A Mechanic's Life - Tales From Under the Hood

Mr_Shiftright

You have to either pay them very well or give them very interesting work. It's just too mind-numbing to be a line mechanic at a dealership year after year without a variety of experiences. The burn-out rate is very high.

guitarzan

thecardoc3 said:

How many techs give their all and want to improve themselves? Just about all of them do at some point in their careers, the question that needs to be asked is what makes some of them change and stop trying to learn more.

Working as an engineer attempting to improve the processes for a mid-sized manufacturing company back in the late 90's, I had a conversation with the president and general manger that has stuck with me. I had not thought about this topic much until he pointed it out. He said that the plant manager thinks that the employees are lazy and do not care. He continually attempts to improve productivity by berating people. However, from the gm's point of view every problem that a business has is the fault of the business. I quickly latched onto the latter theory. In this vein I can clearly see a bad environment beating down a formerly good tech. This is what many business environments do, they take in good, interested, ethical workers and ruin them.

It is refreshing for me to see that the techs you deal with are very interested in what they do. I no doubt am cynical. I have seen far too many white collar IT people who think their job and salary is owed to them, and who grow very little throughout their careers. Of course, I do fault the business for allowing that. The only things that happen at a business are things that are implicitly allowed, including laziness.

thecardoc3

How appropriate that the subtitle is "Fighting Fiction".

http://www.autonews.com/article/20160516/RETAIL05/305169961/1147

Some stores are offering starting salaries as high as $100,000 per year and $3,000 signing bonuses.

Looks like a little digging on Monster.com is on order. I haven't looked yet but suspect the word "salary" is portraying a false picture here. Speaking of false pictures, something isn't right about Nellie's tool box, it looks awful empty for a master technician.

Carlos was quoted as saying "That's a challenge we're constantly working to overcome by educating parents and counselors about the high-tech nature of today's service techs." That is one aspect of the article that is correct. The career isn't for someone that struggled in academia, it hasn't been for quite some time.

Meanwhile, at Nash Chevrolet, the store's help-wanted ad for technicians is going unanswered, says the service manager, McLeish, with a hint of frustration in his voice.

He's offering a $2,500 signing bonus for a certified, experienced technician. He'll pay relocation expenses and tuition for less-experienced applicants. In fact, the list of incentives for the two open tech positions is eye-popping.

Nash's top tech earned $125,000 last year.


You can bet wages like that aren't based on flat rate pay that see's techs have to perform at 200% efficiency all day long, every day, every week.........just to break even time wise if that's even possible.

If all of this were true it would be quite promising, sadly experience has taught us that at best its little more than another false promise to most of the candidates that it is written to attract. We have all seen the pet that got fed all of the gravy while everyone else was starving on flat rate actually trying to fix the broken cars. There is little reason to expect that anything has really changed yet and that explains why his adds are going unanswered.

thecardoc3

Here's one on Monster.http://job-openings.monster.com/monster/f79007a4-c587-4667-84a0-adc045bdb147?mescoid=4900868001001&jobPosition=14#

Last I heard they pay their techs an hourly wage that is below minimum wage and expect the techs to sell and perform work to generate their income through a bonus program. You can guess what happens if the techs don't sell enough. Can't have someone that is working for less than minimum wage now can we?

thecardoc3

Found a few that had some promise. Then I found this one. http://jobview.monster.com/Automotive-Service-Technician-McCafferty-Hyundai-Job-Langhorne-PA-US-161370407.aspx?mescoid=4900868001001&jobPosition=3

stever

Well, that's Pennsylvania for you eh?

thecardoc3

stever said:

Well, that's Pennsylvania for you eh?

I should forward them the link to the story about techs making 125K.....

guitarzan

thecardoc3 said:

Here's one on Monster.http://job-openings.monster.com/monster/f79007a4-c587-4667-84a0-adc045bdb147?mescoid=4900868001001&jobPosition=14#

Last I heard they pay their techs an hourly wage that is below minimum wage and expect the techs to sell and perform work to generate their income through a bonus program. You can guess what happens if the techs don't sell enough. Can't have someone that is working for less than minimum wage now can we?

