2004 Ford Ranger Rumble

The reason I mentioned a customer with an appointment on my other post being an interesting subject for a blog was her attitude while making the appointment. She was convinced I would rip her off, but would not let me off the phone. I’ll call her Jane Rippa.

I answered the phone with my usual polite greeting, only to hear an impatient sigh at the other end. Well, okay then.

“My name’s Jane Rippa and I have a 2004 Ford Ranger. The battery goes dead. I’ve already been ripped off by two other shops. I don’t expect any better from you.”

“I can make that easy for you, Ma’am. Don’t call me. Find someone you trust or a referral from a friend for someone they trust.”

“My Ranger needs fixed! I can’t keep going all over town.”

Usually I would have given her the brush off because being labeled a thief before I even see the customer or vehicle is a little much. Since blogging, if I get a gut feeling the appointment might be blog worthy, I make the appointment.

“Okay, but the initial estimate is for an hour’s labor.” When she hears that, Ms. Rippa starts ranting about already having paid diagnostic fees.

“I imagine you did, but not at my shop. Do you want to make an appointment or not?”

Silence.

“Fine! I’ll be in tomorrow at eight.”

The next morning rolls around and I’m busily checking out an Acura when the Rippa Ranger drives into the shop. I leave the Acura alone for the moment to meet my new customer. Ms. Rippa had already exited the Ranger and slammed the door. She was a big woman, probably a few inches over five and a half feet tall. Ms. Rippa looked to weigh in the high two hundreds. She wore jeans and a pullover green sweater. Her round face with dark eyes and short dark hair twisted into a frown of annoyance as she gestured at her hood.

“Here it is. I had to get Triple A to jump start it.”

I already had my clipboard in hand with her name, phone number, and address on an invoice from our pleasant phone conversation the day before. “I’ll just get your mileage and license, and then you can sign the estimate. Do you have your receipts from the shops that have already done work on the Ranger?”

A funny look passed over Jane’s face. “What do you need those for? Just check it out yourself.”

“I’d like to know what was done. If there’s a matter of warranty on something already replaced, I’ll be able to advise you on it. For example, if I find out the alternator is bad, but it’s already been replaced I will have to charge you for the core when I replace it, so you can get your money back. If they can give you a core I can turn in, I’ll refund your core charge.”

“I don’t have any receipts. The two mechanics that looked at it came to my house.”

In these hard economic times, I know there’s a lot of backyard repairs going on. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

“I still got ripped off!”

“Maybe, or maybe the two you had check it simply didn’t know what was wrong and they parts changed stuff hoping to fix it. Anyway, I’ll call you. Sign here.”

Rippa reluctantly signed the estimate and marched out. Luckily, the Ranger started. Triple A had probably put a decent surface charge on it. I drove the Ranger into the back and opened the hood. My oh my, Rippa had a new battery, new cables, new alternator, and… yep, as I peeked below with my Mag-lite, a new starter. She also had more greasy hand-prints on the underside of the hood than I’d ever seen. If these guys had committed murder, CSI would have found them in no time.

In these cases, you have to get the battery up to speed so I unhooked the negative terminal and started charging the battery. I then went over and finished the Acura. When I returned I hooked up my milliamp meter in series with the negative cable – nothing was draining the battery, so I went away for a while to let the battery charge enough so I could test it. That later checked out okay. I hooked up my scope to it and my scanner before starting the Ranger up and away we went. After doing the usual checks for loose obvious connections and belt tensioner problems, I noted the charging system wasn’t working at all. The backyarders may have gotten a bad rebuild. It happens often with these late model Fords. I use only Motorcraft OEM type ones to replace them. I did one more thing before bypassing the alternator to see if the internal regulator was causing the problem. I hooked up a jumper wire from the ground terminal of the battery to the alternator housing. Instant charging.

It only took a couple more minutes to find the culprit – a corroded ground connection at the left rear of the engine. It had a green fuzzy coating nearly an inch thick. I turned off the Ford, cleaned the connection with cleaner and wire brushes, coated it with lubricant, cleaned the bolt and reinstalled. Now, the charging system checked out fine. I quickly cleaned all forensic evidence from under the hood, including that which my predecessors had left. I then called the Rippa to tell her the good news. Her first reaction was not what I expected.

“I want you to talk to those jerks that ripped me off and get my money back!”

“Uh… no.” And hell no. “That is between you and them, Ms. Rippa. If you’ll come over and pay the diagnostic fee, you can be on your way.”

The phone clicked loudly in my ear. So much for auto repair pleasantries. I backed her Ranger out and parked it. She came huffing in twenty minutes later, followed me in the office, threw the fee down on my desk in cash, took the keys and receipt, and stormed out without a word.

