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My other HF experiences include a small bench grinder and torque wrench, both of which I still use, but neither of which is doing what it is supposed to do consistently nor well. About 50% of the time, the torque wrench slips. The bench grinder is falling apart so I use it sparingly. I have had much better luck just using HF for uncomplicated tools and even those I have to be careful not to put too much stress on. I have snapped a couple of ratchet extensions, allan keys, and the like.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170814/RETAIL07/170819934/1147
A few snips....
While some dealers were overwhelmed with incomplete orders and were closing service departments, others were taking the walkout in stride.
Management representatives say a guaranteed 40-hour workweek would eliminate the system of rewarding the most productive technicians with more hours. The previous contract guaranteed a minimum 34 hours a week.
Actually it wouldn't but then again it would require that the flat rate pay plan actually be administered correctly.
The walkout has strained relationships between mechanics and management at some, but not all, dealerships.
"We've laid off most of the employees that are nonunion," said a noticeably frustrated Randy Petersen, service director at Bill Kay Ford. "They could work without a contract, but they refuse to." He implied that even after a labor agreement is reached, healing won't come quickly. "We'll see where we stand when the strike ends."
At another Ford dealership, a service manager who declined to be named said he had to cancel close to 100 appointments.
Funny how he is blaming the walk-out for the strained relationships.
Petty said she has been doing repairs on most vehicles that pull into the garage, while offering loaner cars to drivers whose vehicles can't be immediately fixed. She'd also be willing to outsource work to another shop to get the job done instead of turning customers away. "If it's not warranty, I'll figure out how to make it happen," Petty said. Only certified technicians can perform warranty work.
This is one of the big issues, only certified techs can be used for warranty work repair orders. If someone does the work that isn't certified at it the manufacturer can refuse to pay the labor claim. Remember the Cadillac dealer that pushed the toolboxes out of the door? It could take some three years to get techs certified if they loose the whole crew.
The dealers' initial offer, made just before the previous contract expired, had a 5 percent annual pay increase over three years, with further incentive premiums. After that offer was overwhelmingly rejected, a mechanic posted on the union's Facebook page that the contract "works out to 1.25 percent increase in pay and the rest is only incentive based." Longer warranties on vehicles that need less maintenance mean more of the service work at dealerships is paid at warranty rates, rather than higher customer-pay rates. That makes it harder for mechanics to qualify for such incentive-based pay increases.
While it appeared that pay raises were being offered, the reality was as mentioned that the pay increase was incentive based and with some 80% of the work coming in the door at warranty rates making anything on the incentive program just isn't possible. The O.E. labor times are too short to meet let alone beat with any regularity. In fact the majority of the labor allowances are all but fraudulent and quite frankly any O.E. that reads this and objects can agree to "The Challenge" and try to prove their times are accurate.
The problem with a guaranteed 40-hour workweek, Petty said, is that the workflow isn't steady enough to support an increase in promised hours.
If no cars are rolling through the garage needing repairs, dealers would still have to pay mechanics for being there — an impractical setup, she said.
If they over staff and there aren't enough cars rolling in the door then the techs don't get paid for their time "at work". It's management's responsibility to get work in the door and keep things moving, not the techs. By guaranteeing the forty hour week they would have to make sure that there is less dead time for the technicians.
"The Challenge" was an essay that I wrote some fifteen years ago challenging Ford to prove that the labor time cuts they were doing back then were fair. In it there would be a group of possible repair routines to pick from but the exact routine to be performed would not be disclosed until the event. The event was to be a live streamed competition between a full time technician and some of the people responsible for establishing the labor times. I proposed that the times were so far off from reality that the dealer technician would beat the labor time representative head to head doing the repair, but neither of them would complete the task in the allotted time. If the labor times were honest, at the least the Ford person should have been able to do the job in the allowable time proving that the quoted time was justified. If the labor times were legit they had nothing to lose and would in fact have legitimate proof. It was no surprise that in spite of intense pressure from the technicians Ford refused to take part. However it did serve to enhance communication between Ford and the dealer technicians if for no other reason than to say that the labor times paid are not intended to reflect the dealership technicians compensation. That is a separate agreement between the technicians and the dealer......
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
You have seen how diagnostics are really supposed to be performed, it can't be done in 12 minutes, and yet that's what the O.E's are paying the dealers and therefore what the techs get. Oh wait, that is "If and only if" the diagnostic time paid results in a confirmed repair. The "no trouble found" doesn't pay anything no matter how much time a tech puts toward a given reported issue.
