Gah 5—A Good Day to Gah Hard · 6:15pm Feb 13th, 2016
So it's come to this. I've finally exhausted a franchise. Until there's another Die Hard movie, I'm going to have to think of a different tagline for blog posts.
A couple of Friday nights ago I had a special blog post planned for y'all. I was going to write a step-by-step analysis of a tricky diagnosis that we had in the shop. I might still—I'm sure there are some of you who are interested in an intermittent failure of the PCI network on a 2002 Chrysler Town and Country van.
As sometimes seems to be the case, the best laid plans of mice and men ponies often go astray.
From the Wiki
We had a pretty busy day scheduled a couple of Fridays ago. It was nearly the end of January, and I was trying to hit my numbers, so I was a little bit overbooked, but had three guys working, and I had a plan to get everything done in good time. Things were going rather well, in fact, right up until our shop idiot backed a customer's minivan halfway through the garage door. Said garage door was closed at the time.
It took a bit of creativity to get the van back out. We weren't sure if the door would stay up without a van to hold it in place; luckily, it did. The garage door guys were prompt, and managed to piece the door together, sort of. But the bottom three panels are hopelessly buckled, and need to be replaced.
Until they are, I cannot fully open that door. In fact, I can only get it about six feet up, and even then it's pretty sketchy. It doesn't go up evenly, since not all the panels are parallel and more. This has had the effect of putting three of the five bays we've got mostly out of commission. I can use them if I have to, but basically coordinating cars into and out of the shop has become a bit of a puzzle.
I guess on the plus side, people parking in front of the main door isn't a big deal right now.
Seems like it was last February that we were dealing with things going awry at the shop, between the new hoists and the water pipes freezing and then the hot water heater leaking. Must be something about Februaries. No wonder the Romans kept stealing days from it. Pity they didn't stop.
So where does that leave you, the reader? Well, I'm sure that y'all have noticed that there haven't been any story updates in a while. It's hard to focus on the important stuff in life when the job is being over-stressful, that's my excuse. I've written a bit of stuff here and there, but haven't really gotten in the groove on anything.
Fact is, the last couple of weeks have been super-demoralizing. Not just with work stuff; the local theatre group is financially strapped . . . we're going to be broke next month. At our last election, we barely got enough members to fill the board, and nobody wanted to be president or vice-president. Our next play is going to be a zero-budget production—it's going to have to be.
Well, that's enough of me griping. Now for some good news!
First off, some madness has caused Present Perfect to be reviewing his way through all my One-Shot-Ober fics. There are a couple I'm really looking forward to his review on . . . I'll let y'all guess which ones those might be.
Second, I have something which will be going up pretty soon. Today or tomorrow. I'm not going to tell you what; but here's a little teaser.
Merry May kept pushing the gnomon of the Maretania sundial back and forth until it finally broke off.
I had thought of doing something special for Valentine's Day, but nah. If I do do a special Valentine's Day story, I'll probably wind up publishing it sometime in March, 'cause that's how I roll.
Source
This is a google image search result for "Applejack Valentine." Oddly appropriate.
I always think that I ought to end blog posts with something profound, but I've got nothing.
I can only wonder :V
Wow that sucks about what happened to the door. I hope the van was not badly damaged by that snafu. Hopefully March has a turnaround for the better for you!
Go figure. It's never the old, shitty, useless door you can't justify replacing that gets wrecked. It's always the important main door or the door you just had replaced.
If it makes you feel better at least you didn't have a co-worker walk over without saying a word and clock you in the head... It made for a very interesting breakfast show today. I have no clue what the guy did to deserve it.
Will the shop idiot be seeing paycheck deductions toward door repair costs?
PS: There needs to be a story written explaining your "Riverdance" guards. They're raising money for a charity, right?
Gah thoughts:
A fine and pleasant Gah.
The Gah heard 'round the world.
I Gah, therefore I am.
Title suggestions!
A New Gah
The Gah Strikes Back
The Wrath of Gah
Return of the Gah
The Gah Awakens
(one of these things is not like the others. . . )
(. . . god, I'm such a nerd)
Bathe Hard
It's time for the Saturday Night Bath at the Cake's house, but Pound Cake wants nothing to do with the water tonight. He's accumulated a layer of grime that's worth the time, and this time he's going to survive without a bath.
3751808
Lady Gah, Gah?
Take what you can.
We've got to go gah, Marty -
Gah to the Future!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/11/17/155463.gif
Sorry to hear about the depths of your struggles with work. But keep on soldiering through, and we'll see you on the other side!
3751619
Mares is one; it's had a rather polarizing reaction. Understandably so.
3751621
Not too badly. Also the van was a piece of crap, and the customer was pretty understanding about the whole thing. So it could have been much worse.
3751621
Not too badly. Also the van was a piece of crap, and the customer was pretty understanding about the whole thing. So it could have been much worse.
3751635
Yeah, of all the doors in the shop that could have gotten wrecked, that one was the most important. Of course, that also means it was the one most likely to have an accident. . . .
That's an interesting way to start the day. Stuff like that used to happen when I worked at Firestone, but here we don't do that kind of thing.