“Thank you,” I called out after her. Just another charming day in auto repair land.  :)

Sales Glitches

Funny how stuff happens. I get a great review on a novel that never received much attention, and I’m notified by readers they can’t access the digital book form off the AuthorHouse site. There’s some good news. Come to find out after phone calls and e-mails it will take a few business days to get the digital e-book form back on line with AMERICAN MUTANT and three others. Since I can self-publish a novel in an hour on Amazon with full linkups to everything, I’m wondering if AuthorHouse could use me on their IT staff.  :)

While I was learning about glitches, and actually fixing glitches in cars yesterday I neared 12,000 words in my sequel to DEMON. I haven’t heard back from the agent taking a full look at the manuscript, but I’m still querying it. The characters are so much fun for me to write about, if I ever contract it with anyone, or even self-publish it, I may be able to market a series.

My friend, Author/Reviewer RJ Parker is now reading PEACE, and really likes it. Luckily, it’s for sale on Kindle and Nook. Because it’s around 650 pages long with action and humor throughout, it’s a little pricey for an e-book. On the other hand, a reader buying it won’t get short changed. On Kindle, it’s selling for $9.99, but on Nook, Barnes&Noble took a bit off the price there at $8.49. If I had anything to do with it, I’d drop it down under four bucks, since competition for e-book sales takes place on the market with thousands of short novellas for under two bucks.

It’s apparent that sales will hinge on the name recognition battle front. Also, it seems so far in my observations that the large excerpts offered mean less than a well done cover to readers. This factor surprised me. Shopping in an on-line bookstore is not exactly like perusing novels on a shelf at a brick and mortar bookstore. I thought the blurbs and writing samples would be the big draw on-line. Not so. Professionally done covers mean a lot, and they can be pricey if you’re self-publishing. It must be done though. If the agent hunting falls through, the first book of my five finished novels I’m hawking that is going to get self-published will be LAYLA, my Djinn storyline inside an automotive repair shop. It will need a first class cover though.

That’s it for now in the writing business. If yesterday’s phone call appointment is any clue, I think today’s real life auto repair appointment will be memorable enough to blog about tomorrow.  :)

AMERICAN MUTANT Review and Origin

I have a five star review for my self-published novel AMERICAN MUTANT. The best price for it where the novel is available in all formats is here at AuthorHouse.

My first two novels, ROC and THE VOID, were early attempts at the paranormal which was a pretty much unknown genre in the middle to late seventies and early eighties. They were typed up on an old Royal electric typewriter, and tedious copies had to be printed with return postage for all materials when sent out for querying. It cost enough to attempt this in the old days that when my son and daughter came along at the same time I purchased my auto repair shop, my writing had to go underground. When the nineties came along and vanity press became more affordable, I self-published five novels using my auto shop customers to finance the costs. I never said a word to them about writing, but I kept the books displayed in my office, and later in my comic book hobby shop. They received good reviews and the same people who bought those still buy my newer offerings since they all have Kindles now. When I’d recoup my publishing costs from one, I’d publish another, always trying the querying route first. It was much more tedious to be on the frontier of self-publishing back then, and nearly impossible to break through to real publishing.

AMERICAN MUTANT was my third paranormal novel. It went on sale back in May of 2002. Back in those days, I would be hesitant to open the galley sent by my vanity press representative for each book because every change or error had to be paid for. It was a great experience in the realization that editing is a writer’s responsibility – first, last, and always. I may not have been the dialogue tag and POV policeman I am now, but when I sent those four novels to the vanity press after my first foray, they were edited to the point I only needed to change a handful of words. As with most authors, I reread my novels to make sure I’m not repeating stuff. They hold up very well even with my experience battling through two published books’ full set of professional editing rounds.

AMERICAN MUTANT’s reviewer, Author RJ Parker, enjoyed everything about it I’d hoped for when I sent him AMERICAN MUTANT, SOTELLO, CASSERINE, and PEACE as a no strings attached gift because he liked MONSTER and COLD BLOODED enough to review them. Authors depend on reviews, and as my writing friends know, they’re tough to get. It’s nice to find a reader who grasps everything you were trying to do as an author. He's reading PEACE now.

