If you have been following me for a decent amount of time, you will know that this isn't my trucks first trip to Never Done Garage.

That is the name of my friend Mike's pole barn. I've never taken the time to ask him, but I am guessing the name comes from the fact that he always has a new project going on or he always has just one more modification he wants to make to one of his vehicles.

I thought he was crazy when he told me he was going to buy a car lift to put in his pole barn, but it has actually turned out to be a smart move on his part.

Let me give you some background on why I made the trip to Never Done Garage on this particular occasion. You see, I had a check engine light coming up on my dash board. Apparently with a lot of these "newer" vehicles, if your check engine light is on, that means your remote start will not work.

I knew we had some very cold weather ahead of us for the Winter (I was right if you look back at some of my recent posts), and I wanted to make sure that I was able to remotely get my truck nice and toasty when I needed to. I know, "first world problems" right?

Anyway, I drove my truck over the night before so that it could sit in the pole barn and get nice and dry. There isn't much worse than walking around under a vehicle that is dripping melting snow and ice down on you. After I dropped it off on Friday night we quickly hooked his scan tool up to it to see what the code(s) was/were.

This is what the scan tool looks like. Basically, you connect it to a jack that is right under your dash below the steering wheel. Pretty much all newer cars have them and if you took the time to look, you should see it straight away.

It turned out the truck was actually "throwing" three different codes.

Usually when you vehicle has a solid check engine light on, it means there is something going on with the emissions system. A lot of times it is something as simple as a poor seal on your gas cap. Many times you can just ignore it for a couple of days and as the moisture evaporates from around your gas cap the code will just go away.

I was hoping that would be the case with my truck but after a couple of days it still did not go away, so that is how we got to this point.

We immediately used Google to look up the codes. We found a several posts on different forums as well as a Youtube video referencing the specific code my truck had. I just laughed and asked my friend what we did before Youtube. He said "It has definitely turned me into a better mechanic".

It appeared that there is a filter buried in the under body of the truck and according to the guy on Youtube that filter can get clogged. He showed what the filter looked like and how you could use an air compressor to blow it out. If that didn't work the next step was to replace the filter and housing.

We now had a plan of attack for Saturday, so I borrowed one of his vehicles and headed home to spend the evening with @mrsbozz and her best friend.

I woke up Saturday morning and it was cold. I am talking a windchill of -20 Fahernheit cold. Luckily Never Done Garage is fully heated so we had nothing to worry about. I got there around 9 AM and Mike was working on reserving some campsites for the coming Summer. I let myself into the 30 foot by 92 foot pole barn that is Never Done Garage and prepared to wait.

I decided to take some pictures while I was waiting and I asked Mike if it was okay that I share them in this post. He is a great supportive friend when it comes to my blogging. In fact last time we did work on the truck he stacked all the parts we were replacing so I could stage a photo for that blog post. Those are the benefits of being friends with someone for twenty six years!

This is his current project Iron Will. It is an old Willys Jeep that he bought in a southern state and transported back to Michigan. I have to admit, it has come a long way from when he first brought it home. His original intent was to covert the old engine to unleaded fuel and rebuild it. Sadly it was too far gone and he had to put a different engine and transmition in it, but that is going to make it much more usable moving forward.

It is going to be a pretty cool ride when he finally has it finished! His next project is an El Camino that he purchased for his wife for Christmas. She has always wanted one so he found her one that they can put a little love and caring into to eventually make it her own.

As you can see, they have already started to tear out the inside of the car. I am not sure if they are going to reuse the seats or if it is going to be a total "gut job".

As you can see, there is definitely some work that needs to be done before they can start worrying about the seats! Having a solid floor to put them on is much more important! I didn't even think to ask him what condition the engine was in (if it even has one).

Whether it does or not, he no doubt has a plan...

He definitely is a fan of big boy toys and if there is tool that you need to borrow he probably has it. His Bobcat came in really handy when we decided to pull some shrubs out of our front yard a year or two ago.

This is looking down the length of the pole barn standing next to Iron Will. Mike is a builder but for years he worked at Lowe's. Several years ago he was able to realize his life long dream of being his own boss full time. He now has a handy man service that covers much of the region where we live. It is not uncommon for us to go weeks or months without seeing each other because he is so busy with jobs.

This is his work trailer that he takes to job sites. I should also note that his father owns a wood kiln and a custom cabinet shop, so there basically isn't anything he can't make out of any kind of wood you can imagine.

Eventually, Mike had to give up on trying to make his reservations(the site was down) and we got to work. We moved Iron Will out of the way and got my truck up on the lift.

I can't express enough how nice it is knowing someone that has a lift. I can't imagine crawling around on the floor trying to do some of the work we have done on my truck. I took this shot of the undercarriage as I was standing full height (5'10") underneath it.

After a little bit of looking we found the housing for the filter. The filter itself isn't a replaceable part so you need to replace the housing and filter if just blowing out the filter doesn't work.

We used his compressor and blew out the filter as much as we could. We then lowered the truck back down and connected the scan tool back up. Besides telling you what codes the vehicle has, the scan tool also allows you to reset the codes.

Our thinking was now that we had blown out the filter, we would reset the codes and wait to see if the codes came back. If they did come back, we would probably have to replace the part. If they didn't then I would be good to go! I am happy to say (knock on wood) that it is now two weeks later and I have yet to see the check engine light come back on.

Michigan Winters can be really rought on vehicles what with all the snow, ice, slush, salt, and dirt. Lucky for me, this was a fairly quick and easy fix. This truck is about 12 years now and @mrsbozz and I have pretty much decided if something goes wrong with it I can't fix myself, we are not going to put any more money into it.

Thanks for coming along on this trip to Never Done Garage! Hopefully I won't be writing another post from here about my truck for a long time!

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