07 Dec Bad News Bears
Obviously, being a fullly-fledged service facility, we see some things and have nothing to say but, “Woof.” Let’s take a look at some of those today.
First up isn’t a malady from a customer car; rather, it’s a situation that ended on a rather good note, because it could have been much, much worse. While welding something for the mysterious build, Craig’s welding gun suffered a mishap. You see, to deliver that much amperage along a power wire (from the welder’s main body all the way to the metal being welded) results in a lot of heat. Normally, there’s coolant being pumped around that power line to keep it from overheating. However, the coolant sprung a leak mid-weld, resulting in a serious overheat in that wire, melting off the plastic shell and just about anything else it touched. Craig finished a weld and when his welding helmet went back to daylight mode (they auto-dim so you can see what you’re welding), he noticed smoke near his arm. Close call; otherwise, it could have melted directly through his clothing and burnt him pretty badly.
In another employee-related piece of bad news, your intrepid blogger had his tread separate on his tire on the way to work last week, and this was the result. Yeesh. The wheel’s fine, but Fix-a-Flat probably won’t remedy the issue here. Thankfully, it’s time for winter tires!
Moving to customer cars, a customer came in recently looking to diagnose what seemed like a worn out wheel bearing. Upon removing the bearing, we knew instantly that it was the issue and that it needed replacement. We asked the techs, and they’re confirming that this is probably the roughest wheel bearing we’ve seen in the history of the shop. The car was fine otherwise, but something bad could have happened if they didn’t come to the shop with the bearing in this condition. Keep up with your regular maintenance and checkovers, folks! We like it when you’re all safe and alive.
Finally, we’ve been seeing a marked increase in the number of oil sludge issues arriving at the shop. Domestics, imports, they all suffer from a collection of nasty build-up from a variety of factors, the main being infrequent oil changes. We’ve seen cars following BMW’s recommended 15,000-mile intervals come in looking like this, and that’s with the manufacturer’s suggestions being followed! Either way, the buildup centered mostly around the oil pickup tube inside the pan, and the pan had a little bit of particulate in it, as well.
Attempting to clean the pickup tube was an exercise in patience, as well. Our first deep cleaning elicited a good amount of build-up from the tube, which you can see in the first picture below. However, that didn’t fix the problem much at all. As you can see from the second picture, shining a light behind the pickup shows that only a few open spots are able to pick up oil and deliver it to the motor. This is one of the more extreme cases, but as always, this can happen to any car when oil change intervals are too far apart, or ignored altogether.
Us being us, we couldn’t stay with the ‘bad news’ theme this entire post. With the weekend coming up, we wanted to end on a positive note. So let’s end on two! First up, we just received a set of Macht Schnell downpipes for an E90 335i back from our ceramic coater, and they look absolutely stunning. We’ve never had a bad ceramic coat from our source, and this set of downpipes is no exception!
Finally, we snapped a quick picture of Tim’s 911 from a down-low angle. We really love the lines of the original 911, so we figured why not share it as a good way to cap off the week? So, here it is!
Have an excellent weekend, drive safely, and as always, thanks for taking the time to read our blog!
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