Do You Have a Jack?

Last Wednesday, I traded in my ten-year-old van and bought a new car for my wife, Rachel. As a result, I am now the proud owner of her 2001 Malibu. It took a while to get used to driving something so small, but I am now truly loving zipping around in what is to me a sports car. It has pickup. The van didn't. It turns easily. The van didn't. It stops where and when I want it to. The van didn't. I even parallel parked it last week when I took Josh back to UT. It took me twenty minutes to parallel park the van with an audience of laughing UT kids when last I dropped him off at college.

Rachel's Malibu only had two minor issues when she passed it down to me. The right-side passenger door could not be opened from the inside, and the AC turned off and switched settings whenever it wanted to. Both of these bothered me, and I gave thought to having them repaired. Rachel had, in fact, wanted to take the car in to get the door fixed last summer, but we forgot to get it done. That was a good thing. Last Sunday, Joshua's roommate Anthony fixed it by disengaging the child lock! In my defense, I had never even looked at it to see what the problem was. Evidently, Jared, Josh, and all those varsity football players Rachel gave rides home to weren't smart enough to push the switch.

The air conditioning was different. There was obviously something happening with the switches. I couldn't tell what was going on at first. After a few days, however, I noticed some constants in the dysfunction. Then being smarter than the average bear (I would have gotten that door open!), I described the problem in Google and learned that thousands of Chevy Malibu's made between 1997 and the early 2000s had exactly the same problem. The fix was to replace the control head at a cost of about $300 unless you were lucky enough to be under warranty. Unfortunately, a lot of people mentioned that the new control heads started malfunctioning after a few months. That got me to thinking that they must have a design flaw, and there must be a way to fix it. I mean, seriously, the problem has been there for almost ten years. Someone must have come up with something. Right?

Well, I googled "malibu +control head +repair" and found this article: http://www.imcool.com/articles/aircondition/AC_ControllersAreRepairable.pdf It seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, and that is where Jack comes in. I sent the article to my buddy Jack Funkhouser and asked him if it made any sense, if he thought it would work, if he thought he could do it, and if he would be willing to do it. He said yes to all of my questions. But before I go any further, I need to explain why I would ask Jack in the first place.

Jack Funkhouser is a vice principal of an elementary school here in San Antonio. Before that, he held the same job I have now. Before that, he was a teacher at Rachel's last school. Before that, he was in the Air Force. None of his jobs had anything to do with auto repair, as far as I know. Just the same, if you had Jack for a friend, you would have asked him just like me. That's because Jack is the most amazing "know-it-all" in town. We're not talking Cliffy Claven here. Jack is no show off. He just has some strange wiring in his brain that drives him to tinker with anything, learn how it works, and figure out how to fix it.

Jack truly can do anything. When he sold his house a few years ago, he asked me and our other buddy, Mike, to come help him with a repair to a wall. I thought we were going to nail a board on and paint it. No. We completely removed the wall from one side of his house and rebuilt it that day. Jack brews his own beer. In fact, the single best beer I have ever had to date, was brewed in Jack's garage about eight years ago. I was there. I did what ever Jack said to do, but even after brewing beer with him and Mike about five times, I haven't a clue how to do it. One day when I went to Jack's, he had the drive shaft out of his Suburban laying in pieces on his garage floor working on it. He even has a little thing that lifts the engine out of the car so he can work on it. He installed his own water softening system. He builds computers from scratch. He built a smoker out of an old refrigerator and smokes his own sausage and jerky. He lays tile and installs wood flooring. I'm not kidding you. There is nothing he can't do. Whenever I pay a repairman to do anything, Jack says, "You should have called me. I could have fixed it for free." He even volunteered to put my dad's garage door opener in for him. The only reason he didn't was that he was too busy and I went ahead and paid Sears to do it.

So, yes, I asked Jack about my hand-me-down car's AC problem. He told me to go out to his house today, and he would work on it. We figured that, if it didn't work, I was no worse off than before he tried. Anyway, the article says, "A newbie technician can easily take two or three
hours to complete this job, given the fear of the unknown and of breaking things. Using an
experienced tech, for vehicles with this problem,we now turn them around in less than an
hour." Jack must be an "experienced tech". He tore the part out, cleaned it, and re-installed it in about 20 minutes. And that includes going back in the garage twice to get tools, etc.

We won't know how fixed it is for a while, but I drove all the way back from Jack's house without a problem. On the way out to his house from my dad's, about a thirty-minute trip, it shut off and switched from the recirculation setting to outside air about 10 times. All indications are that the problem is solved. If it isn't, I will buy a new control head, and Jack will put it in for me. I am lucky to have such a talented friend who is always willing to do whatever he can to help people, not just his friends, out.

Now, let me ask you again. Do you have a Jack? If you don't, you really need to get one.