A Mechanic's Life - Tales From Under the Hood

stever · October 2015

"In the next 10 years there will be a need for 509 car mechanics and 160 diesel mechanics in the valley. The average salary for a car mechanic is $37,200, and $39,800 for a diesel mechanic." (WHSV)

"In 2014, Virginia ranked 11th among the states with an average per capita personal income of $49,710 (in 2014 dollars). [T]he Southside and Southwest regions had the lowest per capita personal income at $31,899 and $32,289, respectively." (Virginia.gov)

Above average depending on where you live I guess, but it seems that there are easier ways to make a living. I'd want to save my body and "graduate" to being a service advisor. Plus the bonus money for upselling flushes would be nice.

isellhondas · October 2015

It is rare to see a mechanic/tech over 50 still working on cars. It is hard demanding work.

And, the staggering cost of tools would surprise most people.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

My buddy who has a Porsche repair shop says he has about $75,000 invested in diagnostic equipment. Current shop rate is $160/hr.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

OK, three days and 250 miles and check engine light did not come back on. I think I'm good here for guessing right on a bad gas cap.

xwesx · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
OK, three days and 250 miles and check engine light did not come back on. I think I'm good here for guessing right on a bad gas cap.

Not trying to jinx you here, Shifty, but I always give it 500 miles. This is probably pretty minor in the grand scheme, but I can't tell you how many non-fixes I've had emerge (or re-emerge) between three and five hundred miles. LOL

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

OK, I'll postpone the victory dance. You could be right after all. No jinx, I am brutally pragmatic.

thecardoc3 · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
My buddy who has a Porsche repair shop says he has about $75,000 invested in diagnostic equipment. Current shop rate is $160/hr.

Diagnostic equipment alone, I'm well over $100K on half of that rate. (actually less than half) Couldn't have done that and kept up to date with all of the other shop equipment without refinancing the house, three times. Now it all is worth pennies on the dollar and mostly sits. Good thing the teaching has flourished.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

You need to charge more.

isellhondas · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
My buddy who has a Porsche repair shop says he has about $75,000 invested in diagnostic equipment. Current shop rate is $160/hr.

Well, it used to be that once a shop bought thier tools and equipment they were pretty much set. Today, everything changes constantly and the need for updated diagnostic equipment is never ending.

I watched an old rerun of Pawn Stars and someone sold them a Sun scope that appeared to be in excellent condition. Is Sun even in business? The shop I used to managed had so much business that we had two of them along with four or five VAT 40 machines. Now they test car batteries with a tiny hand held unit.

The Sun Rep was at our store at least two or three times fixing one thing or another.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

Yeah, they are still around---owned by Snap-On.

thecardoc3 · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
You need to charge more.

Can't do that unless everyone does.

thecardoc3 · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
OK, three days and 250 miles and check engine light did not come back on. I think I'm good here for guessing right on a bad gas cap.

You could check the readiness monitors to see if they are complete and pull the Mode6 data for the test results to see if it passed by a reasonable margin or not.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

Sure you can, if you can do things nobody else can.

thecardoc3 said:

Mr_Shiftright said:
You need to charge more.
Can't do that unless everyone does.

isellhondas · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
Yeah, they are still around---owned by Snap-On.

Thanks! Didn't know that.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

Hey Doc---here's a very very strange noise coming out of this 2002 Malibu 3.1. The owner has visually checked the entire flex plate, had has the car on a lift but even with a stethoscope cannot isolate this noise.

It's a head-scratcher. Ever heard it before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNxCt18mSI

I was thinking maybe a loose keyway in the crank pulley? Notice how the noise disappears when torque is applied.

thecardoc3 · October 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
Sure you can, if you can do things nobody else can.

No, we (I) cannot. When you try to price correctly someone will always undercut you for the easier stuff and that leaves you with an unhealthy share of the most difficult work. Meanwhile you gain the reputation of "He's very good but expensive." and that is what we dealt with at $75/hr.

