The last day and a half has sucked for me lol. I hate interior work but it is nice to do something different for a change. Losing my tail on this one 3.8 hours plus one hour diagnostic so 4.8 hours total and I’ve probably spent every bit of 15 to 20 lol. 2018 Highlander with 68,000 miles needed a steering column it had a click somewhere internally and was jerking too. It made me remember why I hate modern cars lol. I diagnosed it last Wednesday and the customer left it for repairs. Doing this job sucks. Hopefully won’t have to do one of these for a long time haha. I have never seen bolts where the heads are supposed to come off when you tighten them. They were a pain to get out of the old one. A coworker showed me instead of doing how the manual says where you drill a hole in it and use a screw extractor he said hand me a chisel and a hammer I’ll show you how to get them out. He had them out in 5 seconds. He said you’d be here all day trying to drill those out and use a stupid screw extractor that doesn’t work. I appreciate that helpful tip so I know next time. Good thing we had exactly two of them in stock because I didn’t know these even existed so I didn’t tell parts to order them with the column. Usually we don’t have anything in stock so I was truly surprised lol. I have done steering columns before but never on a modern car so it’s way different and way more annoying haha.
Under dash work is one of the many separate skillsets of being a automotive mechanic. Shortcuts likely exist outside of the factory service manual.
For example....Some GM cars (Camaro & Cadillac ATS) calls to pull the windshield to get the dash out only because some ridiculously long bolts that you can cut shorter.