A Mechanic's Life - Tales From Under the Hood

stever

The U.S. Occupations at Greatest Risk of a Labor Shortage isn't "Vehicle and Mobile Equipment Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers" per this WSJ link (that was free at time of posting). It's in the 51st percentile, kind of far down the list. Lawyers and stock brokers will be in higher demand.

thecardoc3

That's one of the problems with percentages. While it still may not be a problem getting warm bodies in the bays, that doesn't equal qualified personnel. With as often as people like to complain that the techs that they are finding aren't good enough that is going to get a lot worse as we lose the most senior techs.

stever

No worries though, there won't be enough lawyers around to sue the ones that are left standing.

Mr_Shiftright

The auto industry will adjust if an actual tech crisis gets out of hand. The factory might open up regional diagnostic centers, or intensify tech training, or even set higher standards for dealerships in tech training. The automakers might even open up 2 year universities and give a diploma.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

The auto industry will adjust if an actual tech crisis gets out of hand. The factory might open up regional diagnostic centers, or intensify tech training, or even set higher standards for dealerships in tech training. The automakers might even open up 2 year universities and give a diploma.

None of that does any good if the job doesn't attract the people that it really needs. Even then if that problem could be overcome once they get here and find out just how badly they will get treated what real incentive is there for them to stay?

BTW, its more like a four year education, and then a five year apprenticeship before one really starts to learn which will take another ten years or so. (and that would be decent if nothing ever changed)

Mr_Shiftright

You don't need 4 years to train a tech to start his career off.

thecardoc3

Based on what? I've shared a number of things here over the last few years that represent what a journeyman technician should be capable of. It's quite fair to say that a number of them were stuff that nobody here had ever seen before, used, or even had a clue was needed let alone possible. The reality is what I have shared to date is barely a glimpse of what top technicians do everyday. Guys like me had to find our own way to learn all of these routines and techniques, many of which we figured out and shared with each other instead of doing other things when we got home from work. Nobody was out there teaching this and with the rare exceptions that is still the case today. That's why today's techs need at least two college years just to polish the reading, writing and studying skills. They need the math, computer and electronics classes that amount to an associates degree in electronics engineering and then they should get to start going into the shop to learn the mechanical side. Anything less and you are setting them up to accept a glass ceiling that they aren't ever going to be likely to break through which in any other career would be looked upon as a failure.

How can the consumers ever have qualified technicians ready to serve their needs when there isn't enough being done to recognize just what it takes to really be qualified?

thecardoc3

When you try to have a system that doesn't rely on qualified technicians, and instead try to have someone else tell parts replacers what to do, you end up here. http://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/40524/toyota/highlander/quality-issues-2015-highlander#latest

The most annoying part however is when those that want it that way don't accept the responsibility for their choice and turn around and blame the techs when the way they wanted it proves that it doesn't work. Meanwhile, a top tech would make easy work of this and would have solved it in about an hour, maybe twoat the most while the system thinks its OK to pay him/her about a half of an hour for the effort. (even if it is the first and only time they ever encounter this failure)

stever

Plug and play the engine module and get the owner back on the road in an hour. Six days and counting and no one knows squat. Sounds like the techs at Toyota don't have a clue either, but they are willing to throw parts at it.

What a country...

thecardoc3

stever said:

Plug and play the engine module and get the owner back on the road in an hour. Six days and counting and no one knows squat. Sounds like the techs at Toyota don't have a clue either, but they are willing to throw parts at it.

As stated whether you realize it or not, this is exactly what you campaign for, its almost comical to see you fault the techs for you getting what you keep saying you want. You should probably go on that thread and tell the OP how glad you are that a genuinely qualified technician (aka more expensive) isn't available to him who could have made make easier work of this.

stever

They called Toyota - no "genuinely qualified technician" there either. So what's left?

Yep, throwing parts at it with no clue if that'll fix it. At the very least they should be able to re-flash the ECU and see it that helps any.

