Wouldn't all those codes popping up have raised your suspicions to a PCM/PCM harness issue, because you know that a large # of fuses are getting intermittent power?
By the time the vehicle can be disassembled to perform static tests it is no surprise that the circuit failure would not be present. Here are normal resistance tests of the fuse block assembly and the wiring from the fuse block to the PCM.
Direct inspection of the connectors is done both visually as well as with terminal pin tension tools. The terminal at the PCM showed it to be oversized and that "could" result in poor pin fit. The terminal for the relay control circuit was also damaged and had the potential to randomly lose connection. The wire itself did need to be inspected for possible damage and corrosion.
Top row, 3rd cavity from the left. Zoom in and compare that terminal to the others
The tool inserted into the yellow wire from the relay to the PCM fit with no drag at all and had to be addressed. That was a chore all to itself as the age of the wires made the insulation hard and slightly swollen. The reassembly of the connector was extremely difficult and what should have taken a few minutes actually took four hours to accomplish. If a replacement pigtail would have been available, even used it would have been easier to just splice it in. As it worked out this time was simply given away as many shops and techs often do. In the end had this not been identified and dealt with it easily could have resulted in the car not being repaired completely.
Tag wires had to be installed that created accessible test points. The fuse block itself was suspect but wasn't up to this point specifically proven. Here is how the test connections were made.
Using these connections along with the ones at the PCM these measurements were collected. This first one was as the problem was starting to occur.
The voltage drop was getting worse.
This one was also used earlier but showed the results when the engine finally stalled.
That confirmed the fuse block itself had failed and was the cause of every code except for the Canister Vent solenoid circuit. The customer's goal was to fix the stalling and did not authorize that diagnostic at this point. Wouldn't you know that that code did not reset after the replacement of the fuse block assembly? That only means there is no way to know if that is still a problem or not. Total bill, some $1200 less than previous estimates but still not cheap even with the time that was not billed for. It would be more than fair to question how a shop can do this and survive and the simple answer is that it cannot. If I had to earn a living running the shop like this we would fail.
The only variable is what exactly does "fail" mean. Go out of business? Entirely possible. Not have resources that would allow for continuing education and investment in the tools to keep pace with technology? That's the most common result of failing to charge correctly for the work that top techs do. The shops and techs don't make the money that they should and therefore find it unjustifiable to continue trying. Yet the best shops, the best techs have kept trying and they learned the skills and routines like the ones that are represented in this series of posts. We did this while people claiming to be experts told consumers just what they wanted to hear while the experts themselves had no idea what it really took to be competent as a technician working on the kinds of electronics that have been present in the cars since the mid 80's.
Lately when I read forum responses for a consumers request for help it is both reassuring that no longer do they routinely get blind guesses to toss parts at a given problem like they were just a couple years ago and yet also troubling at just how far we still have to go for vehicle owners to recognize just what it takes to solve any given problem. I have hope that the next generation of technicians won't have to suffer through the same problems that we did and to that I have been investing my time to explain what the job is really like. That means both what is good about it as well as what is wrong. It's fun to solve problems like this Envoy and it's darn sure worth earning a good living doing and the techs deserve to be respected and recognized for accomplishing it.
Fact is, no one, not even you, can fix a car over a computer. At best, we (or you) can give them some possibilities and possibly prevent them from wasting money and time by pursuing what is not plausible.
>>Tag wires had to be installed that created accessible test points.
Again, something that should be "built in" from the ground up. Ideally the tech wouldn't have to do anything to get all the readouts.
No they shouldn't. First, what would that do to the production cost of the vehicles? Second, adding additional wires increases the likelihood that something IS going to act up reducing quality. Third, someone would still have to do the work of figuring out a failure and while having more accessible test points might help some of the time, there would always be failures that cannot be accounted for in advance. Anything that makes the ordinary easier makes the unordinary that much more difficult. The reason for that is there would be less need to develop the advanced skills and less practice using them. In a way, that's part of the trouble now. People try and insist that the work is easier than it really is and they base all of their other perceptions on that false assumption.
tedious task there. So why was "time given away". Just charge him the 4 hours it took.
