Fire Marshall Bill

Yesterday at work, I was underneath a Maxima working when a co-worker in the bay next to me calmly says, "JP, would you mind giving me a hand here?" I look up and see sparks shooting out of the vent hole where the bumper would be.

I jump up as he says, "I have a little fire here." I run to get a bucket and the hose. The side door wasn't open so as I was running with the hose, it jerked me back when it reached it's limit. So I attempted to put a quart of water into a small container with the water hose that's hard to control.

I yelled at another co-worker to help me open the door to get the hose through. We finally got the hose through the fence, but I stood outside away from the fire and laughed.

The reason for the fire was my co-worker was welding in a tail light pocket and it caught the insulation on the inner quarter panel trim on fire. The insulation is to keep the sounds down and is extremely flammable. That's the logical reason.

My reason is because he didn't know that you should pull back the trim and put a fire retardant blanket in between the interior and the repair.

So later one of our supervisors was watching the tape of the whole incident. Apparently I jumped up so fast that he didn't even notice until he watched the tape frame by frame. It was so funny! LOL All you see is me zooming out the back door! LOL

I hate idiots!

Today, my wife, Kaytee, was driving home from our school on the back roads, meaning neighborhoods avoiding traffic lights. While driving that way, she saw a broken Heineken bottle scattered on her lane. She couldn't avoid driving over the glass since there was a car coming in the opposite lane.

As she drove over the glass she cringed. Knowing she was running over the glass. When she got home and turned the van off she could hear the hissing from the air rushing out of the tire.

She called me in hysterics telling me to bring a jack home. She tends to get upset over anything that goes wrong with any of our cars. I told her not to worry and that I would check the tire when I got home.

I got home just before 6pm and the tire was completely flat. I put the spare on, but refused to let her drive the van. The spare was so rusted, I wouldn't have driven on it myself. I looked at the original tire and had to actually dig the glass out with a knife. I doubt I got all of it out.

immediately and Kaytee could have lost control of the van.

PEOPLE, be aware of what you throw out of your vehicles!

Careful what you wear, Ladies.

I'm at work today, as usual. This woman comes to get things out of her totalled vehicle. She's wearing a skirt and heels. There's nothing really revealing about her. She's pretty in a quiet way. As she was getting into the jeep she was driving, her skirt rode up on her thigh until her ass was almost showing. Oh I wanted to look. But I turned away. It was then that a co-worker, who's also married, came up to me and said, "Why do you think I walked away? I was on the ground working as she was bending over the trunk getting things out. I can't be looking at stuff like that."

Ladies, if you're going to a body shop, please be aware that if we're on the ground working on something we can see up your skirts. Some of us will be decent and look away. But some won't.

German Engineering my ass part deux

So I'm working on another German product. Now it's a Vee Dub. Very new '06 model. It needs a dent repaired that I said 4-5 hours repair and the computer program says threshold cost effective, replace door skin. Okay, whatever you want. Turns out the door skin is less than $100 and needs 2 braces/mounts. Seems awesome until the double sided tape that holds the door skin to the door steel mounts fall off after painting. I ended up spending 4 hours on a 3.5 paying job. Oh yeah, would you like me to put your bumpers on with some tape also??

German Engineering my ass!

So everyone knows I love the Mercedes Benz. Over all these years, Mercedes have built cars that can stand the test of time (wear and tear) but were pricey. Now that I have worked on so many, I think they last because they're over engineered. This is not always a good thing, it makes for difficult and frustrating repairs. With the value of the newer models, it's not uncommon to do $15,000-$20,000 in repairs. Believe me, that's not high just because of the parts. Imagine how much I cut and replace on a newer E class with $15,000 in parts and over 100+ labor hours. I've cut cars to where you could see through them! So to all the richers, keep buying your overbuilt, overpriced status statements. You don't understand what you're paying for anyway. Even though I think the Benz is nice, the cost of purchase, maintenance and insurance is just not justifiable. I'll stick with my daily driver POS custom truck and the family van....valuable cars!!!

New blog

I guess because I hadn't posted in such a long time, my blog was deleted. Who knows? Well I'm back and with the constant nagging of Sunnie I have some things to say. LOL