But no, the present system is so much easier. Unless it's your car sitting at the shop for a week while you incur a rental bill of $45 a day.

thecardoc3

stever said:

They called Toyota - no "genuinely qualified technician" there either. So what's left?

You tell me, you are the one that wants it this way.

stever said:

Yep, throwing parts at it with no clue if that'll fix it. At the very least they should be able to re-flash the ECU and see it that helps any.

That is "just throwing parts" at it too. Some day maybe you'll understand why if that would happen to work, but you don't find out why it worked it would still be a failure. If they don't learn what was wrong and why the fix solved it, then the real lesson this event should have taught will have to wait for yet until another day.

stever said:

But no, the present system is so much easier. Unless it's your car sitting at the shop for a week while you incur a rental bill of $45 a day.

At least I can rest easy knowing that it would not be my car. Yours? That is far more likely.

stever

What's left is cars that are easy to fix in a short amount of time. Engineering for ease of cheap production needs to take a back seat to maintenance and repair.

We don't really have a tech problem, we have an engineering problem.

Which is to say, we have a beancounter problem, and the beans are being foisted on the consumer.

thecardoc3

stever said:

What's left is cars that are easy to fix in a short amount of time. Engineering for ease of cheap production needs to take a back seat to maintenance and repair.

We have been saying that for as long as I can remember, it hasn't changed yet and I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it.

stever said:

We don't really have a tech problem, we have an engineering problem.

We have both problems.

stever said:

Which is to say, we have a beancounter problem, and the beans are being foisted on the consumer.

The bean counters will quickly point out the cost savings they demand turns into more sales because it works out to a lower price more competitive price for .the consumers share of beans.

They could build easier cars to work on, consumers will turn around and spend their money on something cheaper to buy.

stever

It's the 'merican way.

Mr_Shiftright

You can't base every car repair on some extreme case of electronic ghosting. Every "fastest gun" in the West will get gunned down sooner or later, even you Doc---if not defeated, certainly tormented for hours or days.

thecardoc3

Where do you think all of the exotic routines come from? They aren't the results of jobs that were easy and that's probably the greatest disservice that is ever tossed our direction. Having to solve a difficult problem that demands a lot of time is normal. It is not necessarily a reflection of ones knowledge, talents, or skill. Sometimes the work is just that hard. Why is that usually little more than an opportunity to mock the person who stepped up to try to take on such a challenge? It would be different if the people who consider themselves experts and appoint themselves as critics had even half a clue of just what it really takes to be the technician that is capable of working on today's cars. As always, they don't even know what they don't know. Solving that Toyota in that other thread would see me using tools and routines that haven't even begun to be revealed here. Work like that is anything but easy, but with the right approach it can be easier.

Mr_Shiftright

This isn't a moon shot, however. There are any number of intelligent young people who can be taught to do this.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

This isn't a moon shot, however. There are any number of intelligent young people who can be taught to do this.

Agreed, there are lots of people who could learn to be great technicians. But those same people are also smart enough to know that they won't be treated any better than what the ones who are already doing it. That has to change first to even have a shot at attracting the people that the consumer needs the trade to have.

thecardoc3

http://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/5687/pontiac/grand-prix/pontiac-grand-prix-engine-fires-3800-series-ii-1996-2003#latest

So why hasn't anyone told this owner that when the fourteen to twenty year old car developed an oil leak that it could have easily been repaired by replacing the valve cover gasket(s)? Wouldn't that have made more sense instead of experiencing this failure and the associated loss?

Mr_Shiftright

He said the parts were not available...which seems odd. I suspect he wanted GM to fix it for free, rather than bear the cost himself.

thecardoc3

It would have cost less than $150 bucks to have it repaired sufficiently that the fire could have been prevented.

isellhondas

Leaking valve cover gaskets usually drip on the hot manifolds creating a horrible smell. You would THINK that would drive an owner to have someone take a look!