A mechanic having to be a salesperson is an obvious conflict of interest and explains why many times excessive work is done on cars that is not needed. It seems the industry is still perpetuating its own classic problems and no doubt still making customers angry as a result.

thecardoc3

Segments of the trade (we don't call it an industry, an industry has standards) do more to hold everyone back than they do anything else.

thecardoc3

Can't find qualified techs to do the work? Lower the training requirements.....

http://www.autonews.com/article/20160516/RETAIL05/305169994/fca-says-fixes-in-place-for-technician-certification-bottleneck

Mr_Shiftright

This rather rubs against your contention that experience is worth more than diplomas, doesn't it?

thecardoc3

When did I ever suggest that either of them is worth more than the other? It takes both.

Mr_Shiftright

What I meant was that it sounds like FCA is attempting to re-train the trained, at least in that dealer's case. If you are a Canadian brain surgeon and you want to practice in the US, you shouldn't have to go back to first year medical school.

thecardoc3

The equivalent here wouldn't be that the Canadian brain surgeon wouldn't be able to operate here in the US, its that the insurance company just won't pay the hospital for it if he/she does.

Mr_Shiftright

Crazy. If a person is a qualified Honda Master Mechanic then he/she should be able to just study up, pass a test and be certified by FCA. It shouldn't take "years".

thecardoc3

Earlier we had the discussion about how long it takes to really become a master technician. That discussion included just what it takes to go to school and be ready to apprentice and just get started on that path. I said that it takes decades with the caveat that there is no finish line, the studying and learning never stops. Now here we have an example where just changing "brands" can take a 30 year established master technician and see him/her designated as a junior technician. There are legitimate arguments that can be made both ways as to whether that is really fair or not, but that's the reality that techs face. Call it just on more way that someone else moves the finish line at our expense.

Just think, if a thirty year master certified technician doesn't get any respect, why should anybody?

stever

I used a tech today. My battery didn't want to start the van this morning but a couple of taps on the terminals got it going. So I got a load test with the results printed out on the cute little test gizmo.

Now why doesn't the car just monitor that stuff and email/text me when it looks like the battery may be dying of heat and old age?

thecardoc3

That cute little gizmo costs somewhere between $500 and $800 dollars, which would be added to yours, and everyone else's purchase price whether they would ever need it or not.

thecardoc3

BTW, emails, texts? Have you looked at what that adds to the monthly cost of ownership? GM isn't giving that 4GLTE away.

stever

I remember when you had to pay $2,000 for a computer. Economies of scale cheapen stuff. Think of all the money saved with a little advance notice. No more missed appointments, no more being stranding in the middle of nowhere, no more tows.

OnStar is already doing a little of this.

guitarzan

stever said:

I remember when you had to pay $2,000 for a computer. Economies of scale cheapen stuff.

Not communication services.

If you read the minutes of the communication companies board meetings they essentially go like this: "How do we get users rates up?"

Thus why I pay $90 a month for phone and a 3Gb DSL connection. I have the absolute cheapest packages, with no voicemail no nothing extra, and cannot get the cost any lower.

Around 2000 I paid something like $24/month for ISDN, which was the absolute best thing available. A basic phone line was, can't recall, but a lot cheaper than today.

Aside from the impetus to make more money, no matter how much bandwidth is generated, it is always filled up, today by streaming movies and audio. So that puts pressure on infinite building of the router infrastructure, which has a cost to be paid.

stever

That laggy battery almost cost me an eye appointment right before my doc took off for a month.

As it was, I had to take a detour ($1 of gas) and lost an hour of my day dinking around with a basic maintenance item.

(Actually WallyWorld was on my route back home, but you get my drift. And I was posting on my wife's iPad from the shop, first with her cell minutes and then with the free wifi at the ship, so I was working. Was working at the doc's office too).

Funny that car repair talk has come down to bandwidth.

Onboard diagnostics could substitute for some of the bandwidth, but if you have to go to the shop, you're just paying the shop for their bandwidth instead of your own carrier.

There ain't no free ride.

fushigi

The car can use the owner's home WiFi when garaged or in range. While traveling, use open hot spots or the Bluetooth connection to the operator's smartphone for network access. Bluetooth, if you didn't know, is a networking topology and can be used for general communications, not just audio streaming. And the hardware for both WiFi & BT is incredibly cheap; around $10 each at consumer retail pricing so OEM would be far less.

Mr_Shiftright

Of course, you still have no idea what is actually wrong with your van and your gadget's "conclusion" was already known to you before the printout. But you are right---onboard diagnostics have a long, long way to go.

stever

If I had wanted to kill another hour, I could have done the full blown test and determined if it really was a battery problem and not, say, the alternator. I'm going to be bummed if I wind up with a dead battery in two weeks.