It might not be the tech's "fault" that there isn't any work, but that doesn't mean he gets a free ride, either.
The last place I worked guaranteed full-time hourly workers 35 hours/week. But, that was a major corporation and fairly progressive. If it was slow, they offered time off without pay on a volunteer basis. It was very seldom that someone got paid for not working. If they did, that manager had something to answer for.
On the flip side, to right-size your work force, sometimes you have to have mandatory overtime. Of course, if the whole place has mandatory overtime, week after week, the management is doing something wrong there, too.
I'm not a big fan of places that put time burdens on employees that they aren't paid for, though. You shouldn't have to work off the clock to set up a work station, or spend 30 minutes going through a security checkpoint, after you've already clocked out (hello, Amazon!).
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'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
At 12pm another walk in shows up. This one is waiting so instead of having a lunch break he get's right on it. After spending an hour investigating the situation he is unable to duplicate the condition including going on a road test with the vehicle owner for close to half an hour. He get's paid nothing since the time spent did not lead to a solution. He is now five hours into the day for .8 hours pay. Maybe tomorrow will see some customer pay work come through and he can clock hours that will try and let him catch up on the week, and then again maybe not. Even so if the manager or dispatch has a favorite tech that person is likely to get the first choice of the work. 30 minutes? A whole thirty minutes at work not on the clock that is unpaid? Techs can often spend entire days that way especially around the holidays. Techs lose thirty minutes each day just dealing with the parts department. They can lose that trying to find a car that some customer parked in an obscure location. They can lose that going on a road test with a customer or if they have to stop working on a car and talk to the owner in order to explain some vehicle issue that is beyond a service writers ability to comprehend.
The forty hour guarantee would incentivize management to step up and not let lost time happen like that. As it is right now they can be lazy, and get a free ride on the techs backs.
They have blocked everybody from posting, but one of the last ones is worth looking at. It was written by "james Osgood" When you look at his page he only has two friends, so I sent him a request. Iwonder if he will answer....
https://www.facebook.com/james.osgood.1610?fref=ufi&rc=p
BTW His response to the thread there was.....
" James Osgood These Techs were never in the Union and never paid dues regardless of being in talks etc.. Walking off in this case is QUITTING. They also told the dealer the day before the strike that they were not going on strike. Which means the completely screwed ALL the customers and left their cars un finished, just terrible on the Techs behalf.. The stores that went on strike that had Union members took care of the customers and finished their cars or had them picked up by the customer.. These techs didn't care about no one but themselves and deserve what they got.. BTW they did pull the tools inside when it started raining no one showed those pics. On top of that many of the techs are making well over 100K like myself, I dont call that under paid Just Sayin... This is a lazy mans strike!! If you were in the shoes of the owner you would have done the same thing or worse, that I know... Hope this all comes to an end soon I need to work.. This is the reality!!!!
August 10 at 9:24am
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-mechanics-strike-update-0822-biz-20170821-story.html
This article really spells out what techs have had to deal with.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/20455/auto_mechanics_union_chicago_strike
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Try and imagine how much time someone would have to spend studying including watching video's like this for all of the systems on just one car. Now imagine one car line like Chevrolet. Now imagine all of GM, then try and picture multiple manufacturers. That would be pretty tough to do just for one model year......
Information like this is just a baseline and insufficient to fully prepare someone to handle every possible failure for any given system. If a technician already possesses the knowledge, skills and tools reflecting mastery of the trade this video can assist in familiarization with an unknown system which can reduce the diagnostic time of common failures that can sometimes occur. It has little to no value for uncommon failures and random (intermittent) faults.
I got to look at a 2005 Silverado that was setting a P1518 communication circuit failure which is mentioned towards the end of the video a few months ago and shared some of the information that I collected in the iATN and here. No where in service information and of course this training video was it ever discussed that some failures that can occur between the TAC module and the throttle body or the APP sensor would result in the module intentionally shutting the communication line off. This causes a diagnostic issue because the module disrupting communication results in the PCM setting the P1518 while the actual failure that time had nothing to do with the communication circuit itself.
