u/CraftyAd823

I’m trying to prove a point to someone about what the definition for ready for departure is. I’ll put what my definition is as a spoiler so as to not sway your answers. I’ll also ask, is this a subjective opinion? Or objective fact?

Let me know your thoughts.

>!In my mind, it is an objective fact that “ready for departure” means the plane is buttoned up, chocks and jetbridge are pulled, and we’re ready to push. No if ands or buts. It’s black and white.!<

And before anyone asks - for the sake of my privacy I’ll not be disclosing where I work.

I work for United (express) through primeflight and I love my job. If you do this work, you know it’s the best job in the world. But in this economy, $13 feels like my life is falling apart. I like my boss, my station, and my coworkers a lot. But even with overtime, I cannot make ends meet.

How do I go about asking for more money? My GM says he doesn’t control the pay. I’m being promoted to lead soon…. But I don’t know what kind of raise that brings. I don’t want to leave and I don’t want to move to a different airline in the airport but I’ll do what I have to do to get by.

I’m posting this purely for that lost soul looking for the answer to an impossible problem.

TLDR: check your in line fuses in the high voltage junction box. It’s that little skinny box in front of the battery housing that you probably didn’t even know was there. If one is bad, that’s your problem. $10 from a parts store - sometimes located in the stereo section and not the fuses section.

If you’re finding this post, that means you’re probably the 16th person on the planet who has had this problem like me who was the 15th. I have a 2016 Ford Focus SE that randomly one day decided to crap the bed on me.

Driving back from work, my left blinker turned on, my radio stopped working, and my traction control light started blinking. I pull over and turn off the car trying to diagnose. Go to start it again - NO KEY DETECTED. Now I think that’s so strange because this is not a push to start vehicle. Yes that’s right, I have a physical key that goes into the steering column, I turn the key to start the car, and it tells me NO KEY DETECTED.

I google and I search everywhere for a solution and I found so very few articles or videos about this. And the few that I found all were people with push to start cars. Either the articles had no fixes or the fixes I could find were “do a remote start” or “disconnect the battery for 20 minutes”. I tried disconnecting the battery and that worked one single time for me to at least get the car home. Go to start it again, same issue. But this time, disconnecting the battery for 20 minutes didn’t work. I also don’t have remote start… so not an option.

The car sat for over a month while I call mechanics and I do more research. Everyone I called all said “never seen that before” and all the research I found came up with nothing. Today I just decided to start poking around. A while ago, the radiator fan went bad and so I ordered a new one. Replaced it and it still wasn’t working. Module and everything. So I started looking through the fuse box and all the fuses were fine so what am I missing? There’s another place with fuses that had a blown fuse in it that solved my radiator fan issue.

High Voltage Junction Box. It’s resting right in front of the battery housing box. It’s a skinny plastic box that has your positive terminal coming out of the top connecting to the battery. In order to get a real good look in it, you’re probably gonna need to yank the whole battery out. Which is near brain surgery in these ford focuses but I digress… Take your Ohm meter and test for continuity across all those fuses. I don’t know the rhyme or reason for why the car goes into anti theft mode when one of these fuses are blown, but it does. The particular fuse that did it to me was the one second to the left. 50 amp AMI fuse. I just happened to check and what do you know, OL on the ohm reader. I went to auto zone and picked me up a box of the fuses for like $10 and replaced the sucker.

What do you know, the car started right up. I drove it around for an hour. Went and got gas, refilled some liquids in the car, gave it a clean. Shut it off and on multiple times with 0 issue. It was that dag burn fuse. Wouldn’t have called that.

If you read this whole thing, I hope I was of some help. If this didn’t solve your issue, I’d find your nearest priest. Tell him to pray for you. I’m a clever guy but I’m not a mechanic by any means. I’m just broke and can’t afford to take my car to get fixed. If you have questions, I’ll do what I can to help. But I’m telling you, I accidentallyed myself into fixing my car. Thanks