Mr_Shiftright

I have never seen a valve cover leak causing a fire but I suppose if the leak were bad enough, this might be possible.

thecardoc3

I've seen a lot of engine fires that were caused by engine oil leaking onto the hot exhaust. It definitely does create a terrible odor and it had to of been leaking for a long time to get bad enough that it finally had the conditions to ignite. It's sad the manufacturer has to create a recall to try to protect some owners from their own negligence.

qbrozen

A college housemate had exactly that happen to his Honda while it was in our driveway. He had the hood open at the time, running the engine, trying to locate the leak. I came outside about 3 seconds before it ignited. We threw dirt on it till it went out.

thecardoc3

http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/ownership/shop-class-exploring-the-causes-of-excessive-oil-consumption/ar-BBrL3Jx?ocid=spartandhp#page=1

I've seen worse articles in MSN but there are still too many holes in this one.

Mr_Shiftright

Here's an odd one:

http://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/40708/ford/escape/instrument-panel-clicks-on-off-immediate-after-starting-engine#latest

BCM related?

thecardoc3

Smart Junction Block actually, and it is very unlikely. For one thing we need to know the engine. and if this is a 2.5 is a hybrid or not. Early or late production. Then we need to know if it has GPS or not. The radio is powered up all of the time and it gets its command to turn on via the MSCAN databus. The early versions used the ignition switch through fuse #43 to turn on the cluster, but later versions did away with that and those clusters turn on via the MSCAN bus as well.

You aren't doing anything with this system with less than the Ford IDS scan tool.

Mr_Shiftright

The SJB is a smart distribution device, correct? Isn't that the one that bedeviled Mustang owners, with water from defective windshield seals shorting it out?

Seems to me I recall that replacing the SJB required programming it

thecardoc3

Some do and some don't. Programming when required involves the IDS recovering the as built data from the original SJB and then loading it into the replacement. If that fails then you have to access Motorcraft Service
https://www.motorcraftservice.com/Home/Index and after registering, recover the as built data from Ford and enter it manually. Here is an article on the subject by a friend of mine. http://www.searchautoparts.com/motorage/technicians/scope-scan-service-repair/using-built-data

BTW. This is the same routine that is used for airbag systems. Ford's process of trying to retrieve data from the current module before a replacement is installed is common for almost all of Ford's reprogrammable modules.

thecardoc3

FWIW. To troubleshoot this, one has to start by pulling codes from all of the modules in the car. Pay particular attention to loss of communication codes and power supply codes. Then using the live data, pick one of the modules that coded against say either the ACM (audio control module), the FDIM (front display interface module), the IPC (instrument cluster) and/or any other as appropriate based on the codes received. The data pids will show the identity of the modules that are in communication with the module that the tech has chosen to view with the scan tool. The goal is to see if communication is lost to the entire data bus or just the reported modules when the failure occurs. Once that is known, then the next step of the path can be chosen.

The engineers cannot create a trouble tree that can lead someone through diagnostics like this. It is up to the technician to know how to do it and apply critical thinking skills to make the best use of the information at hand.
This is why today's techs need (or at least have the equivalent training of) an associates degree in digital electronics engineering. Excellent math and science skills. Good reading and comprehension skills, and they have to either own or have access to not only the factory scan tool they need tools like PICOscope because they might have to directly measure and interpret the communication data bus and waveform. https://www.picotech.com/products/oscilloscope (the 4000 series or higher)

There have been attempts to suggest techs that do this work are a different career than ones that do mechanical work, that's a false perspective. The tech has to be the electronics specialist on top of being the master mechanic that can work on everything bumper to bumper.

Now imagine how much tooling, training and study is required to work on multiple vehicle manufacturer platforms and you'll have an idea what guys like me have been doing for the last twenty plus years.

One more thing. Before anyone can "google" and try to come up with some silver bullet, one of us using the right tools and techniques solved the problem and reported the information. Without that, there would be no magic answer. Meanwhile anyone who relies on those magic answers when available isn't learning how to do it without such information. That's the difference between qualified technicians who have the tools and training to do the whole job and anyone else.

