Do Dealers Need Electronics Technicians?

7937

We used to have a saying at one of the places I worked once-upon-a-time. "If you can't fix it, modify it". Sometimes that approach seems to help.

I'll tell you a story. I took over the running and maintainance of a high power radio station. There were high power short wave transmitters and medium wave broadcast band transmitters ranging in power from 100kw to 500kw. Yes, you read those figures correctly.

The 250kw shortwave transmitters were extremely unstable and would continuously trip off the air. The radio station had been opened in 1963 and through the years people who had worked there before me had added their own little modification to the circuits in order to overcome a problem. But electronics being what it is, the problem would resurface in another guise in another area of the transmitter. High power RF is very sneaky.

So, one day I took the bull by the horns and started stripping out all modifications that didn't comply with the original drawings and rewired the circuits according to original specs.

Lo and behold, everything worked again and our problems were over! I must just add that these transmitters are as big as railway trucks and you can walk around in them.

The moral of my story is this - things should work as the manufacturer designed it to work. Work-around solutions don't always solve your problems.

We can't expect mechanics to fiddle things right. It's ok for people like you who have the knowledge to do things like that to your own car but that approach is not going to help matters in the real world.

When I have time I'll reply to Mr. Shiftrights question about what the ideal system and method I would use in future cars.

Mr_Shiftright

Thank you guys, those were interesting observations.

mralan

I spoke with the automotive director at our Community College. He said Ford created their training program (ASSET) to meet the demand of technology and teach technicians the onboard computers operations.

The 2 year program consists of alternating blocks of 8 weeks classroom followed by 8 weeks on-the-job training at a local dealership. I was very impressed with the curriculum. I wish they had this program when I was in school. I'm in my 40's now ... too late for me.

opera_house_wk

A car owner goes into a dealer and says, "My check engine light is on." The mechanic says, "How were you doing when it came on?" Sounds like an everyday event. Yet, I see something profoundly wrong with it. The mechanic is getting a very poor recollection of the event. I have been involved with customers for 30 years and have found that problems sometimes bear very little resemblance to the customers description. Wouldn't it be helpful if a whole range of parameters is stored on the computer when an event takes place. Haven't we all needed more information in the middle of a job and the customer is nowhere to be found. These are the things that computers do best. Computers didn't replace accountants. The hands on the adding machine didn't give them a better feel for the company, access to more data and being able to manipulate it did.

All that said, I hate OBD-II because it is such a poor execution of technology. Too little data and too hard to get at. They have three different standards for the engine in the same connector in addition to a number of other standards for climate control and vehicle sensors. The personal PC never took off till there became one architecture to work with. Hopefully we will all have $50 scanners in the future that will access everything.

Mr_Shiftright

I still think the "customer interview" is sorely neglected. Sometimes you need to drag information out of them.

0patience

Smarter computers?
That would be great if it could be done. Even with the advent of the 42 volt system, there will still be alot of things that aren't going to be dependant on the ECM.
I work with vehicles that can tell you what the engine was doing at the exact moment that there is a fault. But, the computer still doesn't tell you what is wrong, just the parameters of the sensors, the trouble code and what rpms, what speed, what the oil, water and turbo temps were, but it is still up to the mechanic to figure out what went wrong or is wrong.
And I can tell you, even having the ECM take a snapshot of ALL the parameters at the time of the fault, can still not give you all of the information you need.
I have had several times where the ECM lied.
The information that was at the sensors, was not the information that the ECM was providing.
It was off just enough to make you chase your tail.
The cause, faulty ECM. But it worked, the engine ran, all parameters were in spec and there were no trouble codes or faults.
Why did we check the ECM? Because it was overfueling and burnt a valve.
These are $3,000 computers that control these engines, not some $100 OBD2 ECM and they monitor everything. Yet, it still overfueled and burnt a valve and said nothing was wrong.

You said,
I hate OBD-II because it is such a poor execution of technology. Too little data and too hard to get at.
What did you do before OBD1 or OBD2????
OBD2 is far better at "assisting" a mechanic than any system ever put in place.
Any time you have a govt entity enforcing how something is done and a large corporation doing the work, it is going to be slow going.
OBD2 is a tool, nothing more.
If you expect the automotive ECM to ever give you all the info to go right to something and know the problem, you are dreaming.

opera_house_wk

Back in the early nineties, I designed the first PC based intermediate engine test monitor for the F-16 fighter engine. Hard to believe, but before that it was 16 position rotary switches, a FLUKE DVM and look it up on a chart calculations. The new engines no longer had voltage test points. All information now had to come from a 1Mhz LAN bus formatted to MIL-1553. There was no specification as to what I had to do except test the engine. So I thought, what would I want. The result was maybe a little later delivery and a lot of bells and whistles. As always, the hardware was delivered before the manual was done. I stood behind the operator and answered questions for about 5 minutes and he never needed me after that. There was automatic and manual event capture as well as instant and detailed performance calculations. A year and a half later when the engine parameters needed to updated, the operators had no requests to change how the program operated. Internal diagnostics would also tell you where the cable was not hooked up right. All the engine data could be stored on a disk and the program could be run on any IBM compatible PC. This was a successful project.

As you may have gathered, I wanted to do some of the more exotic things, build the interface and write my own program. Looking at the OBD-II standard made this all seem like a waste of time. I wanted to get into those things like Arizona Speed & Marine does. I had flashing lights on my 84 Supra, OBD-I was a little better with some back and forth communications and now we got OBD-II for a while. The technology was there ten years ago for a good system and instead they dribble out a few bits at a time. So instead of being grateful, you should ask why not something better. Why are you buying a new interface every few years?

0patience

Buying a new interface every few years?
How do you figure?
OBD2 has been around since 95 and is probably going to change in 2003 or 2004 to OBD3.
That is more than a few years and we aren't talking about an F-16, we are talking about a car.
Personally, I don't care for OBD1 or OBD2, but it is what we have and since the govt decides how it is going to be done, then complaining about it ain't gonna do much good. Mechanics work with what is handed to them. They diagnose, test, repair and modify.
As I said, any time you have the govt making the regulations and the corporations interpreting them, you aren't going to have a common system, you will have what the manufacturers interpretted.