Mr_Shiftright · October 2015

Well then have two-tier pricing. You can post whatever labor rate you want on the wall but you can quote a different price for easy work.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

You should have seen what I solved yesterday. A PCM lost its internal ground circuit for a number of sensors on a Chevrolet Trailblazer. There are eight sensor ground return circuits for the sensors, five of which were involved with this internal ground circuit failure. The circuits affected were the pedal position sensors, throttle body sensors, intake air temperature sensor, and the AC high side pressure transducer. (The symptom was the classic check engine light, engine low power light, loss of power, no throttle response often posted about in the forum.) There was a very small abrasion between the harness to the pressure transducer and an accompanying harness that had the front parking light circuit in it. The failure occurred only when the parking lights were on and even then only randomly. It took some twenty-five minutes of driving for it to show me one current spike and let me identify which ground circuit on the car was affected. (I let you try and figure out how I did that) Then it took examining that part of the harness until the exact point was located. The failure was caused by the parking light circuit wire protruding from its harness and it was against the pressure transducer wires where overtime they each wore through their insulation just enough to make an occasional contact copper to copper. (We call failures like this a sneak circuit)

The wiring harness repair was easy and opening up the PCM and repairing the blown ground circuit trace was easy too. The shop that had replaced the PCM and throttle body, correctly last month, made more money (probably four to five times as much) than we get to charge for being able to solve these kinds of problems and there isn't any answer for this situation. You would need a time machine and have to go back thirty plus years to change the perceptions and expectations and especially make the career journey to get to this level worthwhile. Nobody could be expected to find this the first time that the car showed up with the first failed PCM and the worn out throttle body. You only need to be able to trouble shoot at this level when the ordinary suddenly no longer applies, and yet what it has taken to get to this level has meant push yourself to study, continually re-invest in tooling and training while you get blamed and insulted over things that are beyond anyone else's perception.

The best part of all of this is that with writing this someone will now try and use this one off failure's solution as a "silver bullet" and given the number of chances that it could happen again they will tell someone to look there for "the problem" and it will in fact be someone else's answer. Then they will be the hero who knows everything and the mechanics are dumb for not knowing "this" failure. BTW, the total diagnostic and repair time was under two hours. That's under $200, and similar diagnostics and repairs through the years have had some customers call us rip-offs, but then they do that to everyone that they have work on their cars. That won't be the case with this repair, since it was done for another shop. They will be paying for this and again it really isn't their fault because it isn't plausible for anyone to have found this with the first repair event. The real fun however is as long as we are available to do this, they don't have to walk the path that it took to be able to do it. They won't be buying the tools, or going to the schools and will keep wining the price game on the street. They also won't have to deal with anyone trying to trivialize the effort that it took for them to reach their level of proficiency.

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

I really can't understand how you could solve a persistent and debilitating problem for someone and then they would call you a "ripoff". Seems to me that any rational person would have paid you 5X that to get out of 'car hell'.

BTW, what did you think of that noise I posted in the video above?

thecardoc3 · November 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
I really can't understand how you could solve a persistent and debilitating problem for someone and then they would call you a "ripoff". Seems to me that any rational person would have paid you 5X that to get out of 'car hell'.

That's part of the rub. When a top tech is the first person to work with a given failure they are far more likely to succeed and then that makes what it really took to solve it almost be invisible to just about everyone on the outside of that individual repair.

For example there was a post about an oil leak repair a few years back. It seems everyone missed the fact that the only way the information ever came to light was that a tech had to figure out the issue first, and he/she had to document the condition. Which BTW, the most likely way that occurred was by getting beat by that, or else a very similar situation prior to that. It takes discipline to test and prove exactly what is occurring on any given situation especially when there will be no shortage of "experts" that are just waiting to parrot someone else's discovery. This is just what is going on when someone complains "They wanted to charge me XXX to test and find out what was wrong and I googled and it was ZZZZ and I did it myself". Like it or not it cannot be wrong to take the time to test correctly each and every time, and yet that's what statements like that really mean.

Mr_Shiftright said:

BTW, what did you think of that noise I posted in the video above?

I don't think the noise is coming from the oil pressure gage, (VBG) but without directly checking this and allowing the sound to lead me towards its origin anything else is very subjective and borders on a guess. A damper pulley itself could make a sound like that if the fly-weight has come loose from center hub. The alternator pulley could do it if it is one of the de-coupler designs.