Mr_Shiftright

"There have been attempts to suggest techs that do this work are a different career than ones that do mechanical work, that's a false perspective. The tech has to be the electronics specialist on top of being the master mechanic that can work on everything bumper to bumper. "

Why is that? I mean, electrical contractors don't frame houses; dental surgeons don't clean teeth.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

"There have been attempts to suggest techs that do this work are a different career than ones that do mechanical work, that's a false perspective. The tech has to be the electronics specialist on top of being the master mechanic that can work on everything bumper to bumper. "

Why is that? I mean, electrical contractors don't frame houses; dental surgeons don't clean teeth.

Because it requires the mechanical insight just to determine if/when the electronics aspect needs to be applied.

Techs work all by themselves 99% of the time, the job isn't done by committee. Heck for that matter I can tell you stories about techs that had to call into the hotline looking for help and that need has been used against them behind their backs. aka. "If he was really as good as he thinks he is, then he wouldn't have had to call for assistance". That is behavior by the critic that I call moving the finish line and it rarely mattered what one did, there was always someone else who wanted to move the finish line to suit their domineering perspective. That's a practice that is all too familiar even in these forums.

Are you following the Yukon misfire thread? Just getting exposed to the answers there doesn't equal knowing how to test and diagnose at that level. If you were a strong technician with excellent scope and electronics skills, it would take some forty hours of training spread out over a year or two as it is used and experience gained just in that one aspect to master that technology alone. Just learning about this level of capability is in itself an epiphany to anyone not already trained and equipped to perform it. Now to complete the cycle all someone who has never even performed a basic compression test has to do is parrot that information, pretend to be knowledgeable and they can and usually will try to make someone working as a technician that doesn't yet know about it yet appear to be incompetent.

Now imagine any one of the thousands of things a tech might have to deal with each year, and someone else just happen to be aware of some minutia that applies "this time" and instead of sharing it in support, use it as a chance to discriminate against the technician and you have the automobile repair trade.

Mr_Shiftright

All well and good, but people can't always afford to go to NASA to get their car fixed. They search for answers, talk to others with similar problems, get ideas, take good guesses. If they fail, fine, then they can go to Werner Von Braun Automotive and take out a bank loan to pay for it.

But you can't blame people for trying to save a buck these days.

I would gladly spend $150 on bad guesses because that's just an hour's time at the Mini mechanic. He's not going to fix it for $150 either.

So we're even!

thecardoc3

It's bad enough that you want to have your cake and eat it too, heaven forbid someone else gets to have any of the crumbs.

Mr_Shiftright

I'm not the Mechanic's Charity Fund. It's not my obligation to guarantee their survival. That's up to them---work smart, build a reputation, do your marketing, price yourself competitively, be honest, have a clean shop, do good work.

qbrozen

thecardoc3 said:

It's bad enough that you want to have your cake and eat it too, heaven forbid someone else gets to have any of the crumbs.

The number of people who are even willing to open the hood of their car, let alone try to fix it themselves is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Nobody is going hungry because I don't take my cars to mechanics (unless it is under warranty). I'll let the other 99% of the car-owning population do it.

I'm in advertising and I certainly don't get bent out of shape when someone wants to make their own ad by reading on the internet "how to create your own advertisement." Some will do well enough that they will never need me. Some will fail and wind up coming to me for help anyway. I'll never begrudge either.

roadburner

qbrozen said:

The number of people who are even willing to open the hood of their car, let alone try to fix it themselves is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Nobody is going hungry because I don't take my cars to mechanics (unless it is under warranty). I'll let the other 99% of the car-owning population do it.

I'm in advertising and I certainly don't get bent out of shape when someone wants to make their own ad by reading on the internet "how to create your own advertisement." Some will do well enough that they will never need me. Some will fail and wind up coming to me for help anyway. I'll never begrudge either.