The simplest answer is the experts have coached consumers to complain about prices to the point that it has been easier to just take some of the losses than it is to try and explain all of the costs. In the majority of the cases the consumer never knows what the shop/tech really invested in accomplishing a given repair. The default perception (often pushed by management) is that they did the repair with effortless precision. Then there is the secondary reality that is being exposed with this. By not charging for that time the idea of being the hero's and earning all of the customers business is supposed to reward the effort. AKA "Build it and they will come". Sadly the reality couldn't be further away.
Meanwhile, all of the other perceptions about the trade also never took into account how much of the time the techs weren't being paid for the work that they were doing. In the dealership a tech fighting that harness issue would be lucky to be assigned some easy work (that he/she still had to do) that was somehow supposed to allow him/her to "make up" the time. In the shops the management is/was quite often as ignorant about the demands of the job as was everyone else is and to them struggling with that connector is the measurement of the techs skill and knowledge no matter what else he/she was capable of accomplishing. So that means, we don't charge for those challenges, never have. The reality that someone else would jump at the chance to use having done so against us and that could be more counter productive than just taking the first loss.
BTW. Most dealers would simply have the techs sell and install a new wiring harness to overcome the issue with it. At $1500 for the harness plus much simpler labor it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why.
Wouldn't all those codes popping up have raised your suspicions to a PCM/PCM harness issue, because you know that a large # of fuses are getting intermittent power?
No, not really. Until something is proven, either by direct testing/observation everything is in play. The practice of choosing the simplest of the codes presented allows for the chance to cover the most ground with the diagnostics. Quite often I'll see someone post advice like check "fuses" or check "the grounds" but without corroboration to the symptom that amounts to telling someone looking for a missing shoe to check the closets. Yea that's where it "might" be but with a little logic applied first that may be easily ruled in or out before much physical time and effort are applied. It wasn't until after it was proven that there was no power to the purge valve that it was appropriate to test and check any fuse. Then when it was proven that there was no power to the fuse that protects that circuit that's when it was appropriate to see what was going on with the others.
I didn't mean more wires Doc. If anything the miles of wiring needs to go way down. Right now you have a bunch of sensors throwing codes but they should be talking to each other so they aren't dumping so many into the scanner. Ideally the software should be able to figure out the part/module whatever that needs a whack with a hammer instead of dumping a bunch of codes into the tech's lap. All that does is give the tech yet another trouble tree to work through and winds up costing everyone more money.
I didn't mean more wires Doc. If anything the miles of wiring needs to go way down.
FYI. The mileage length of the wires in vehicles is going up, not down. To try and control costs, the cross sectional diameter (gage) of the wires is going down along with the sizes of the pins in the connectors and that is creating a whole new problem. Pin fit issues, and wires failing inside the insulation due to vibration and build issues are increasing in frequency. While there have been some improvements in onboard diagnostics, the complexity has likewise increased to a level that I haven't even begun to try and share here.
Right now you have a bunch of sensors throwing codes but they should be talking to each other so they aren't dumping so many into the scanner.
Let's break that down into the core fundamentals. The sensors don't throw codes. That's a distortion of how the technology works and when you start out with a faulty assumption like that you only succeed in getting further from understanding just what it really takes to be a technician who makes a living diagnosing and repairing the robots that we call cars.
Ideally the software should be able to figure out the part/module whatever that needs a whack with a hammer instead of dumping a bunch of codes into the tech's lap.
If something here needs to be whacked with a hammer its the idea you just tried to push.......
All that does is give the tech yet another trouble tree to work through and winds up costing everyone more money.
So you totally missed the fact that trouble trees are for people who don't know anything about the system they are trying to work on. When you have a technician who truly understands a given system, he/she doesn't need a trouble tree to do diagnostics.
The wires need to go away. The highest and best use for wiring in cars is for the windings in the electric motors.