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

I like the alternator theory---but I don't know if the 'Bu has one OEM.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

Did you read the write up by the person who uploaded the video on YouTube?

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

Yeah, so what are you thinking---excessive crankshaft end play?

thecardoc3 · November 2015

If I have to guess, the torque convertor bolts are probably loose. He said that he checked them, but I'm not too sure about that. Just because they might not have turned, that doesn't mean that they are tight and holding the convertor and the flex plate together. Of course the center of the flex plate could be cracked and just not visible.

qbrozen · November 2015

that noise is REALLY loud. It could be so many things. My first reaction is that it is the exhaust tapping on metal somewhere.

xwesx · November 2015

thecardoc3 said:
Like it or not it cannot be wrong to take the time to test correctly each and every time, and yet that's what statements like that really mean.

We're in the age of piggybacking. With so much information available so easily, it is foolish for people not to gain insight through others' experiences. That is not to say there is anything wrong with taking "the time to test
correctly each and every time," but if someone can use that history to narrow down a list of suspects prior conducting the first test, then so much the better. Consider that much of the "unpaid" time you frequently discuss involves the initial hunt to start narrowing down the options.

And, your hunt is borne of your myriad experiences/knowledge in addition to the same access to information that everyone else has. So, I don't think it is reasonable to hold it against someone to search for the most cost effective solution or attempt a self-repair based on those findings. Our end goals, all of us, are to see the vehicles running (and hopefully well) to get us where we want to go.

I may be going off the philosophical deep end here, but the teaching you mentioned earlier is far more valuable than the income it generates. When all is said and done, it is that impact that carries on and creates a legacy. Sure, the work done makes a difference in the lives of those who own the vehicles, but all of them (vehicles) will die for good sooner than not.

xwesx · November 2015

qbrozen said:
that noise is REALLY loud. It could be so many things. My first reaction is that it is the exhaust tapping on metal somewhere.

Ah, that kind of stuff can be troublesome to pinpoint (particularly solo). I had a bent heat shield that was tapping the exhaust only when under torque or dropping off the accelerator quickly, and it was so difficult to find. From in the car, it sounded really loud (sorta like a glass-pack muffler), but you couldn't hear it at all from the outside save for a very occasional metallic ping in the immediate area of the problem. With enough patience, I finally found it and took about five seconds to bend things back into shape. /sigh

thecardoc3 · November 2015

xwesx said:

We're in the age of piggybacking. With so much information available so easily, it is foolish for people not to gain insight through others' experiences. That is not to say there is anything wrong with taking "the time to test
correctly each and every time," but if someone can use that history to narrow down a list of suspects prior conducting the first test, then so much the better. Consider that much of the "unpaid" time you frequently discuss involves the initial hunt to start narrowing down the options.

There is nothing new about learning from someone else's experiences. What's being missed is that shortcuts to answers do not equal learning anything. In fact that approach is what creates the parts replacers.

BTW it seems no one wanted to try and come up with a way to prove which of the five pcm ground wires was getting power applied to it. There are other ways, but this one only took one (9ms) failure event.

First the wires have to be disconnected from the new PCM and attached to ground through a 10amp fuse. (which didn't blow BTW). Number the wires 1-5 and then take three low amps current probes and monitor the current flowing in the ground circuits as follows. The current probe attached to channel "A" of the scope had grounds 1,2,and 3 in it. The current probe attached to scope channel "B" had grounds 3,4,and 5 in it. The current probe attached to the scope channel "C" had grounds 2,3,and 4.

A current spike on only channel "A" meant the wiring fault was in ground #1.
A current spike on only channel "B" would be ground #5.
A current spike on channels "A" and "C" would be ground #2.
A current spike on channels "B" and "C" would be ground #4.
A current spike on all three channels would be ground #3.