So how in the world does someone master this kind of work? On one hand it isn't possible to do simply because of the expectation that on top of being able to handle all of that information the tech has to physically be able to apply it in minutes. (Think O.E. diagnostic times of .2 to .3 hours or twelve to eighteen minutes). Which leads to this scenario that I dealt with yesterday.
A couple weeks ago I got a call from the Air Force Refueling wing at the airport because of a Ford truck that they wanted to replace a PCM in. They needed someone to perform the flash programming and set up the module. Their techs had diagnosed that the PCM had failed and was unable to turn on the starter relay to allow the engine to be cranked and started. I asked them before they replaced the computer how they determined that the computer was at fault and the story that I got raised my suspicions that it was not diagnosed completely or correctly and that the tech had jumped to this conclusion when he reached the limits of his training and experience. I offered them two choices, one was for me to come down and help the technician re-check his diagnostics and make sure that he really knew how to go about this which of course did have the possibility that even though the process was short-cutted could be correct. The other would be to proceed, they could get the replacement PCM and I could just set it all up for them. They chose the latter.
So yesterday I went to the base and after getting through security they directed me to the motor service facility. The tech who has been working on the vehicle wasn't present but several others including his first sergeant were and they all readily admitted that they had no idea how to proceed and were really curious about the process. So I went through the steps of replacement and programming of the new PCM for them while explaining each step. Once that was complete the last step instructs the technician to crank and start the engine, and it failed to crank when the key was turned which was still the original complaint, the new PCM didn't solve the problem.
Not one to simply stop right there I sourced the starter circuit schematic and it showed that fuse #31 in the dash fuse block get's the 12v command from the ignition switch for the starter relay. That signal was confirmed to be present when the key was turned to the crank position. Testing the fuse prior to that step with a tool called a power probe showed a very strange behavior, the power probe kept detecting a ground that was pulsing on/off through the starter fuse, disconnecting the relay stopped that from occurring. The next step was to prove the starter solenoid output connection and for power for the relay to switch to the starter and those were correct. Using the power probe which can output 12v when the button is pressed I was able to crank and start the engine confirming that the system failure is in the command circuit which includes the PCM or in the inputs to the PCM that must be correct to get the PCM to allow the starter to be engaged.
The truck had stalled on the line and was towed to the shop about a month ago and had not run ever since that day. After the PCM replacement failed the amount of time that it took to narrow down where the failure is was under ten minutes and that included explaining how the circuit worked. The exact failure is not at this time diagnosed, only the subsystem in which it exists is identified with the other potential circuits ruled out. In talking with the first sergeant they cannot teach their junior technicians how to do what I had just demonstrated because they don't know how to do it themselves. This really opened their eyes when they saw how to correctly deal with 2003 model year technology while turning around and thinking about the kind of technology that is on newer vehicles.
I've got a funny feeling that I just made a lot more work for myself......
http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20170904/mechanics-strike-drags-on-but-some-cutting-solo-deals-with-union
It's no secret that I came here some six years ago now because of activities that served to paint the trade incorrectly. Back then everywhere I looked there where "experts" preaching to consumers about auto repair who really were totally uninformed about just what techs actually do. What's worse they never discussed what techs have had to overcome on a daily basis just to try and be there for the consumers and be ready to take care of their vehicle needs. That in a way played directly into the Dealer's and O.E's hands who were all about stunting the technician's career growth and limiting their standard of living.
It's time for this story to really get some support and for the consumers to understand just how techs have really been getting treated and what that has done to their chances of having someone qualified to service their cars. The O.E.'s and dealers have been talking out of both sides of their mouths for as long as I can remember and this strike is putting all of the issues out in the open.
There was a time where there was no shortage of people taking shots at professional technicians and its way past time that some amends are made and putting this story front and center would be a step towards doing that.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
The dealers who are against the union demands want the world to stay abusive and disrespectful of the techs. The stereotypes helped them suppress wages and actually worked to ensure higher profits from the service departments at the consumers expense. That abuse of the techs by the dealers was real cause for the dishonesty that was displayed in that sting some six years ago. The sting preyed on the weaker techs who gave into the dealer pressure and their failure was used to unfairly paint all techs with the same brush. The top techs around the country mastered their craft in spite of everything that was happening around as well as to them and don't get enough (any?) recognition for having done so. If things don't change they will continue to discourage others from entering the trade because no-one should have to live through the nonsense that they did while undertaking an already very difficult and mentally challenging career. @actualsize Are you watching this?