My sentiments exactly- when I was in private practice and someone wanted to prepare a DIY will or represent themselves in a case I didn't get bent out of shape; there was plenty of business to go around.

thecardoc3

Nobody's asking for charity. Just don't try to paint working harder and smarter as anything other than what it was. Oh, and what you called rocket science was accomplished on half of your $150 per hour.

Qbroz... Where do you draw the line on someone treating you wrongly based on problems they had with other advertisers?

qbrozen

thecardoc3 said:

Nobody's asking for charity. Just don't try to paint working harder and smarter as anything other than what it was. Oh, and what you called rocket science was accomplished on half of your $150 per hour.

Qbroz... Where do you draw the line on someone treating you wrongly based on problems they had with other advertisers?

What line? I have no line to draw. We get abused by clients all the time. Generally, the sentiment is "the customer is always right." We have lost money countless times on projects. Very very rarely will we ultimately fire a client due to repeated abuse and monetary losses.

thecardoc3

It may be rare, but you do have times when it becomes necessary. That's a lesson that a lot of shops haven't learned yet.

Mr_Shiftright

If I were running a shop today, I would tolerate a certain amount of abuse, especially from newbies who have been abused themselves by incompetent and greedy mechanics, or who need some automotive therapy to dis-abuse themselves of misconceptions about how their car works, or how legitimate technicians work.

It's all a process, and each customer is different.

However, I would definitely fire any customer who is litigation-happy, as that is an aggressive form of behavior that rarely has a good outcome. I don't like being threatened.

As for $150/hour, that's what it costs to do business in California.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

If I were running a shop today, I would tolerate a certain amount of abuse, especially from newbies who have been abused themselves by incompetent and greedy mechanics, or who need some automotive therapy to dis-abuse themselves of misconceptions about how their car works, or how legitimate technicians work.

Define greedy. Is that a given dollar amount for any individual? Is someone who makes $10 an hour greedy when compared to someone who is making minimum wage? Is $20/hr greedy for a mechanic but honorable for a barber, nurse, waitress or babysitter? What about $30, same question. What if the mechanic works harder and gets an extensive education well beyond the norm. Does that make him/her greedy or committed to being their personal best?

Let's use the Yukon. http://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/40712/gmc/yukon-xl/2007-yukon-misfire#latest

If a technician commits him/herself to studying, learning, and being equipped so that they make ordinary work out of such a complicated failure, does that make them a master at their craft, or just greedy?

thecardoc3

Don't want to answer questions like these? Yea, I wouldn't either. I'll let you in on a little secret. The majority of the accusations of being greedy against shops and techs, and yes I mean the majority of them are really wolves in sheep's clothing. Consumer greed knows no limits and to feed their need they jump, scream and accuse others of greed(and more) in order to try and mask their own intentions and desires. Since no-one ever usually looks past the accuser to get to the facts they get to have their cake, everyone else's cake and they don't even care if it spoils and no one ever eats it. They just want more, and more and more and they don't care who, nor how they hurt someone else to get what they want. Meanwhile, once they start it, historically everyone else just piles on more abuse to the people that are already being abused even if/when its completely un-justified.

I can hear the "buts" now. Of course there are some bad people, incompetents, newbies, and hard working honest people who just happen to be human and make mistakes once in a while. Get over it, because nobody here is above the rest of humanity, and nobody here is capable of being a technician that will never get beat by something, confused by circumstances, or encounter something that they have never seen before etc.. For techs seeing something for the first time is normal, having to learn something new is normal, and yes even having to learn on the fly the hard way is absolutely normal.

Being a consumer doesn't give someone the right to mistreat others and there is no greater insult than calling techs greedy, especially when it is being done by someone who refused to lower their lifestyle and self esteem to one that equals what the average technician can expect to have. Anyone that works as hard as techs do and lives with the physical abuse, low wages, unpaid labor hours, and poor benefits that plague the trade is anything but greedy. In fact not only are they the complete opposite, they accept losses that shouldn't be theirs when they occur and often blame themselves for "not being good enough this time". By anyone else's standards that would in part be foolish, but that's what a tech who accepts his/her strengths as well as weaknesses does. They accept the losses because they see those experiences as identifying something that they need to improve on. To be called greedy when that's what is really going on can't be labeled here as what it really is without it being censored.