The logic table looks like this.
12345
a 123
b 345
c 234

The spike occurred in channels "B" and "C", so the only wire that needed to be examined was #4, the AC pressure transducer ground circuit. This will end up in a training class in the future. You won't find this exact routine in a book or service manual because this is a combination of several advanced routines that we do teach, but to my knowledge had never been used in this fashion before.

xwesx · November 2015

Agreed, if someone is using this as an answer (e.g., jumping to the "I should replace this part" conclusion), then they likely aren't learning anything. But, if they're using the symptoms as a way to get to the point where they can say, "It looks like maybe my issue is a grounding short within this harness leading to the PCM," and can get information like what you share above, they can use this information to lead them to a solution or eliminate this as the candidate if nothing goes wrong.

Someone without your level of knowledge in automotive systems can (and do) easily get lost in all the wires and circuits in a modern car, but they still need it to transport them. And maybe, just maybe, they actually do want to understand a little more about how that car works.

Anyhow, brilliant stuff! I'm going to share your post with my son (11), who will surely appreciate its elegance.

----

A few weeks ago, after I finished wiring his new room, he came to me greatly concerned that his circuit tripped every time he turned on his lights. We installed this new circuit with an AFCI breaker, and he felt it must be related since everything was wired correctly and the lights worked fine only the day before. He was certain that the breaker was bad, and wanted me to swap it out with a different one (we had three on hand) to test that theory.

Considering the time involved with that "test," I suggested that we look instead at the combo switch/receptacle I installed last (and just the day prior), thinking that it was likely not coincidence. So, he takes it out, inspects it, tests it, and everything was good. We turn on the circuit (before putting that outlet back into the box) and test, everything works fine. So, I put everything back in place. Trips again. He again strongly suggests changing the AFCI.

At this point, I'm convinced it is related to this outlet, so I ask him, "how does an AFCI work again?" He explains it in great depth... and then a light comes on. He says, "Dad! The ground wires are bare copper, so maybe the ground wire on that outlet is coming into contact with a neutral wire?" Excitedly, he pulls the cover plate off again, and sure enough.... the ground wire had folded itself in such a way as to bend up perfectly to contact the neutral terminal above it and cause enough variance in the line to trip the breaker. A quick twist of the wire to reroute it and all was good - no parts throwing necessary.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

xwesx said:
At this point, I'm convinced it is related to this outlet, so I ask him, "how does an AFCI work again?" He explains it in great depth... and then a light comes on. He says, "Dad! The ground wires are bare copper, so maybe the ground wire on that outlet is coming into contact with a neutral wire?" Excitedly, he pulls the cover plate off again, and sure enough.... the ground wire had folded itself in such a way as to bend up perfectly to contact the neutral terminal above it and cause enough variance in the line to trip the breaker. A quick twist of the wire to reroute it and all was good - no parts throwing necessary.

A local fire department bought themselves a "new to them" rescue truck. It had its own generator that would kick on as soon as the truck lost its land-line on engine start-up. (The trucks use an ejection device to disconnect the land lines). The truck would kick out the GFI on any circuit that it was connected to in the fire house, but on its own generator it did not trip its own GFI's. The fault was in a control relay that switched the outlets from land power to generator power, one set of the four contacts were welded together.

I spent more time locating and fixing the failed guesses that people had attempted than it took to diagnose and repair the original failure.

xwesx · November 2015

...And people say firefighters are the heroes!

stever · November 2015

"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acknowledges parts supply and the availability of repair technicians are both factors in delayed recall repairs.

However, car dealerships nationally say they are not aware of any credible suggestion that there is a shortage of service technicians or available appointments."

Call Kurtis Investigates: I Can’t Get My Recalled Car Fixed, What Do I Do? (cbslocal.com)

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

Well you could train them better, pay them more and treat them like skilled workers...that might help a little.

Yeah, I know, that's why my friend's Porsche shop charges $160 an hour, but at least when I brought my car in there I knew it wasn't being worked on by an indifferent, resentful or underpaid tech.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

stever said:
However, car dealerships nationally say they are not aware of any credible suggestion that there is a shortage of service technicians or available appointments."

That's the funniest thing I've seen all week.....

thecardoc3 · November 2015

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/05/08/3656610/mechanics-wages/

isellhondas · November 2015

I can't imagine a would be technician going into the trade after reading that article.