An onboard gizmo could have done that test as part of the "Tuesday night updates".

That's a lot less painful than having your car in the shop for a couple of hours, just from the time and hassle factor.

Mr_Shiftright

Nah, you have to load test a battery, so nothing onboard is going to do that, and you can't test the charging system until the battery is full up and tested. Once that's done, though, I suppose an onboard system could test part of the alternator. Not sure how you would test voltage drop on cables without a whole lotta sensors.

I think cars would have to be built an entirely different way for any significant onboard diagnostics to work on a practical level. I mean radically different. There may not be 'cables" and "belts" and "wiring".

stever

That's the nice side benefit of EVs and hybrids. Battery maintenance is a big deal, so lots of sensory stuff is getting implemented and that stuff will migrate to ICE.

Mr_Shiftright

yeah but even hybrids and EVs just tell you to take it in for repair. They identify problems in systems, but don't tell you what's wrong. So the "migration" will not be for DIY, that's for sure. Messing with some of these battery systems can kill you.

stever

Nah, you can already flash stuff over your wifi to "fix" it. Wider adoption is just a matter of time.

Mr_Shiftright

I can't even watch the Warriors play basketball over wi-fi without the streaming getting stuck...So yeah, maybe on the planet Arcturus in the year 2036 all this will happen.

stever

Mr_Shiftright

You can't trust anything anymore.

thecardoc3

Too funny... Besides with the Acturusian sun in its red giant phase you would only be able to go at night. One would think people would know that.

thecardoc3

stever said:

They've had those kinds of change intervals in Europe for over a decade now, maybe more. Americans seem uniquely qualified at pouring money down the drain.

Of course the dealer may be wrong - did you check the owner's manual?

After all of the oil discussions that we have had on the forums during the last five years there is no way that you shouldn't know the correct answer to the OP's question. The dealer is correct, once a year or 10,000 miles which ever comes first. However, the service interval is totally meaningless if someone fails to use a product that meets the vehicle specs, and the OP's VW has very special requirements that North American spec products cannot meet and they should not be recommended for his car.

stever said:

Meant to add that I've been on 7,500 miles intervals using regular old oil for good decade now myself, usually Supertech from Walmart or whatever else may be on sale. And I drive them forever.

If the OP followed this as a service recommendation, he would ruin the camshaft and high pressure fuel pump in his engine. That oil is too thin to protect a flat tappet camshaft.

texases said:

You have to put in synthetic that meets VW specs. Many don't. I didn't mean VW brand oil.

The OP's car is listed as requiring VW 502/504, except that the 502 isn't a long life oil. That's why its necessary to source a VW 502 approved product that is also ACEA A3/B3, A3/B4 approved which are long life certified, or make sure the chosen product is VW 504 approved.

carboy21 said:

Why do you have to put VW synthetic ? Even under warranty, my 2015 Hyundai Elantra gets the oil of my choice which I take to the dealer and he changes it with no questions asked. Castrol Edge costs $22 a five quart.

Your Hyundai is designed to use the API SN, ILSAC GF5 North American and Asian spec products. The VW is not.

carboy21 said:

I put 5000 city miles with stop and start traffic and no trip longer then 20 miles.
10,000 miles interval is for highway driving and no one except a traveling salesman will put only highway miles.

That's not accurate, many of the Europeans have extended drain intervals, and the oil specifications are written to take that into account. The API and ILSAC do not have any standards for extended life, but ACEA does. That's why you will see the European spec products have ACEA A3/B3 and/or A3/B4 approvals. In Europe the automobile manufacturers set the oil standards, that is who ACEA is. In North America, the oil companies set the standards and current API and ILSAC specifications do not meet current requirements for GM, Ford and Chrysler, as well as many of the Asians. (Your Hyundai is one of the exceptions, for now)

carboy21 said:

Europeans are a skint because oil and gas is more then twice as expensive as in USA and distances in Europe are less one-third of what an average American drives .

That isn't correct, the oil specifications have nothing at all to do with that perception.

stever

Thanks Doc, you make it all seem so simple.

thecardoc3

stever said:

Thanks Doc, you make it all seem so simple.

