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Is it possible that low side pressure switch in the A/C system shuts off the fan in addition to the compressor with low pressure? Since she had the A/C worked on I think she could have a coolant (freon) leak and does not have enough low side pressure to run system at idle.
It could be. Did you happen to get the lighter socket fixed too? It would be a real good idea to still have that meter working.
I am a x tech, and so i do everything on my own. I never pay another man to do squat for me, not for a thing. You name any job and i can do it just about.
I don't like the idea to be helpless, and still have to pay ,a man for what you are getting you can't tell if the guy doing the work knows a thing.
Once I did pay a man for a job i could do, and had done before, and he just screwed it all up. I refused to pay upon my visual inspection and laid right into hom telling him that I thought he knew what he was doing and then i told him the How To.
He still wanted money for his time and i saud for what? he didn't get 10 cents. as i will not pay for shoddy work ever. I was pressed for time doing bigger things, but had I known i would have done the job myself and saved my time. I had to re do what he did and tale more time because he damaged other parts.
A meter and a test light are tools every driver should have and know how to use at least in a limited way.
It may be what you had was a high resistance connection, type of short, not a dead short which blows fuses. That might be a bit much for a novice to find, but just the same that meter is important. It used to be cars had meters but people being the way they are the meters went south for idiot lights.
A little tale" last year on a really hot day, in my 1986 3/4 ton Didge convesion nav, heading to Mass from NH, that meter saved my hide.
I was 40+ miles out from home when that meter showed a lower reading than I liked. Some where around 11.9 dcv. I had on AC, a very heavy load, the egnine is a v 8 and has a primitive com****r, and running it with just the engine is about a 10 amp load more. Then I had tunes cranked up maybe 9 amps more.
I had to go another 15 miles befire the first auto parts store. I monitored that meter hard, I cut off the tunes and the AC. Just power to run that engine was the main idea, and I lowered the powerd windows while i still could.
When I arrived at the parts store i went in leaving the engine running with my wife waiting outside the van in the shade to watch it, since it was just brutal hot.
I couldn't afford to shut the engine off, since that takes apx 365 AMPS, and I needed to know if a Alternator and regulator were in stock or not, and if not to go to another store.
They had both. Since I was in want of getting somewhere, I bought the alt knowing it might be re-buildable, but not then and there. I swapped it out right there and traded in th core. When I fired you the engine it said uh UH Ak ka boom and ran... pretty low batter, byt that meter said 14.8 dcv, just like I wanted. For kicks I ran the van 10 minutes more right there and bought a new regulator to go, and off we went.
Now I could have not even known till the ac and the engine dies somewhere down the road, and spent the rest of the day getting towed to some shop some where and then the hassel of getting a lift some how, and another back, and PAID some fool who can't do the work as well as I can.
If you get that meter and get it working, and or if you want a real meter called a mulitimeter at walley world for 17 bucks (Yellow cased GE modle I bought there just to have what anyone can) I can teach you simple things. and you can test camera batterys, flash light batterys watch batterys and nore besides the car.
You can set this type meter to test your skin too with Ohms and pass current right thru your body and not feel a thing.
I am very married, incase I seem to be too forward.
A little tale" last year on a really hot day, in my 1986 3/4 ton Didge convesion nav, heading to Mass from NH, that meter saved my hide.
I was 40+ miles out from home when that meter showed a lower reading than I liked. Some where around 11.9 dcv. I had on AC, a very heavy load, the egnine is a v 8 and has a primitive com****r, and running it with just the engine is about a 10 amp load more. Then I had tunes cranked up maybe 9 amps more.
I had to go another 15 miles befire the first auto parts store. I monitored that meter hard, I cut off the tunes and the AC. Just power to run that engine was the main idea, and I lowered the powerd windows while i still could.
When I arrived at the parts store i went in leaving the engine running with my wife waiting outside the van in the shade to watch it, since it was just brutal hot.
I couldn't afford to shut the engine off, since that takes apx 365 AMPS, and I needed to know if a Alternator and regulator were in stock or not, and if not to go to another store.
They had both. Since I was in want of getting somewhere, I bought the alt knowing it might be re-buildable, but not then and there. I swapped it out right there and traded in th core. When I fired you the engine it said uh UH Ak ka boom and ran... pretty low batter, byt that meter said 14.8 dcv, just like I wanted. For kicks I ran the van 10 minutes more right there and bought a new regulator to go, and off we went.
Now I could have not even known till the ac and the engine dies somewhere down the road, and spent the rest of the day getting towed to some shop some where and then the hassel of getting a lift some how, and another back, and PAID some fool who can't do the work as well as I can.
If you get that meter and get it working, and or if you want a real meter called a mulitimeter at walley world for 17 bucks (Yellow cased GE modle I bought there just to have what anyone can) I can teach you simple things. and you can test camera batterys, flash light batterys watch batterys and nore besides the car.
You can set this type meter to test your skin too with Ohms and pass current right thru your body and not feel a thing.
I am very married, incase I seem to be too forward.
Very nice pictures!
Looks like you guys have a lot of fun and excitement!
I know what you mean about having to PAY someone to mess up your car, it happens to me all the time. I have had very honest mechanics that didn't know what they were doing and ended up paying to fix what they broke because I was then afraid for them to touch my car again.
Then the other side is a good mechanic that is a crook.
I am really afraid to even type this because I am feeling sick right now BUT guess what it cost?