Sensors throwing codes is shorthand, but essentially sensors monitor stuff and send signals. The module getting the signals matches them against the parameters and tells other stuff what to do. When the signals are fouled, a code is thrown. Multiple bad signals shouldn't mean 4 or 6 codes get thrown.
Every "real" factory manual I've seen if full of trouble trees or flow charts. Lots of software coding is a variation on the theme - if this, do that.
I suspect, Steve, that you might not be giving enough attention to the fact that under the hood of an automobile lies an environment far more hostile than the one your home computer deals with every day.
Sensors throwing codes is shorthand, but essentially sensors monitor stuff and send signals. The module getting the signals matches them against the parameters and tells other stuff what to do. When the signals are fouled, a code is thrown. Multiple bad signals shouldn't mean 4 or 6 codes get thrown.
There is no room for "short-hand" like that, if you don't know how it works then you don't know and shouldn't be pretending otherwise.
If there's nothing special about trouble trees, why are they in the factory manuals? You follow them all the time, even if they are in your head.
No, we don't follow trouble trees. There was all the detail you should ever need in yesterday's series of posts that explains why they fail to allow anyone to efficiently test and prove what is wrong. There is no real strategy in place when you follow a trouble tree. They don't teach someone to build the critical thinking skills that the job demands and I'll say it one more time. They are useless for an intermittent, or random failure because the problem has to be there 100% of the time for a trouble tree to work. So techs need to learn how to make the best use out of all of the tools that are available to them and from there create their own routines anyway.
The only thing that you are pushing is the same old attempt to minimize the talents and skills that are required to do the job and therefore the employee cost. That approach has been failing the consumer, the businesses, and the tradespeople alike.
Are you familiar with Deming? Here are some quotes associated to Deming. It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
Everything you did intellectually with your problem can be reduced to a flow chart and could be put into a program (the process). All that's currently lacking are the smart parts that dump the info into the scanner, without having to make wire tags or whatever.
Deming also said "We are here to make another world."
Everything you did intellectually with your problem can be reduced to a flow chart and could be put into a program (the process).
Someone must create the infinite number of flow charts, reflecting every single problem that can happen. This means problems must be imagined, then artificially created, in order to generate the flow chart before the problem has occurred for the first time in the field. This would require the OEM to have a team of full-timers whose sole job is to iteratively break everything in every new vehicle.
Sounds like something the Japanese would do. Never the Big 3 though LOL.
This means problems must be imagined, then artificially created,
Exactly and that is the trouble tree's main weakness. They are written by someone who sets the fault on a circuit that isn't even in the car when they are choosing the test points and documenting the test measurements that they acquire. That's why there is no consideration given for accessibility of many of the test points that are chosen and no real strategy in play.
That's why there is no consideration given for accessibility of many of the test points that are chosen and no real strategy in play.
The OEMs could direct these teams to work together, and POOF, the readily accessible car. There is no technical reason why the car is so inaccessible. I am sure that somewhere at the OEM is an engineer who sees this plain as day, and has argued for it, but has been voted down by the design committee.
I'll forgo my self-replicating part diatribe - bit afraid the AI in my desktop computer will electrify my keyboard and Taze me if I harp on that yet again.
When we do, they better not send engineers that write trouble trees for a living. They would be much better served sending techs that can think for themselves.
I've seen this Business Opportunity listed for a while now. One of the legacy problems for the trade was that wages were kept so low the people who really should be looking for a chance to grab something like this simply can't afford it. There are more shops in this position than I care to count.
"Trust me I'd love to put a new transmission in for you, but if VW Corporate tears the old one apart and doesn't claim it defective then we get paid nothing. I've already spent over 2 hours on this one and they'll only pay me for a half hours work." (link)
"Trust me I'd love to put a new transmission in for you, but if VW Corporate tears the old one apart and doesn't claim it defective then we get paid nothing. I've already spent over 2 hours on this one and they'll only pay me for a half hours work." (link)
As I've noted in other topics, these comments on VW warranty and service experiences make me so glad I didn't go with a Golf R. The local VW dealers have service departments that are anything but first rate and I do not need the aggravation.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
I've already spent over 2 hours on this one and they'll only pay me for a half hours work." (link)
When he finds out that he can make a better living doing much simpler work and never be faced with not being paid like that he will be yet another former technician.
