A job in Austin taught me to always check the ground strap first

I was chasing a no-start on a 2015 F-150 at a shop in Austin last spring, swapped out the starter and battery before I noticed the ground strap was corroded to nothing. The owner walked over and said "son, you gotta start simple" while pointing at a $12 part. How do you train yourself to fight the urge to jump to the hard stuff first?

3 comments

3 Comments

kai_chen28d ago

@lucast81 you're not wrong about that at all... sometimes the simple stuff hides in plain sight and eats up your whole day. I had a Honda Civic once where I pulled the alternator, tested it three different ways, even replaced the battery... turned out it was just a loose connection at the fuse box that took thirty seconds to fix. That's the trap, right? You convince yourself it's got to be the big ticket item because you've already ruled out the easy stuff, but then you realize you skipped checking the thing that was staring at you the whole time.

lucast819d ago

Real quick though, that $12 strap probably took you a lot longer to find than just swapping the starter would have if you'd started there. Sometimes the "hard stuff" actually saves you time.

josephbailey9d ago

Had a buddy once spent three hours replacing a fuel pump in a parking lot. Turns out the fuse was blown. Cost him $2 and a lot of pride.