3751799
Not directly, sadly. However, he's getting sent home early a lot, because we don't have enough work, largely because I have to schedule light, since I can't get as many cars into the shop as I used to. So he's feeling the pain.
I was looking for a Romanesque pony, and . . . well, the guard uniforms are pretty Romanesque.
I hope it never gets to that point.
3751808
Hmm, yes, I could work with those. We'll see what movie franchise I remember when it comes time for another Gah-themed blog post.
3751813
Foals hate baths. It's a scientific fact.
cdn2.arkive.org/media/95/95D9B49C-4481-4513-896B-52E137F5578D/Presentation.Large/Plains-zebra-and-foal-bathing.jpg
3751814
vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/d/d0/Rara_%22if_we're_all_done_here%22_S5E24.png
3752122
lol I do: there was something the boss was mad at me for earlier in the week, but he forgot all about it when the door got wrecked.
3752198
So if you'd been wondering why it was taking me so long to post the update to CSI-V . . . but it's up now! And complete, finally!
3752238 Best part is that me and my buddy just went back to discussing what we wanted from the menu while the manager was trying to separate them. A soldier and a security guard, it's going to take something special to keep us interested.
(you didn't see that)
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37540750/_ponies/gilda%20mother%20of%20god.png
Oh, while I got you, here:
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37540750/2016-02-05%2016.06.19.jpg
See something missing?
3752686
I figured it out, though. Go me! The easy part was actually figuring out what was taking down the network; the hard part was figuring out where the problem was.
Reminds me of the old GM W-body cars with the rear calipers that never worked right. They'd drop the outboard pad, and since the caliper was seized on the pins anyway, it'd never make contact with the rotor. Usually about a half-inch gap between the rotor and the caliper.
3752707 Well don't keep me hangin' man! What was it?
Don't see many of those, never seen that happen, myself. And I think all of those cars that I've seen, all have rear drums.
3752730
A bunch of wires in the big junction by the transmission were corroded (you know the big junction I'm talking about). It was putting enough positive voltage on the PCI wire from the ABS module to the fuse box to raise the ground on the PCI network between 3 and nine volts, depending on where the wire was moved. Interestingly enough, with a 3 volt ground bias, the PCI network still worked, so it's apparently pretty robust. Nine volts blinded it, though; the signal is supposed to be a 0-7.5V square wave. Interestingly, the PCI wire wasn't actually broken--the insulation was intact--but it was getting enough interference through to mess up the signal.
What added to the fun was that the Mitchell wiring diagram didn't actually show all the modules that were on the network.
I've got all sorts of wiring diagrams and oscilloscope patterns that I saved, and I've been meaning to put together a nice case study on it. I know a bunch of FimFic readers are computer people, and they might be interested in how automotive networks work. I suspect that the method of diagnosis is somewhat different . . . but it might make for an interesting comments section.
Also speaking of interesting diagnoses, I don't know if you've ever used a pressure transducer to analyse a cylinder. If you have, here's a nice revealing pattern:
orig12.deviantart.net/61f0/f/2016/044/d/9/dakota_bad_cylinder_waveform_by_admiral_biscuit-d9rnzyp.jpg
It's cranking, not running, and this cylinder misfires, but has good compression.EDIT for clarity: the test was done cranking, not with the engine running (waveforms are somewhat different on a cranking test vs. a running test). This cylinder had a constant misfire, but it had good compression on an analog gauge (about 175psi).
Stuck shut exhaust valve (rocker arm fell off)
They're probably mostly all dead by now. It was the early 90s ones.
3752769 Ahhhh... the infamous bundle of wires by the TCM. Can't honestly say I've ever seen one with a network problem from there... but I have seen... let's see, one, two... a bajillion of them having transmission problems from those wires. So many...
What is a PCI-V?
3752686
Since I don't work on cars, I don't know for sure what right looks like, but isn't the pad supposed to be visible?
3752769
Was the ingress path for the water also allowing current to leak in, or was the corrosion reaction itself responsible for the voltage?
3753098
I'd say the splice on the wiring diagram (229, IIRC) which is not explained, or the fact that the Mitchell wiring diagrams leave off the rather important fact that the TCM is also on the PCI network. Had I known that when I first started looking at the van, it would have saved about an hour of diagnosis. Sadly, this is not the first time where wiring diagrams have left important information out.
I almost condemned a PCM once because the diagnostic instructions in Mitchell failed to mention that the oxygen sensor heater circuit was pulse-width modulated.
3753515 lol yeah
in·ter·mit·tent
/ˌin(t)ərˈmitnt/
adjective
Occurring at irregular intervals; not continuous or steady. Expletive uttered by electrical technicians, engineers. Method of torture overlooked by Geneva Convention.
eg; "intermittent wiring"
synonyms:
sporadic, son of a bitch, irregular, fitful, fuck, spasmodic, broken, God damn it, fragmentary, shit, discontinuous, isolated, motherfucker, random, patchy, dang POS, scattered, aww hell, kill me
If the Roman empire had not fallen, would we have black history week instead?
Every four years, we'd have a week with 8 days to account for the leap year.
Also, cute zebra foal!