The issues with the "arbitrage" purchased TDI cars is a bit concerning too. At least they were short term rides.
As bad as this customer service story is, it certainly isn't any worse than we've heard before from the likes of the Big 3.
If everyone boycotted companies that treated them poorly some argue there would be no companies left. I happen to think most people do in fact implement retribution due to long human memories, and what you have is people that'll never buy another "insert brand here." The problem for a particular company happens when you have more of those people inserting your brand over others inserting different brands in that category.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
Volvo for me. Totally irrational, but there you go.
What I find irrational is people that tell you to ignore your own personal anecdotal experience and listen to and purchase based upon their own personal anecdotal experience.
Example "You buy foreign! Traitor! You should buy Fords. Since 2000 I've had to do nothing but oil changes on all my Fords."
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
But isn't KIA proof positive that any brand is capable of redemption? Well OK maybe not Fiat.
With the Koreans I am more forgiving for the following reason:
I feel like they had a learning curve getting into the automobile business.
The Big 3 get less forgiveness because they've had many decades of prior experience and learning, yet they either refused to learn anything and change, or they deliberately deceived the public with their shoddy product and inflated prices. I believe the latter is more the case; deliberate malarkey.
I take my 90's lemon as a stab in the back by the engineers, designers, accountants, managers, and assembly workers responsible for every failure.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
Who knows? Maybe someday, in a brave new world of sunlit golden hills and cute furry animals, even FCA will get their cars out of the rankings ditch.
I guess someone always has to be at the bottom of the list though, right?
True that someone has to occupy the bottom of the list, but no one has more cars that score from 1 to 20 than Chrylser/Fiat. I love CR's new rankings that provide a number from 1-100, which is exact. The color coding is still similar to the dots, with 5 ranges (1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61-80, 81-100 all having distinct colors).
So it might be MORE OK if you are dead last but scoring 60+. Also, it is more OK to be last when you are not perennially in that spot.
'18 Porsche Macan Turbo, '16 Audi TTS, Wife's '19 VW Tiguan SEL 4-Motion
2014 Ford Focus 2.0l Manual. Customer reports the vehicle wont start (no crank) at times. When it acts up numerous warning lights are lit on the dash and the drivers information center in the middle of the dash is blank. When driving traction control lights and ABS lights will come on and go back out. When the vehicle is having trouble starting waiting for a bit often allows it to start but the power steering is then noted to be inoperative. When that happens shutting the car off and restarting usually restores full operation of all systems.
Pulling codes revealed the following. PCM. P1607, P05A1, U0121, U0422, U0100. ABS. U0140, U0100, C0040, U0001, U3003, U0126. RCM (airbag) B00A0, U0001, U0140, U0154, U0253, U0422. TCM No com. (Manual trans, not used) ORC (occupant classification) U0151, U0100 APIM U0140 (accessory/SYNC) Audio No Comm. (not used) BCM. U0001, P1934, U0422, U0121, U0131, U0151 FCM No Comm. (not used) CIM No Comm. (not used) DSIM No Comm. (not used) Drivers and Passengers door modules No Comm. (not used) HVAC No Comm. (Manual AC) IPC P1607, U0121, U0422, U0100 Parking Aid No Comm. (not used) Power Steering U0001, U0121,U0126, U0140, U0428 SAS (steering angle ) P0000, U0001
When the vehicle is presented all systems are working normally and only these historical codes are available. There are no TSB's or other product reports that are relevant and you have half an hour to try and figure this out. How would you use the codes as presented in order to narrow your focus on the most likely causes? Keep in mind that while some testing may reveal issues that need attention there is always going to be a line between "A problem" and "The problem". Also keep in mind there may well be more than one problem here.
I think first thing I'd do after a preliminary check of the battery, battery grounds and alternator connections (anything that might cause a temporary voltage drop), I would test the ground circuits for the PCM. Of course, I have no idea how to do that at the moment, jes' sayin'.