I'm not belittling any of this. I'm merely pointing out what I believe to be the general perception and why I believe a strike at some Chicago dealerships to be irrelevant in the grand scheme. I'm in pharma advertising and see things happen every year that affect far greater numbers of people than this strike that never make the news. It does not surprise me. I don't expect it to be in the news.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Media works on the principle of "heat", which brings in dollars, rather than directly focusing on dollars. So if the techs burned down the dealership, that would generate way more publicity than a simple strike. Labor issues are pretty boring to the general public these days. If anything, union-busting is probably way more popular than a union succeeding in today's new.
Remember this goes beyond the union issue itself as the things they are pushing for impact technicians and ultimately consumers everywhere.
From August 19th...
I learned a few things Friday about the labor dispute between mechanics and the automobile dealerships that employ them.
When I stopped to talk with striking workers on picket lines in front of dealerships along 159th Street, I listened to people talk about their desire for fairness and willingness to compromise.
If only a few others took the initiative to do the same.
We all have families. We all have bills. We'd like to get back to work," said Rich Bryson, of Plainfield,
who works at Joe Rizza Ford, 8100 W. 159th St., Orland Park.
That type of rhetoric is expected and typical in all labor disputes.
What I didn't expect to hear was praise that striking workers volunteered about some employers.
"It's not the owners, it's the dealer's association," Bryson said. "The owners are great.
They're allowing us to use the bathroom. They bring us food."
Down the street at Apple Chevrolet, 8585 W. 159th St.,
Tinley Park, striking workers said the same thing.
"We work for a great family," said Demetrios Sitelis, of Orland Park, who has serviced vehicles at the dealership for 14 years.
"Our ownership is great."
Back at Joe Rizza Ford, management was getting ready to fire up a grill and cook lunch for striking workers.
"We're doing the three B's today: burgers, bratwurst and Ball Park Franks," said Dan McMillan, Rizza's chief financial officer.
In all my years covering labor disputes, I've never before seen such a cordial relationship among people on opposite sides of a conflict.
This is not a surprise that many of the techs have employer's that they have great relationships with. The biggest problem for all techs and the dealers alike are the warranty labor times.
"We're all still on the same team," McMillan told me. "When all is said and done, we'll all be back in the same building.
We all have the same goal of providing great customer service."
What then, I wondered, has kept about 2,000 members of Automobile Mechanics Local 701 on strike since Aug. 1? With the dispute
set to begin its fourth week and no new talks scheduled as of Friday afternoon, I sought to learn more about both sides of the controversy.
As everyone SHOULD be doing.
I knew from media coverage that union workers had rejected the latest contract offer because, they said, it failed to address such key issues as uncompensated work time. Union mechanics at about 130 Chicago-area dealerships work on commission, I was told. When a vehicle needs work, a mechanic is allotted a certain amount of time to diagnose and repair the vehicle based on industry standards.
This is one thing that needs corrected, the labor times do NOT represent industry standards and in most cases are nothing short of fraudulent. Pay attention to the next few sentences.
If it takes longer than expected, mechanics are essentially working on their own time, they said.
"You're only guaranteed pay for 34 hours a week," Bryson said. "No one works 34 hours. No one works 40 hours.
Most mechanics work 10-hour days" — or 50 hours a week — but many are only paid for fewer than 40 hours, he said.
Remember claims of making more than $100K a year? That's not saying that it can't be done an hints as to how it likely is are coming in this article too. But the average technician is no where near that number. It doesn't matter what you are paid per hour if you are getting zero hours for time spent on a given job. $XX times 0 = $0
A key sticking point in negotiations is the amount of time allotted to service factory warranties, especially in the case of recalls.
When vehicle manufacturers face expensive recalls, striking workers said, they try to shift the costs of repairs to dealers, who then shift the costs to workers.
I'd love to watch the people who set the labor times actually do the repair. There is a very simple reason why we never get to and its quite simply because they can't complete the task in the allotted time but yet the times get to stand and be portrayed as "the standard".
Cont...
Automobile dealerships are collectively negotiating through a group called the 2017 New Car Dealer Committee, which on Thursday issued a media statement about the impasse. "To resolve this labor dispute, we offered an industry-leading contract that includes unprecedented wage increases," NCDC said.
"Unfortunately, union leadership instructed our employees to reject this offer, and the strike continues. This strike is harming technician's families, their co-workers and our loyal customers."