$600.00
He said it was a ressistor(spelling), a new blower, rewiring. He said I had to have all of them and it does work good but I am feeling very sick because I don't know why I needed a new blower because it was working great when it was not cutting out. If the wires were bad, I can now see why it would cut on and off but I don't understand why I needed a new blower, do you???
I want to know if this guy is trustworthy so I can feel okay to take it back the next time something happens.
Ihave used him before and the problem is always fixed and stays fixed but I never know if it is something small that he charges so much money for.
Another reason why I am afraid to have someone mess around with my cigarette lighter.
Do you have an opinion on whether the price was fair?
Do you think I needed a new blower?
Thanks
That price might be fair. A new blower motor can be pricey. I assume you have a copy of the repair order. It should list all parts and all labor. It should list his hourly labor rate too, and be broken down in a way you can read and understand it.
The prices if parts have increased greatly over the past few years. All metal have gone up much higher than they once were not so long ago. So has labor, and shop over head.
I work for a machinsit most often now, as his mechanic. We build a wide variety of industrial machines. Some of these are science related for testing things. One requires exact sets of weights, which are made of brass by us. We buy 3" (inch) by 24" round stock of brass to make these weights of. As of late the cost has doubled for the same thing.
Resistors come in a wide variety for what ever application they are used for. They can be stand alone parts in line with the wiring, or they can be part if the switch.
Often times these are made in such a way that the device isn't made to be repaired at all. More and more these are created as sealed units. This carries over to other parts, not related to wiring what so ever.
Bean Counters figure out ways to make a part as cheap as possible, and create changes that do not lend to customer use.
An example of this happen this last week to us. I took parts for chemical treatment to Mass, driving the 1 ton dump truck. I had left a empty trailer rated to carry 6 tons at another metal supply house, to load on the retyrn trip. When I got back there with parts in the truck and hitched the trailer again the center line to the brake hydralics burst, and the truck lost it's rear brake capability.
The center line was junk leaking, and another part which USED to be made as a flex hose to a junction block where the center line splits to go to each rear brake assembly at the wheels is made as a unit, that can't be fixed.
The block is made to be crimped to the flex line one time, and one time only. The only way to replace the flex line is to buy the entire unit, since you can't simply un-screw the flex line from the junction splitter block anymore.
This works great for the bean counters, saving a threaded fitting, but it is a bad deal for the customer, who is forced to buy nore than at one time he would have needed.
Working under the dash is no fun and is very time consuming. Many un-related items are in the way and must be removed and then put back.
If you are personally willing to buy a few tools a cost of $4.00, (test light) $17.00 (GE multimeter), a Clymers work shop manual for your exact car year make and model (apx $30.00) You stand a good chance to fix the lighter yourself.
This won't make you a crack tech, but it will teach you things you didn't know before. If you bought the dcv meter that plugs in to the lighter socket, and get to use that, you can monitor the charging system any time you use the car.
With the repair order all you need to do is sreach the parts he used to see what these parts retail for. Add that up, check is labor rate, what ever that is, which is likely competitive to others in your area, and add that up.
You can go to another shop and see if they have a flat rate labor book and look up hours it takes to change these parts too. The times listed are for a tech to remove and replace parts on a new car. Older cars where it matters with older parts where time and corroision (rust) have taken a toll, not likey under the dash, time can be anything. Rusty cars take much longer to fix, because so much metal is missing.
A good shop will charge a fair price for most work, even if they beat the book.
At one time i worked for Volvo, and could beat the book changing a clutch by 7 hours and 15 minutes. So I would charge customers a fair price of around 1/2 the book time. The prices if parts were not exactly locked in stone either, but to make over head, again a fair price was charge for the parts.
With very rusty brake parts, sometimes the fees seemed very high, but a shop that looses money won't last no matter how good the techs are.
If you can have a go with these tools, I can help more.
The Book will show you what wires are what in color. The $4.00 test light looks like a ice pick, and lights up withy power, showing you there IS current or not, making electricity visable. This is a fast way to work, when you need to know Go / No Go volts. Sometimes at night broken down I use mine to just see. I have one in every vehical because these tools work fast and are cheap.
When I needed more detail I use the multimeter, which has a setting the plug in meter has, but isn't practical to mount on a dash.
For all you know the ciggy butt socket fuse is bad.
Another thing is the junk parts still blong to you. Shops often offer these to the customer. It is a service for the shop to throw the dead parts out. Any service has a cost in $$$$.
By having this blower fixed, you may well have saved a lot of money. If that high resistance connection went bad more, it is possible to dead short the charging sysem, to the point of a vehical fire.
If you fear getting shocked, you won't. The only parts on a car that can shock you are the coils and their wires to the spark plugs.
You can put a finger on both battery terminals and not get a shock you can feel. Current is passing thru both fingers into the hands up your arms, thry your shoulds and back to the battery when you do that, but you can't and won't feel it a bit. Go see.
If you touched a metalic object to the (+) terminal and to the body of the car what ever the metalic object is would burn or get very hot fast. That is a dead short. Don't do that ever.
PM me if you want with the details on the Repair Order....
Thanks a lot Mac and everybody.
Keep an eye out for the title to this thread, I will call it "Any mechanics out there #2"
Hope I get to drive for awhile before you here from me again.
Thank you again, very much!
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with Ohms and pass current right thru your body and not feel a thing.