Comments
Direct inspection of the connectors is done both visually as well as with terminal pin tension tools.
The terminal at the PCM showed it to be oversized and that "could" result in poor pin fit. The terminal for the relay control circuit was also damaged and had the potential to randomly lose connection. The wire itself did need to be inspected for possible damage and corrosion.
Top row, 3rd cavity from the left. Zoom in and compare that terminal to the others
The tool inserted into the yellow wire from the relay to the PCM fit with no drag at all and had to be addressed. That was a chore all to itself as the age of the wires made the insulation hard and slightly swollen. The reassembly of the connector was extremely difficult and what should have taken a few minutes actually took four hours to accomplish. If a replacement pigtail would have been available, even used it would have been easier to just splice it in. As it worked out this time was simply given away as many shops and techs often do. In the end had this not been identified and dealt with it easily could have resulted in the car not being repaired completely.
Tag wires had to be installed that created accessible test points. The fuse block itself was suspect but wasn't up to this point specifically proven. Here is how the test connections were made.
Using these connections along with the ones at the PCM these measurements were collected.
This first one was as the problem was starting to occur.
The voltage drop was getting worse.
This one was also used earlier but showed the results when the engine finally stalled.
That confirmed the fuse block itself had failed and was the cause of every code except for the Canister Vent solenoid circuit. The customer's goal was to fix the stalling and did not authorize that diagnostic at this point. Wouldn't you know that that code did not reset after the replacement of the fuse block assembly? That only means there is no way to know if that is still a problem or not. Total bill, some $1200 less than previous estimates but still not cheap even with the time that was not billed for. It would be more than fair to question how a shop can do this and survive and the simple answer is that it cannot. If I had to earn a living running the shop like this we would fail.
The only variable is what exactly does "fail" mean. Go out of business? Entirely possible.
Not have resources that would allow for continuing education and investment in the tools to keep pace with technology? That's the most common result of failing to charge correctly for the work that top techs do. The shops and techs don't make the money that they should and therefore find it unjustifiable to continue trying. Yet the best shops, the best techs have kept trying and they learned the skills and routines like the ones that are represented in this series of posts. We did this while people claiming to be experts told consumers just what they wanted to hear while the experts themselves had no idea what it really took to be competent as a technician working on the kinds of electronics that have been present in the cars since the mid 80's.
Lately when I read forum responses for a consumers request for help it is both reassuring that no longer do they routinely get blind guesses to toss parts at a given problem like they were just a couple years ago and yet also troubling at just how far we still have to go for vehicle owners to recognize just what it takes to solve any given problem. I have hope that the next generation of technicians won't have to suffer through the same problems that we did and to that I have been investing my time to explain what the job is really like. That means both what is good about it as well as what is wrong. It's fun to solve problems like this Envoy and it's darn sure worth earning a good living doing and the techs deserve to be respected and recognized for accomplishing it.
But, how do you like what solving that car was like?
Again, something that should be "built in" from the ground up. Ideally the tech wouldn't have to do anything to get all the readouts.
First, what would that do to the production cost of the vehicles?
Second, adding additional wires increases the likelihood that something IS going to act up reducing quality.
Third, someone would still have to do the work of figuring out a failure and while having more accessible test points might help some of the time, there would always be failures that cannot be accounted for in advance. Anything that makes the ordinary easier makes the unordinary that much more difficult. The reason for that is there would be less need to develop the advanced skills and less practice using them. In a way, that's part of the trouble now. People try and insist that the work is easier than it really is and they base all of their other perceptions on that false assumption.
Meanwhile, all of the other perceptions about the trade also never took into account how much of the time the techs weren't being paid for the work that they were doing. In the dealership a tech fighting that harness issue would be lucky to be assigned some easy work (that he/she still had to do) that was somehow supposed to allow him/her to "make up" the time. In the shops the management is/was quite often as ignorant about the demands of the job as was everyone else is and to them struggling with that connector is the measurement of the techs skill and knowledge no matter what else he/she was capable of accomplishing. So that means, we don't charge for those challenges, never have. The reality that someone else would jump at the chance to use having done so against us and that could be more counter productive than just taking the first loss.