The labor practices in most dealerships are what is doing that, not this strike.
Both sides have reached agreement on many issues, the dealers group said.
"We believe that the union's proposals on the remaining issues would harm the ability of NCDC dealers to effectively compete in today's marketplace, thus threatening the job security of our technicians as well as all of our other employees."
So ripping off the techs, and all of the other nonsense is good for the business.
Local 701 also issued a statement Thursday, thanking the public and other unions for showing support and accusing the dealer's group of trying to "win" the strike instead of continuing negotiations with help from a federal mediator.
"The NCDC is using every expected play from the management strike playbook — namely attempting to scare their employees into submission," Local 701 said. "Some are forcing their employees to remove their toolboxes from the shop — sending the message that they are not welcome back." Clearly, the friendliness among management and workers outside dealerships in Orland Park and Tinley Park is not the case everywhere.
Striking workers told me many mechanics spend up to $30,000 to furnish their own tools. Technicians often are not compensated for time spent diagnosing mechanical issues, they said. They encounter delays with WiFi issues and when they talk by phone with information technology experts at manufacturers who try to help determine what repairs are needed.
Gross understatement on the cost of the tools by the time someone has been a tech for more than ten years, but the rest of this is accurate. Just think about how this relates to this post. https://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/45761/ford/edge/2017-ford-edge-buzz-when-headlights-on#latest
"Vehicle technology has become very sophisticated," Sitelis said. "We become IT guys. We hook laptops up to every car. When you're on the phone with tech, you're not getting paid."
BTW, remember the sting where techs started overselling? They did get paid to do that and usually praised for their production.
Before the strike, union journeymen received a base rate of $32.30 an hour, said Sam Cicinelli, Local 701 business representative. Entry-level workers started at $9.25 or $11.80 an hour, he said.
Any takers?
On Aug. 10, the NCDC said its "final offer" included raises of nearly 5 percent a year for each of the three years of the contract. The offer included paying "virtually all increases" in health benefits for employees, which would reach $292 a week by the end of the contract, NCDC said, plus 100 percent of pension costs, or $181 per week.
The offer received an "overwhelming rejection" from Local 701 members who voted in Countryside on Aug. 12, the union said. Striking workers I talked to said the dealer group's portrayal of the offer was "misleading" and failed to address key considerations such as uncompensated work time and the number of years experience needed to achieve journeyman status. Workers said many of them had stockpiled savings in preparation for the strike and were prepared for an impasse that could stretch from weeks to months.
"This isn't about right now, it's about the future," Sitelis said.
McMillan said he hoped the dispute would be resolved soon. "This is hurting our business," he said.
Self diagnosing automobile systems? Systems that just don't fail in the first place?
You know how frustrating it is when you press a button or turn a knob in your car and something doesn't work as it should or doesn't work at all.
As we move into the era of self-driving vehicles -- many of which will have a 48-volt system in the powertrain -- electrical failures can't happen. A camera, radar or lidar unit that functions intermittently or stops functioning could cause a fatal accident, and a short-circuit in the battery pack or electric motor in an electric vehicle can start a fire.
Delphi engineers have been studying electrical gremlins in automobiles on the road by looking at warranty data. It's an effort to understand where and why failures occur and part of an industrywide push to banish electrical problems. Delphi has been talking with German and French automakers and by year end, could have a good idea of how next-generation electrical systems will be configured.
Here's one -- ahem -- shocking finding from Delphi's research: Connectors fail not because of corrosion from moisture, improperly seated terminals that work loose during driving or improperly crimped or damaged wires. Connectors fail and take a vehicle's electronic accessories down mainly because of mistakes made during assembly. The main reason for electrical failure is because both parts of the plastic housing that holds the wire terminals are not fully mated, Delphi says.
During a visit to Delphi's tech center north of Detroit, I asked Glen De Vos, the company's chief technology officer, and Mary Gustanski, Delphi's vice president of engineering, how the industry will eliminate electrical problems in self-driving vehicles with high-voltage powertrains.
You might think the answer is simple: Design foolproof wire connectors and flawless assembly methods so that wiring harnesses can't be mishandled.
It's far more complicated than that. The next generation of vehicles that have self-driving features and electrified powertrains will borrow a page from the commercial aviation industry and have redundancy built into their electrical architectures.
That means safety critical systems will still work if there is a power interruption or some other failure.
