Gee, I dunno…d’ya think the kid’s gonna be alright?” Basil looked worried. “I certainly hope so, Tooner,” he replied as he struggled to control his emotions. “But I do worry – a bad experience at this age can damage a young fellow for life.”
I stared at my two colleagues. “Aren’t you guys overreacting a little? I mean, you’ve packed him a lunch, checked his list of supplies three times, and insisted he wear a fresh pair of coveralls.” I shrugged. “Get over it. You two are acting worse than a mother on her kid’s first day of school.”
But as we silently watched the service truck disappear down the street, even I had to admit that life happens way too fast. One minute, your apprentice is playing in a puddle of oil; the next minute, he’s off doing service calls.
Basil smiled weakly as he dabbed at his eyes with a clean rag. “Well, I suppose you’re right, Slim. We’ve done our best. Sometimes you just have to let them go.”
Tooner growled and went back to his tire vibration job without another word. Even though he tries to hide it, deep down I know he cares.
I slapped Basil on the back. “Cheer up. If Beanie has any problems, he’ll call. Come on back inside – there’s a bag of fresh donuts with your name on it.”
But the sugar-laden treats failed to lift the mood that morning. We’d sent our young apprentice on his first official service call to help out another shop, and it was worrisome. “What if The Bean really screws up?” exploded Tooner at one point. “Our reputation’s on the line here!”
I couldn’t blame Tooner for being worried – Beanie hadn’t called all morning and the pressure was getting to us. But we had our own work to do, and we needed to keep ourselves focused. “Relax,” I said. “It’s a simple wiring problem. I’m sure he can handle that.”
The vehicle at issue was a 2000 Chrysler Sebring with a dead short. The guys at Spoke Lee’s Alignment Shop had been struggling with it for two days now, and Spoke himself had called me that morning for help.
“Y’know we wouldn’t normally tackle these things, Slim,” he’d said, “but it’s a regular customer, and besides, you’d think a dead short would be easy to find.”
“And it’s not?” I asked.
Spoke groaned. “We’ve replaced the fusible link four times! Every time we drive around the block, it blows again!” He lowered his voice. “If you could send someone over, that’d be great. I hate to run up a towing bill unnecessarily, if you know what I mean.”
I understood all right. It wasn’t the towing bill he was worried about – it was the ribbing he’d get from Dutchy when he showed up with his deck truck. Our local towing operator can be less than sympathetic at times.
The long-awaited phone call finally came in the early afternoon. Tooner pounced on it at first ring. “Beanie, is that you?!”
Basil and I came running. “Is he okay? Put it on speaker phone!” yelled Basil. “I need to hear his voice…” I glanced at him and he coughed. “I, er, I mean, I want to hear what he has to say…”
It turned out that Beanie had lots to say, and most of it wasn’t good.
“Guys, I’m stumped!” he lamented. “I’ve checked everything I can think of. I’ve followed the wire from the battery to the ignition switch, and then traced the lead to the sunroof, and then…”
“Hold it!” broke in Tooner. “Ignition switches? Sunroofs? Back it up, buddy boy. Just start at the beginning an’ tell us what’s goin’ down.”
Beanie stopped to collect his thoughts. “Okay, here’s the deal. Fusible link #5 keeps blowing, and the only circuits it feeds are the ignition switch and the sunroof relay. We’ve already tried a new ignition switch, but that didn’t help. Then I disconnected the sunroof wiring harness, but we’re still blowing the link. I don’t know where to turn next, guys!”
Basil rubbed his chin. “Turn is a good choice of words, Beanie. You need to check your road map. Have you consulted the appropriate wiring diagrams for this vehicle?”
“Well, yeah. Spoke has them printed out right here. That’s how I know the wire only feeds the sunroof and the ignition switch.” He paused briefly. “From what I can see, there’s only a few circuits going off from the ignition switch, and each one has its own separate fuse. Those fuses aren’t blowing, so it can’t be one of them.”
“Hold up there,” growled Tooner. “Whaddya mean ‘only a few circuits?’ Since when does an ignition switch feed only a few circuits?” He headed for the shop computer. “Keep him talkin’, boys. I’m gonna check out that diagram myself.”
When Tooner returned, he had a crumpled printout clutched in his hand. “Beanie, I show a ton of circuits runnin’ off that ignition switch, and there’s at least four or five that ain’t got no fuse.” He thrust the wiring diagram towards the phone. “It’s all right here on page three.”
There was a long pause from the speaker box. “Uh, page three?” ventured Beanie meekly. “I’ve only got two pages here.”
Spoke used the same online service for repair manuals and wiring diagrams that we did, but somehow he’d only printed out two of the three pages required. Once Beanie found page three, he was able to trace the short to the EGR solenoid wiring harness, which had melted to the exhaust manifold.
I hung up the phone. “Well, I guess we’ve learned a lesson. Never send an inexperienced tech on a service call.”
“Whaddya talkin’ about?” Tooner bristled. “It ain’t Beanie’s fault we didn’t give him the right gear before he left!”
“The right gear?”
“Yeah! The road map, er…I mean the wiring diagram. Rule number one: never trust the other guy’s information.”
“Exactly my thoughts,” chimed in Basil, clapping Tooner on the back. “You can’t blame the lad for getting lost when we’re the ones who sent him in the wrong direction. If you ask me, I’m rather proud of the boy.”
“Ditto. Now let’s go have some of them donuts. I feel like celebrating.”
Basil and Tooner headed off to the coffee room full of praise for their protégé, while I stood there shaking my head. This was a side of their personalities that I’d never seen before.
But life’s like that; just when you think you’ve got the story figured out, somebody rewrites the map…or rather, the book.
Rick Cogbill, a freelance writer and former shop owner in Summerland, B.C., has written The Car Side for a variety of trade magazines for the past 14 years. “A Fine Day for a Drive,” his first book based on the characters from this column, is now available for order at thecarside.com.