BTW. Most dealers would simply have the techs sell and install a new wiring harness to overcome the issue with it. At $1500 for the harness plus much simpler labor it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why.
Sensors throwing codes is shorthand, but essentially sensors monitor stuff and send signals. The module getting the signals matches them against the parameters and tells other stuff what to do. When the signals are fouled, a code is thrown. Multiple bad signals shouldn't mean 4 or 6 codes get thrown.
Every "real" factory manual I've seen if full of trouble trees or flow charts. Lots of software coding is a variation on the theme - if this, do that.
Another reason for the wires to go away.
If there's nothing special about trouble trees, why are they in the factory manuals? You follow them all the time, even if they are in your head.
The only thing that you are pushing is the same old attempt to minimize the talents and skills that are required to do the job and therefore the employee cost. That approach has been failing the consumer, the businesses, and the tradespeople alike.
Are you familiar with Deming?
Here are some quotes associated to Deming.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
Deming also said "We are here to make another world."
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Sounds like something the Japanese would do. Never the Big 3 though LOL.
I'll forgo my self-replicating part diatribe - bit afraid the AI in my desktop computer will electrify my keyboard and Taze me if I harp on that yet again.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
If everyone boycotted companies that treated them poorly some argue there would be no companies left. I happen to think most people do in fact implement retribution due to long human memories, and what you have is people that'll never buy another "insert brand here." The problem for a particular company happens when you have more of those people inserting your brand over others inserting different brands in that category.
Example "You buy foreign! Traitor! You should buy Fords. Since 2000 I've had to do nothing but oil changes on all my Fords."
I feel like they had a learning curve getting into the automobile business.
The Big 3 get less forgiveness because they've had many decades of prior experience and learning, yet they either refused to learn anything and change, or they deliberately deceived the public with their shoddy product and inflated prices. I believe the latter is more the case; deliberate malarkey.
I take my 90's lemon as a stab in the back by the engineers, designers, accountants, managers, and assembly workers responsible for every failure.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
I guess someone always has to be at the bottom of the list though, right?
So it might be MORE OK if you are dead last but scoring 60+. Also, it is more OK to be last when you are not perennially in that spot.
2014 Ford Focus 2.0l Manual.
Customer reports the vehicle wont start (no crank) at times. When it acts up numerous warning lights are lit on the dash and the drivers information center in the middle of the dash is blank. When driving traction control lights and ABS lights will come on and go back out. When the vehicle is having trouble starting waiting for a bit often allows it to start but the power steering is then noted to be inoperative. When that happens shutting the car off and restarting usually restores full operation of all systems.
Pulling codes revealed the following.
PCM. P1607, P05A1, U0121, U0422, U0100.
ABS. U0140, U0100, C0040, U0001, U3003, U0126.
RCM (airbag) B00A0, U0001, U0140, U0154, U0253, U0422.
TCM No com. (Manual trans, not used)
ORC (occupant classification) U0151, U0100
APIM U0140 (accessory/SYNC)
Audio No Comm. (not used)
BCM. U0001, P1934, U0422, U0121, U0131, U0151
FCM No Comm. (not used)
CIM No Comm. (not used)
DSIM No Comm. (not used)
Drivers and Passengers door modules No Comm. (not used)
HVAC No Comm. (Manual AC)
IPC P1607, U0121, U0422, U0100
Parking Aid No Comm. (not used)
Power Steering U0001, U0121,U0126, U0140, U0428
SAS (steering angle ) P0000, U0001
When the vehicle is presented all systems are working normally and only these historical codes are available. There are no TSB's or other product reports that are relevant and you have half an hour to try and figure this out. How would you use the codes as presented in order to narrow your focus on the most likely causes?
Keep in mind that while some testing may reveal issues that need attention there is always going to be a line between "A problem" and "The problem". Also keep in mind there may well be more than one problem here.