And to make that work, you just put two of everything in a car, right?
Again, it's far more complex than that.
"We are spending a lot of time right now with the OEMs developing what those strategies are," De Vos says. "Simply duplicating everything is really expensive, especially if you have to duplicate it in different ways. It's like two different development efforts. But fundamentally that's what we have to look at: How do you provide redundancy and fail-operational capability?"
Gustanski said redundancy is more than two sets of wires and components. It's onboard computers that can sense when there is a failure in one computer and then automatically provide backup.
"For safety critical systems, we don't want to leave the driver stranded," she said. "We [have to] make sure there is a way to get you where you need to be, maybe in limp-home mode. So, in the vehicle's electrical architecture we [might] go to centralized computing, one for safety and one for the electrical architecture because they end up backing each other up."
Weight and cost are two big problems with adding redundancy. But Delphi and other companies are attacking those issues.
On the second-generation Chevrolet Volt and the latest Toyota Prius, for example, General Motors and Toyota engineers eliminated most of the heavy copper cables by installing the cars' power electronics directly on the transmission, where the electric motors are housed.
Delphi, Gustanski said, is working on a new generation of lightweight aluminum wires that can also reduce cost. She said aluminum wire, combined with thin-wall insulation, can reduce weight by as much as 40 percent vs. copper.
There's no doubt Delphi and its competitors and engineers at Ford, GM, Toyota, Daimler, BMW and elsewhere will solve these problems and make electrified, self-driving vehicles reliable.
So I work at a highline European
dealership. We are a hourly shop with production bonus. Our
dealer group got bought out by another dealer group. Over
the course of the year, changes were happening good and bad.
Now the real bean counters came in The new owners and along
with the new management, We lost 5 Service Advisers so far
due to pay. A few techs left due to cost of living in my
area. Now they have decided to implement flat rate to be
aligned with their whole organization. So far myself and a
few other techs are leaving based off of this.
This isn't about saving the customers any money, and it isn't about improving service quality or fix it right the first time demands. It's all about the commodity being more important than the people no matter which side of the counter they happen to be on.
Car's that cannot be repaired for what ever reason drive sales even if the next one is a different brand. Mega dealers who own multiple stores still win when a customer dumps a car especially since they quite often don't change the franchise name when they do the buy-out so the consumer doesn't even know they are still dealing with the same company.
Cars that are repaired when a problem arises give the owner longer service and reduced costs of ownership over the vehicle lifetime, but that would result in fewer new car sales. That's the real reason why you don't see support for the techs. It's not that it isn't news, it's just intentionally suppressed. It isn't any more news when service fails but that gets attention because it serves the underlying agenda to move new cars. The dealers rarely if ever pushed back against any negativity against their service departments because it again supported the sales side of the business.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
For one thing, the facilities are impressive, with impeccably clean work areas, a nice customer waiting area, an engine dyno room, and a service manager who is a go-between with customers and the techs.
These shops charge a LOT of money for what they do. But apparently, few customers are reluctant to pay, because they get a high level of service and they can SEE where their money is going.
Most dealerships are run like impersonal factories. The techs are not even like real human beings to the general public.
https://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/47042/dodge/ram-pickup-2500/ram-2500-5-9l-starting-issue#latest
They would get all kinds of answers like try changing your fuel pump relay, or fuel filter or whatever and simply add to the grocery list of parts already being thrown at the vehicle. I often found it amusing that if a shop had done some work and a problem still existed it was just straight assumed that they had no idea what they where doing and that they where just tossing parts while in the next post all of the answers from the same responders where basically go throw some parts at the problem. I even got a lot of push back as I repeatedly insisted that each problem needed to be investigated, analyzed and diagnosed. Much of the push back centered around the perception that the owner was just trying to save money all while ignoring the fact that just tossing parts, no matter how good of a guess someone might have thought that it was, it was still just a guess that had a greater chance to be wrong than it did to be right.
So now here we are today and here is Shifty's response to this poster.
Have you determined the cause of the initial no-start, that is, what's missing? Fuel, spark, injector pulse?
Of course that is the correct approach. First determine the subsystem that is affected and then you can start to analyze that system. The you continue to drill down and eventually that will lead to the solution or diagnosis.
