Burken Boys’ and Girl’s Journey

[wjburken]

Holy sh*t.

Yep!

 

[Sparksalot]

Yup.
For the record, I carry tools in my Chevy too.

#metoo

 

[Sam Harris]

Thank God for Joseph and the knowledge..!

 

[Tonyv__]

Man your kids are great. My brother probably would of kicked me in the ass because he doesn’t know any better

 

[wjburken]

Man your kids are great. My brother probably would of kicked me in the ass because he doesn’t know any better

I am very proud of my kids. They still fight with each other like normal siblings, don't get me wrong, but they certainly have each other's back when push comes to shove.

 

[Tonyrodz]

I am very proud of my kids. They still fight with each other like normal siblings, don't get me wrong, but they certainly have each other's back when push comes to shove.

As it should be.

 

[Joseph Garcia]

Good comes out of bad. You now know that Javier had a previously unknown esophagus stricture that has now been rectified.

 

[pwtr02ss]

Glad to hear they came through for each other in a time that most would panic. Very awesome kids you've got there.

 

[wjburken]

Joseph is getting things ready for his lawn mowing business by switching his rider from its snow removal configuration to its grass cutting configuration.

Yesterday afternoon he was replacing the broken lower console on his riding lawnmower with a used one off of ebay and it had this “strange” plastic thing mounted where his rider has the cruise control lever. He couldn’t figure out what it was for so he asked me. I had to laugh because I realized he’s never seen a cell phone that would fit on this. I’m envisioning an old Nokia fitting in this perfectly.

 

[wjburken]

I’m going to title this particular post - “Proper diagnostics - A Teachable Moment”

Javier informed me shortly after getting the truck that the horn in his F-350 wasn’t working so today he decided to get the horn working. I asked if he had checked the fuse for the horn and he said he had and it was good. As it is his truck, I am trying to let him do his thing and help when asked.

Ford installed the horn in almost the worst location, inside the passenger fender. I walked out to check on him after about an hour to discover he had busted off a couple of rusted bolts and had a few more where the panel clip nuts were rusted through and were just spinning on him. I helped him get that taken care of and finally got the fender liner out so he could get to the horns. We got the horns out and I suggested that we put 12V to the horns themselves to see if the horns had failed or there was a broken wire somewhere. Well, 12V made them sound off loud and proud. Well, that started me on my electrics diagnostic routine as he was already 2 hours into this project and I knew he wanted to do an oil change as well. 1st step, do we get power at the harness-Nope. 2nd step is the relay tripping when the horn was pressed-yep. 3rd step, is there power at the fuse which he said had tested fine? Well, here is the teachable moment. After having him show me the fuse location diagram for the truck, I discovered that the fuse location for the horn was empty. I grabbed a 15A fuse, put it in and viola! We were blasting a solid chord from under the fender. I told him in the future, he needs to make sure he takes his time and to make sure he understands what he is doing and to double check his work.

Had he done that, he could have avoided about 4 hours of work when all he needed to do was install a 15A fuse.

He also learned how to deal with busted off bolts, figuring out what hardware to get for the auto parts store like panel speed nuts, bolts, washers, etc.

At the end of the day, he got a 4 hour lesson on the benefits of proper diagnostics, how to deal with rusty and broken bolts and how part of his truck is put together.

I call it a win as I love watching my kids learn.