Wednesday - late afternoon

Well, today wasn't horrible I guess. Awfully tired, my sleep is a bit whacked with all of these different hours I keep getting thrown at me. Drove straight to the plant, got a pre loaded trailer and came straight back.  No washout or loading needed, it was a nice break from that for once.  Tomorrow is normal, deliver and come back. 

But, I also went to the eye doctor today.  My vision has been growing worse and I needed to make sure I didn't have glaucoma or some other eye problem.  I don't like going to those things because of the very bright lights they shine into your eyes.  I don't necessarily think that level of luminosity is particularly good for your eyes, but then again, glaucoma is far worse.  

The end result is no glaucoma or macular degeneration at all.  I'm just getting old and my eyes are getting old with me. The doctor had me looking through lenses and asked me if I had considered getting glasses for - all the time, not just reading glasses.  Nope, I can see well enough for driving and reading glasses are ok.  Not great but ok. 

He then had me looking through a series of lenses. At the end of that, he wanted to prove his point to me.  Ok, look through the lenses now. It was a bit blurry.  And now?  Perfect.  He kept doing this and finally told me that the blurry stuff was my regular vision and the perfect vision was with what glasses would do.  Ok, he sold me.  I ended buying a pair of regular glasses and polaroid glasses for driving.  Oh, yes, I have a "mild" cataract and he said if I would wear protective lenses outside that would help keep it from getting worse.  

I thought it nice however that I don't have the really bad stuff, cataracts can be fixed if they get bad enough.  He didn't even suggest that, it's not that bad, yet anyway. 

He sort of mildly scolded me for not having had come for the last 3 years, annual checkups are important. If glaucoma does start up, you can control it if caught early enough. If not? Well I have a family member who can attest to the destruction that glaucoma can do to your eyes, namely one of her eyes is completely dead.  

That out of the way, I can focus on other things.  

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The SUV. It's at the dealership. It's been at the dealership for eight days now.  I called this service dude again - I've made a lot of calls and getting a lot of nothing answers from him.  He tells me the same exact thing we discussed last week: Well we are having trouble finding OEM abs module.  Dude, we discussed this on Friday  and I said fine, let's just fix the noise issue and get the key fobs made.  You're telling me that you have done nothing to this vehicle since Friday? 

I decided not to allow temptation to take over - that would be to give a total, earned earful. I asked to speak to one of the owners.  He said ok, comes back a minute later, well I don't know where he is. I did make a comment to him at that point and after he said something else that came off totally wrong: You are a real piece of work, aren't you? Yes, yes I am was his reply. 

I hung up, called back and asked for the owner. This time? One of the owners got on the phone.  This guy was totally professional, didn't try to pass it off as some sort of "mistake", took ownership of it and said after a lengthy conversation that he would get into the vehicle with his service manager and they would figure out what's wrong.  

He called back an hour and a half later. I got that thing off the rack, we drove the first few feet and could hear the noise, this is going to be easy to find!  They couldn't find it. Next, they put in electronic detection devices next to the issue that the garage said it has.  "We couldn't hear anything coming from that mount and that detection device was right there next to it".  This was another lengthy conversation. They checked the entire front end and said it isn't the body mount but we aren't really sure what it is. It could be a suspension part that is just a little bit off and making that noise.  Ball joints, stabilizer bar, forks, everything all looks good.  

The end of the story? Short of pulling the entire front end suspension off and checking everything and replacing everything, they really don't know what else to do. I give up on it, I"ll live with that noise.  He said yes and I won't charge you any labor because of the way we treated you and the fact you bought the vehicle from us.  Albeit some 8 years ago lol. I tend to keep vehicles until they are completely worn out and really ready for the junk scrap pile.  This one is far from that even with that problem.  

So, I'm getting the new key fobs - which they hadn't even ordered yet after, again, eight  days of sitting there.  He said he would have them brought in by air and would cover the shipping costs, I'm paying for the keying and the work it takes to get them matched to the vehicle.  

And after that, excepting for regular maintenance, I am done fixing things on it.  Taylor said it sounds like the entire body is going to come crashing off of it.  Yeah, no.  A bit of an exaggeration, she's like: "Time to go buy a new one". Oh please nooo.  I'm not doing that, thank you very much. I have enough payments right now, I don't need another 5 year loan on top of that. I will drive it like that. 

At some point, I expect something somewhere in there to break and then it will self-identify.  You need to understand here that pros that have been in the business 30 plus years were looking at it, including one person that ONLY does front end stuff.  

Anyway, unless I find somewhere else to take it where they can tell me what's wrong - I doubt I'm taking it to yet a third shop tho - I'm just live with it until I get sick of it and get rid of it I guess.

And with that, I am outta here.  I want to watch some tv, go get the kids from church, watch some more tv and go to bed. At least I don't have a super early load tomorrow.