RJ Parker is a true crime writer who has published a set of novels about serial killers. You can find them here on Amazon. After starting in December, Mr. Parker hit the 10,000 book milestone in sales earlier this month. He has already been interviewed on live TV from Canada, where he resides, after the Ohio school shootings, due to his writing of SCHOOL SHOOTINGS -Virginia Tech, Columbine and others which he gave away and donated to the Ohio fund. My wife, Saint Joyce and I both read his novel WOMEN WHO KILL. It may not have been as polished as novels are expected to be; but it was enthralling, and I don’t read non-fiction at all. Promotion is a talent I admire and respect because I am horrible at it. Having RJ as a friend has allowed me to follow someone’s success who really knows how to do it. I love to watch a professional work. That he likes my novels is an added bonus.  :)

Honda 3.5L Engines Need Valve Adjustments

I didn’t have time on Friday to write up these characters with a 2005 Honda Odyssey, 3.5L engine. The Honda stopped in on Thursday afternoon, arriving in the shop running very rough. As I walked toward the vehicle, a guy in his thirties, pot belly, about six feet tall, in cutoffs and ratty looking gray tank top, with long stringy brown hair, and a Fu Manchu beard gets out of the driver’s side with a big smile. I’m thinking blog time for sure already until a woman exits the passenger side. She sported cutoffs, a faded yellow sleeveless top, reddish hair cut short, thin to the point of emaciation, and a few inches shorter than the driver. Both wore those strapped on open toed sandal shoes. Now I know it’s going to be blog time. I just didn’t know why yet. They’ll be known as Tina and Timmy Odyssey for our adventure into automotive repair land at Nilson Brothers Garage.

“Hi can I help you?”

The guy peered at my nametag for a second. “You sure can, Bennie. Our Honda’s runnin’ terrible.”

I glanced down at my name tag and sure enough, a smear had made my r into an n. So, now I’m Bennie. Immediately that old Elton John song ‘Bennie and the Jets’ starts playing in my head. Great. “I did notice it running badly when you drove in. Would you like to make an appointment to have it checked?”

“Could we just leave it now, Bennie?” Tina asks me.

“Sure.” I told them the diagnostic price, and they took it in stride. I’m nearly fifty dollars less than the dealer so they knew it was a bargain. I wrote them up an invoice. First, let me say I had both my big doors open in the shop with a nice March breeze blowing through. Then let me explain I had to duck into the driver’s side to get the mileage for the estimate. I nearly passed out. I stumbled back out of the Honda and pretended I was checking out the vehicle’s license while gulping fresh air. Returning to the driver’s side with my breath held for dear life, I quickly got the mileage and shut the driver’s door. I figured I’d have to look around carefully when T&T left, so I’d have something to show the police when they arrived with the coroner. I knew there had to have been a dead body hidden within the Honda’s interior. Timmy signed the estimate and walked out with Tina, hand in hand. They only lived six blocks away. It was now time to find out if even my apples and cinnamon Fabreeze could make it so I could get from the doorway to my diagnostic bay without fainting dead away from the smell.

A second scenario hit my writer’s mind as I hunted my emergency Fabreeze down: zombies. No, that couldn’t be it. They make too much noise. I found my Fabreeze and opened up all the doors of the Odyssey, an appropriate name all things considered: no zombies or decaying flesh. I Fabreezed the hell out of the interior, trying to ignore the refuse piled up inside. Pinching my nostrils, I turned the key to on and rolled all available windows down. I let my apples and cinnamon forces of good battle for five minutes with the stink of evil before hopping inside, holding my breath anyway, and driving it into my diagnostic stall. I made it without incident, or fainting spell.

My software took a deep reading of the computer including mode 6 which will even herald possible problem areas that have not set a code. The poor Odyssey had a random misfire code which I suspected, having read up on my service bulletins and facing this in the past with the 3.5L engine. At around 80,000 miles and up the exhaust valves tighten up just enough to cause the computer to see the misfire. Then it shuts down a whole bank. I took a quick look in the engine compartment for anything out of the ordinary… like a dead, mangled skunk, but it was far cleaner than the interior. I figured out the estimate and called the Stinkies… I mean the Odyssey’s. They were very happy it wasn’t a blown engine and gave me the go ahead.

“Just call us when it’s done, Bennie.”

Bennie is on the case. “I sure will.”

The exhaust valves proved to be only a couple thousandths of an inch tight, and adjusting them made all the difference. The air blowing through the shop mixed with my Fabreeze Force had worked magic to the point I could actually take a breath inside the vehicle as I test drove it. Tina and Timmy turned up at the appointed time to pay their bill, and I quickly found out in my small office what had contaminated the Honda. Even with propping the door open, and going through the quickest customer charge transaction in Nilson Brothers Garage history, my eyes watered, my nose ran, and for the first time ever I considered pepper spraying a couple of customers – not because they were unruly, but because the smell would have been an improvement. After they left, I thought of pepper spraying the office as an experiment, but decided on leaving both doors open and launching my Fabreeze Force into every corner.

Back to the purpose of this post - if any of you own a Honda with the 3.5L engine, they do need valve adjustments. As to the rest of my adventure I will leave it in each person’s best judgment. Yes, Fabreeze works! Bennie, over and out.  :)

Remember to buy COLD BLOODED if you like hardcore adventure. Thought promotion ended, huh? I think not.  :)