back to the rear bumper. Unlucky for me though, the bracket that was suppose to be holding the exaust on. Ended up breaking in two before landing on my foot. Then for the second time I turned and saw Jeremy along with my grandpa this time laughing so hard, I was suprised they could even breathe. So I sat down and handed the plasma cutter to Jeremy and told him he can do it, telling him I wasn't going to mess with the exaust anymore.

After I had grabbed a coke and sat down, Jeremy's wife Santana and there little boy of 3, Aiden, showed up with dinner. Which just happened to be cooked cabbage, (which I had never had before, but if Santana cooked it, it knew it was going to be good). Which it truly was. But anyway, i'm getting to far ahead. Before we ate Jeremy and my Grandpa had finished the exaust, so we went ahead and started on the water pump knowing that it would take the longest. Then about an hour later after almost dropping the car off the lift due to a hydraulic malfunction. Along with drenching Aiden with water, which he didn't quite mind it. We went ahead and called it good and went and ate dinner while watching the news. After 5 minutes and 2 bites of food, Aiden said he was done and ran over to me and said he wanted to play. So I told him to give me a few minutes and that we would play tag which is his favorite game. But while I finished eating he wanted to know if he could play with my phone, so I let him. Not seeing the harm in it, but boy was I wrong. He didn't break it, but somehow he had managed to erase all of my contacts from my phone, and I had no way of getting them back. So we went ahead and played tag for a little while, his dad and my grandpa drank a few beers, and while Santana cleaned up the dishes. Then around what would have been like 11:30 p.m. Santana gathered things up and told Aiden it was time to go. Which when  they leave, the rest of us usually follow cause it usually is pretty late. So we said our goodbyes, and we all headed home still with the thought in our head that we still had a fuel pump to change.