Diagnostics when done correctly is a series of analysis, diagnosis, analysis, diagnosis as you progress down to the root cause. It can be the most difficult work that is ever assigned to someone because it can demand extensive system knowledge, training both technical and in how to make full usage of the available tooling, and it quite often requires a technician who does think outside the box and can use a combination of routines to prove exactly what is going on.
While it's easy to ask the question, "Have they determined what is missing during that initial no start" the difficult question that goes right along with that is how exactly does one do that? The next question then is "Once one test is performed, how long do you have to wait to get another chance to test further?" You see, once the car starts, you cannot make any more progress until the next event occurs. That means it's entirely plausible that this actual diagnostic might be a series of twenty seconds of testing events that occur in eight to twenty-four hour intervals.
That's tough enough all on it's own now factor in just what someone had to invest in tools, schools and a lifetime of learning inside the school of hard knocks just to be ready to do this for someone. Oh, and don't forget they still needed to earn a living while everyone around them still thought that it should be free and that they should just know what the problem was.
I suspect that the poster has little to no idea just how to prove if this is missing spark or fuel etc. and just wants a silver bullet answer. A silver bullet could fix the vehicle but it doesn't teach anything that can genuinely be applied to the next situation. Look at that as winning a battle on your way to losing the war, which BTW leads us right back to why the strike in Chicago is so important. The techs want to be paid for being the people who will apply themselves and take a disciplined approach to proving exactly what is wrong with a given car. Meanwhile just about everyone around them wants it for nothing (or next to it) all while the work get's more and more complex and demands even more of the technicians.
A tech had to come here and figure out a way to fix what was going on and Shifty's response proves that the message has been delivered. Funny how there are (were) people around here who got paid for what they were doing and a tech had to do it on his own without compensation. The techs in Chicago are mirroring that same kind of challenge on a large and very personal scale, take note of how easy it is to make excuses to not help them. It would serve everyone right if all of the techs simply walked away and left everyone back to guessing and looking for silver bullets.
In the quest to solve my overheating problem, I block test kit to make sure a head gasket isn't leaking. It passed the test no problem. Zero air entering the cooling system. I have yet to finish making my air baffles. Hopefully this weekend, if not sooner. I do have a miss when cold, so new plugs and wires going in as well. I already did the plugs and they all looked the same (which is to say fine). Wires are pretty old and crappy.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
Doc you have to realize that you are like the doctor in the ER room---you see the worst stuff--the nail fired into the skull, the fingers sawn off, etc. But you know, sometimes all you really do need is a laxative and an aspirin.
I was also rather suprised at the post you linked to--the basic tools to test for spark, fuel and injector pulse are readily available at Autozone. True, true, they won't get you past a really wicked problem, but this guy hasn't even done the basics yet.
I suspect, as you do, that this problem will turn out to be tricky, based on the symptoms of never starting the first time and always starting the second time. On the other hand, a fuel rail bleeding down is a possibility, no?
The reason I ask is that at times I was highly suspicious of the shops working on my '95 Dodge Neon for sabotage. I truly believed someone might be rigging one thing to go wrong soon thereafter while fixing what I took it in for. Like clockwork every 3 to 4 months smoething else would go wrong.
I expected the mechanic to be able to predict what would go wrong soon thereafter and fix it once and for all, but that would probably require replacing the entire car with a Toyota.
Now don't go ticking Doc off with such talk. I've had a few cars like this---they just never quit being annoying and unreliable. I had a Saab Turbo and I swear I replaced just about every piece of that car, and it really needed the repairs, too--they weren't misdiagnoses. My Mini Cooper was another car that bedeviled me for a few years--and has finally settled down to squeaks and rattles and little parts falling off.
I know it can seem like a car is jinxed or someone is messing with you, but some cars, especially if they are miled up, really do go through what I call "serial malfunctions"---the water pump and alternator and power window all seem to have some kind of mileage lifespan and then they all quit about the same time.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
I suppose in hindsight, some of the problems Neon's had became VERY predictable, as they approached close to the limit 100% failure rates on many parts. Head gaskets became a predictable failure. That ancient 3-speed auto was a fairly predictable failure. One thing I can blame them for is replacing the car battery without replacing the corroding cables/wires, connections, ect.. Corrosion spreads and builds..... , and gets worse, not better. it wasn't long after getting a new battery that I needed new electrical connections.
I wasn't implying that the heat range of the plugs would fix your problem--only suggesting that you have the right plugs in there---one less variable to deal with during diagnosis.