It is simple. If that's too complicated, then all I can say is put down the wrench and step away from the car.

stever

Go EV.

carboy21

stever said:

Go EV.

Don't buy VW in USA if it is going to need all those EU specified oils

thecardoc3

The majority of the cars on the road today have requirements that are not met by many of the products you can find on the parts store (or Walmart's) shelves. That doesn't make them bad products, it just means that they might not be correct for the car someone is working on.

Just about all of the Euro's need a high HTHS specification which is why you have to look to the manufacturer's specific, or ACEA approvals. North American and Asian vehicles use a low HTHS engine oil. This has been covered so many times in the forums there is no way that it shouldn't be well understood by all of the regulars and MODs. Armed with the right information its inexcusable to fail to advise a consumer correctly.

thecardoc3

stever said:

Go EV.

Be careful what you wish for. This does nothing but trade known problems for issues that you have no idea about, yet.

carboy21

thecardoc3 said:

The majority of the cars on the road today have requirements that are not met by many of the products you can find on the parts store (or Walmart's) shelves. That doesn't make them bad products, it just means that they might not be correct for the car someone is working on.

Just about all of the Euro's need a high HTHS specification which is why you have to look to the manufacturer's specific, or ACEA approvals. North American and Asian vehicles use a low HTHS engine oil. This has been covered so many times in the forums there is no way that it shouldn't be well understood by all of the regulars and MODs. Armed with the right information its inexcusable to fail to advise a consumer correctly.

Bottom line is, if you buy EU cars, you are asking for lifelong trouble. Unless you really fancy the catch phrase "German engineering " , one is better off buying American or Asian cars.

texases

One other difference with many new cars-they have larger oil capacities. This translates directly to longer change intervals. 

stever

thecardoc3 said:

Armed with the right information its inexcusable to fail to advise a consumer correctly.

So going back to the first response - check the owner's manual - you don't think that was the right info either?

thecardoc3

stever said:

So going back to the first response - check the owner's manual - you don't think that was the right info either

Let's go back to the first response if you insist.

stever said:

They've had those kinds of change intervals in Europe for over a decade now, maybe more. Americans seem uniquely qualified at pouring money down the drain.

Let's see, American and Asian cars while some of them had specific requirements were no where near the cost of proper service for the Europeans. Full synthetics weren't required for the domestics which amounted to a considerable savings even if the recommended service intervals were more frequent.

stever said:

Of course the dealer may be wrong - did you check the owner's manual?

Trying to throw a shadow onto the dealer was wrong.

stever

Ha, you think the dealer's all keep up with this stuff? Wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that that a lot are still doing the one size fits all 55 gallon drum in the roof routine. And how would you know otherwise?

>Let's see, American and Asian cars while some of them had specific requirements were no where near the cost of proper service for the Europeans.

Never heard of GM/Opel or Ford? There's a lot of exotic plebian cars over the pond eh? Mustang, Edge, Focus, Fiesta. At least GM gives stuff like the Encore a fancy name (Mokka).

thecardoc3

Does failing to advise consumers correctly make it easier or more difficult for a dealer to incorrectly service a customers car?

stever

Huh? Just how many people do you think research what fluids their car needs? Most don't even crack open their owner's manual, much less ask for info online. I guess that means you agree that when it comes to getting service on your car, owners should "trust, but verify" instead of simply depending on the shop to know what they are doing.

/dead horse beat

Mr_Shiftright

The only time the dealers familiarize themselves with esoteria of detailed oil specs is when they're trying to deny a warranty claim. Otherwise, they do the same thing owners do---dump in the oil that the factory tells you to.

carboy21

stever said:

Huh? Just how many people do you think research what fluids their car needs? Most don't even crack open their owner's manual, much less ask for info online. I guess that means you agree that when it comes to getting service on your car, owners should "trust, but verify" instead of simply depending on the shop to know what they are doing.

/dead horse beat

I have bought a few new cars over last 20 years but to be honest never opened the owners manual
They just lie in their binders in the dash, still looking like new after 10 years

carboy21

Mr_Shiftright said:

The only time the dealers familiarize themselves with esoteria of detailed oil specs is when they're trying to deny a warranty claim. Otherwise, they do the same thing owners do---dump in the oil that the factory tells you to.

Most dealers have the 55 gallon drums for refilling oil . They fill all the cars with the same 5wX30 oil ., unless you specify them a particular specs for foreign brands like MB/AUDI/BMW.