I wonder how the enrollment is looking like at the Vo-Tech schools?

xwesx · November 2015

isellhondas said:
I can't imagine a would be technician going into the trade after reading that article.

Yeah, no doubt. As an aside, I'm all for doing "side jobs" to earn extra money, but when so many are doing this sort of thing, its clear that "the industry" is sorta taking stuff like this for granted to support their willingness to depress the actual wage system even further.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

xwesx said:
Yeah, no doubt. As an aside, I'm all for doing "side jobs" to earn extra money, but when so many are doing this sort of thing, its clear that "the industry" is sorta taking stuff like this for granted to support their willingness to depress the actual wage system even further.

There are so many facets to this its hard to decide what to comment on first. IMO if the techs were paid correctly at work, then they would be able to leave work, at work, just like anybody else gets to do. Meanwhile there are plenty of consumers who cater to this as well and often treat people who do side work as the hero's while criticizing the shops for their current pricing while this is all working towards further suppressing the chances for a technician to grow and thrive inside the trade. Many shop owners consider techs doing side work as not just illegitimate competition they consider the practice as justification for termination. The only reason some have backed off of such a hard line is the difficulty that they face in finding a qualified replacement technician. Side work is generally not tolerated and that is especially so when a technician gets introduced to a customer at work and then "steals" that customer from the shop, effectively competing with the shop on the street.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

Hmmm, or should it Hum?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gQbL0G1WeE

Here we go again, someone else that thinks they can diagnose a problem on a car and guess pricing without actually doing the pinpoint testing that is required.

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

I think the point is to give the consumer enough information to intelligently discuss the issue with a technician--not to have the consumer attempt to fix the car. The info monologue makes that pretty clear I think. I agree with you though, that estimating repairs costs is probably not going to work out in some cases, but if they gave a RANGE of costs (e.g. worn front brake pads, est. cost $150--$450), that would cover 95% of all situations I think. This is essentially what www.repairpal.com does.

explorerx4 · November 2015

I'm looking at a leftover 2014, which could be up to 2 years old.
It has a turbo engine, but probably less than 100 miles on it.
Change to oil right away or maybe it's ok to drive it for a while?

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

Garaged or sitting on a lot?

explorerx4 · November 2015

It's definitely been sitting on the lot.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

Change it. They don't run a "break in" oil so you don't have to be concerned about the engine settling in. You d have to be concerned about the production and control of crankcase acids and time on an oil can be one of the biggest issues associated to that.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

In a recent survey (1000 small shop owners) 56% report that they expect to close the doors by 2020.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20151102/RETAIL05/311029986/study:-independent-shop-owners-ready-to-bail

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

I see one serious flaw in this study. They don't mention the age of the owners that they polled. If you are between ages 55 and 60, of course you're going to close your doors by the year 2020. It also doesn't seem to take into account whether you're any good at what you do.

imidazol97 · November 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
I see one serious flaw in this study. They don't mention the age of the owners that they polled. If you are between ages 55 and 60, of course you're going to close your doors by the year 2020. It also doesn't seem to take into account whether you're any good at what you do.

Good catch. So often surveys of cars and owners get away with skewed data. To wit, the arguments over Consumer Reports and JD Power's results in other forums. In support of your point, the two area shops, reasonably honest, both are run by older guys who will be retired in a few years.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

So do a survey and find out what the average age of shop owners and top technicians is and then see how that lines up with their survey. Then add in the fact that very few have groomed their current employees to be in a place to replace them (both financially or otherwise) and then you can try to correct their numbers. BTW. This goes hand in hand with the Stabilitrak thread. Even when a shop/tech does make the effort to be fully prepared and trained there is still the "I want it for free from the factory crowd" and that works to make the investment to own and run a fully capable shop even more futile.

Mr_Shiftright · November 2015

In the case of Stabilitrak, it seems that GM has merely passed off the problem to the indie shops or dealerships.

thecardoc3 · November 2015

Where qualified techs diagnose and repair the problems that cause the system(s) to shut down occur. When you know how the system works you don't find "Stabilitrak" failures, you find that one car is a TAC issue. Another is an ABS system issue. Etcetera.

A Mechanic's Life - Tales From Under the Hood

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