You know this makes me wonder how Gandhi would have been treated if he had been a mechanic.

The rant turns another page.......

Mr_Shiftright

Greedy---- oversell, or charging for misdiagnosis, or outright dishonesty, or total incompetence (taking on a job they have no business doing).

roadburner

For me it's not a greed issue- rather, it's a competence issue. I'm more than willing to pay a shop a price above the prevailing rate if that shop provides quality service.

thecardoc3

Mr_Shiftright said:

Greedy---- oversell, or charging for misdiagnosis, or outright dishonesty, or total incompetence (taking on a job they have no business doing).

Where would the world be if nobody ever tried something new? Failure is always an option. Having to learn something new and do something for the first time is not only normal, its expected in many different careers and this one is no different. What would you say to someone who is afraid to fail, so they refuse to try? It's a good thing that people who want to be engineers, doctors, and yes technicians don't agree with what you wrote.

Now overselling, no doubt that is wrong I totally agree on that. But there are only a few who really do that and you should go after them and the people who pressure them to and benefit from such activity. Not use it as a standard to try and browbeat every person that attempts this career choice.

Charging for "misdiagnosis" how about being paid for such in any fashion? Let's group those together. If someone is being paid to give advice and they haven't done due diligence to prove its accuracy or validity even if it appears to be free to some end user then it is just as bad. You have recently gotten to see practical application of tools and routines that are so far beyond your expectations you chose to equate them to something that people who work for NASA have to do. Nothing that I have shared here is new, its all been around at least six to ten years if not more. (Frankly I often wonder just how did we get by in the past without the things we can do today) If you think what I have shared here is Werner Von Braun stuff, you should see what I have been spending time studying this week in preparation for classwork for technicians to be ready to deal with the advanced engine platforms that are hitting the streets in new cars today. Every tech is going to be challenged like never before with this stuff and there will be some growing pains for them. Guys like myself are hard at work today trying to minimize those pains for the tech, shop and the consumer.

Back to charging for "misdiagnosis", the reality is that most shops don't charge enough, which means the techs don't get paid enough to do diagnostics correctly.
Let's try that again.

About charging for what ends up as a misdiagnosis. The reality is most shops don't charge enough for diagnostics, which results in the techs not being paid enough to do them completely every time. That results in them pulling up short before the task is really completed and that's what opens the door for the mistakes to occur. You've gotten to see a handful of the many routines they should have at the ready in order to get diagnostics correct, but because of the pressure to be too cheap they aren't prepared to work at that level so the technology beats them. If they charged more, and turned around and invested more in training and equipment those issues would eventually correct themselves, and while "the problem" would never go away completely (There is just too much to learn and have to do to know it all) it could be reduced to a more manageable level. Its time you realized that most of what goes on in forums like this serves to make the situation worse, not better. If you want it to get better, then ask what can you do to help. If you don't want to do that then at least get out of the way of the ones that are trying to. One more thing about trying to give someone a list of possibilities about what is wrong based on a symptom without any testing. When someone does that it is at best no different than a tech who has stopped short before doing everything possible to test and prove what is wrong and it easily isn't even at that level. The best that can really be done is to tell them how to test and prove what is going on. If they don't have the tools and skills to do that once they have been shown then the next step is up to them. If they then turn around and find out that there are no shops with techs available to them who can approach their cars problem the right way then you have your answer as to just how much everyone has helped that consumer.

Mr_Shiftright

"Back to charging for "misdiagnosis", the reality is that most shops don't charge enough, which means the techs don't get paid enough to do diagnostics correctly. "

You were making a cogent argument up to that last line---then you slipped into Orwellian Newspeak.

thecardoc3

LOL. Yeah, reading back through it, that could have been worded a little better. That's what I get for taking a ten minute break and try and write something.