I've been pretty absent here lately, busy playing monopoly. Spring means an excess of work & I've been training some new guys. This year there's an invasive species of mussel in the lake that causes a lot of headaches for boats. I doubt it will have the huge effect on our boat lift business that others assume, but I don't at all doubt that it will bring us some competition again. One fella who answered our help wanted ad was not too good at hiding the fact he wished to learn the ins & outs of the boat lift business, dealing with the marinas & park service properly, etc... he had a couple masters degrees & lived in a several million dollar house & just wanted to work a hard, dirty, low paying job for kicks. I gave him the worst of the worst for a couple days and used our time together to convince him that 1. the other hoist companies are inferior and higher priced. (the latter of which at least is true) and 2.That I'm sitting on a years worth of inventory that's totally paid for and we could kill any competition price wise without causing me the slightest concern. (again the latter of which at least is true). When I had a sit down with him and told him I didn't think he was right for us & I couldn't see him staying with the work for 15 bucks an hour he offered to buy the business, big surprise there.
The car has an intake leak causing poor idle quality. the intake was difficult to fit since the block was decked, I'll have to take it off and re-install it. I learned something though: If you spray starter fluid along the head/intake seam to listen for changes to the idle and simultaniously remove wires from the distributor to see if a certain cylinder is firing or not you will get the whole engine compartment to fire, so to speak. Glad the neighbors weren't watching. No damage done. I still haven't opened up the trans to find the reason it won't shift into third, but I am fairly certain the problem lies in the valve body (I did something wrong installing the shift kit) or the overdrive servo wasn't fully contacting it's seat on the OD band & ended up slipping off the edge instead of pushing on the band. neither of which is a serious problem, just need to find it.
The car has an intake leak causing poor idle quality. the intake was difficult to fit since the block was decked, I'll have to take it off and re-install it. I learned something though: If you spray starter fluid along the head/intake seam to listen for changes to the idle and simultaniously remove wires from the distributor to see if a certain cylinder is firing or not you will get the whole engine compartment to fire, so to speak. Glad the neighbors weren't watching. No damage done. I still haven't opened up the trans to find the reason it won't shift into third, but I am fairly certain the problem lies in the valve body (I did something wrong installing the shift kit) or the overdrive servo wasn't fully contacting it's seat on the OD band & ended up slipping off the edge instead of pushing on the band. neither of which is a serious problem, just need to find it.
Glad your business is rocking along, bummer about the zebra mussels. The main problem we're having with out local lakes is that they're drying up. Levels are way down, dangerously low. All kinds of debris is starting to show up: boats and cars that were sunk decades ago, submerged tree stumps from back before the lakes were originally flooded (all the many, many lakes in Oklahoma were made by the Army Corps of Engineers.)