A couple links and some comments

One is a lawyer's site who is a lemon law expert, the other is an ex-mechanic.

http://jimroal.com/repair.html

http://www.normantaylor.com/mechanics_flat_rate_pay_system.html

Having made an entire career repairing cars when I look at what is said on those two sites I know that there is even more to the story than just what you see on them. Back when we had to fight through problems like that 92 Buick Park Avenue misfire, and we weren't paid diagnostic time, a tech like myself could spend several hours working to find out exactly what the problem was, only to then have the customer do what that guy did and say he was going to fix it himself. Even if I had gotten to repair it back then, the repair only paid for the replacement of the computer. The time spent cleaning and tightening the ground connections wouldn't have been paid for either.

Today, not only isn't there proof that any of the labor times in the books have been created by a legitimate time study, many of the labor times are nothing less than fraud. Something that really needs to be done is a real time study for specific repairs and then get the manufacturers to explain why the times that they quote are wrong. You want consumers to have quality repairs? Help to expose and fix all of the problems that the trade faces and progress will be made towards that goal.

On a recent repair that I did, a heater core in a Mazda B3000 (Ford Ranger) a warranty company was involved and they claimed that the labor guide quoted the whole repair at 7 hours. Meanwhile Mitchell showed 7.1 hours, and was very explicit that the time did not include the recovery, evacuation and recharge of the AC. When this was pointed out the warranty company representative tried to claim that the AC didn't need to be discharged to replace the heater core. Well, since he had Alldata I made him look up the procedure and then he saw that the evaporator core under the hood did need to be removed to access the bolts that held the plenum assembly to the firewall. He tried to go from one old flat rate cut the time trick to the next. In the end I wrote the entire exchange into the statements on the work order explaining to the customer why the bill was different than what the warranty company was going to pay. The customer accepted the fact that any help paying for the repair was still help.

Hi Everyone.

This week we had to troubleshoot an older Buick Park Avenue for a misfiring complaint. The owner had already been trying to fix this by changing some parts, primarily the plugs, wires, and he had swapped a couple of used ignition modules and coils in and out with no luck.

When I road tested the car, the misfire was quite apparent. The most important aspect of it was that I could hear some back-firing with the miss fire, and that's really important to notice. If the problem was one where a loss of fuel or compression was occurring, you don't get the kind of backfires that I could sense. Right from the front seat of the car, I knew this was a spark issue. The problem is this old Buick (1992 Park Avenue) doesn't have the sophisticated electronics that today's cars do so it was time to really dust off some of the skills.



 

Since I suspected that problem was ignition, and especially spark timing related, it made sense to see if the module was able to command the coils to fire. The first capture you will see shows that there is indeed a problem with the module turning the coils on and off consistently.

The red trace is the current flowing through the coils as controlled by the ignition module. The blue trace is the camshaft sensor signal, and the green trace is the crankshaft position sensor. Of particular importance is the voltage drop that is occurring on the ground for the cam and crank sensors which is provided by the ignition module. The tan trace at the bottom is the electronic spark timing output from the PCM. Notice how the faults in the coil current match up with the signal error from the ECM to the ignition coil. I remember when these cars were common and this misfire condition would occur. We didn't have four channel scopes, and we didn't have the low amps current probe like we do today. There was definitely a point back then when we could be forced to try a known good part, and this cars condition would have potentially been just one of those. At the same time I had to stay aware of the fact that the customer had already been throwing some used parts at this, and was I looking at the original failure, or one that he inadvertently added to the car.

The next capture helps narrow down the possibilities. I had to be sure if the ECM was making this mistake all on its own, or if it was still an input issue.

The voltage drop on the ground circuit is quite obvious and you can see it in both the crank sensor in  green and the cam sensor in blue.

We need to see the distributor reference command, the white wire from the module to the PCM during the misfire.

With all of the data collected, it was time to talk to the customer. At first he had us put together an estimate, but once we did that he sprung the old "I can buy that part cheaper" routine on us. The PCM was going to cost us almost $120 from the dealer, and he was claiming he could buy an aftermarket reman under $90. One of the problems is that there is still a chance that the ground voltage rise could be the cause for the PCM miscalculating the spark timing. It's also possible that the distributor reference signal could be corrupted at the PCM even tough it was OK at the module. There was going to be more work required to drop the PCM to make those measurements, and time had to be spent removing, cleaning and properly tightening the connections at the engine block and the coil mounting bracket. But the customer wouldn't approve any more time, all he wants to do right now is replace the PCM. I'd say he has a little better than a 60% chance that the car will be repaired with the computer replacement but I also know that without getting to make these last checks, there is still room for another discovery.

The really tough part about this is without the meat and potatoes part of this repair, the sale and replacement of the computer once it is confirmed to be defective we don't charge enough to make ends meets with diagnostics at this level. The pricing pressure we have always endured would have the cars not showing up at all if we truly priced that correctly, so the repairs have always been relied on to subsidize the diagnostic portion. It was neat to see the data from one of these and be able to save it for future reference and training. But if we can't earn a living doing it, we have to wonder why we even learned how to and equipped ourselves to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

World Class Techs and Some Other Random Thoughts

http://www.searchautoparts.com/motorage/news-service-repair/aaia-and-ase-recogni- ze-world-class-technicians?cid=95883

This article came out this week announcing the names of these techs who have been recognized for passing twenty-two ASE certification exams. It touched off a bit of a debate in the iATN about just how relevant the ASE and even the iATN are inside our trade and it parallels what you can see inside this very thread. Gimmestdtranny probably felt like I was roughing him up a bit for trying to solve that diagnostic on that Silverado, and it probably did come off that way when that really wasn't the intent. Roadburner has made a couple posts that I took as degrading to techs and when I questioned what his background was I felt that he thought that he was beyond such scrutiny. There is a double standard at play here, and it mirrors what it is like to be a professional technician. Gimmestdtranny clearly noticed it as he pointed out that he felt he had to defend me and I thank him for that, but it really shouldn't be that way.

I find people question my capabilities as a technician on a daily basis, I'm just supposed to accept and deal with it. It's always been that way and that of course isn't something that I personally deal with as good as I should. The funny thing is, the lack of being good at that kind of situation is the very thing that drives me to study all of the time, with the expectation that I should eventually rise above having to deal with that. You can call that one of those situations where my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength.

So where do I stand, next to those 1863 individuals through the years who have sat down to prove their knowledge. I have ten, all of the automotive A-1 through A-8 to be recognized as an ASE Master Tech. I have had those and stayed current with them since 1982. Plus I have the A9 Automotive Diesel, and the L1 advanced diagnostics. What they have that I don't is the Heavy Duty truck series of tests, and its not a matter of if I can pass them or not, I have no interest in trying to prove that I might be able to pass a test on work that I don't do. Does that make me less of a technician in regards to the work that I do? It shouldn't. But yet when we had the debates about the correct way to address even the dreaded evaporative system leak, suddenly it was like all of the experience and study and training that I have had no value when pitted against an opinion. I actually expect to see debates like that try and play the price angle and of course that happened here as if that really has anything to do with whether a leak is a frozen vent valve, or a loose gas cap. But seriously, it's like that everyday anyway and even when we are right, someone else is sure we are wrong and they don't even have to prove that they can change a flat tire prior to them proclaiming their competence.

There will be a price to be paid someday for the biases against the trade. We haven't been able to attract the people that you need us to have in order to replace our aging work force for a long time. Even if we could fix that part today, it would still be some twenty years for anyone who comes in now to really be competent to the level that the consumer demands.
For anyone that reads this, that last statement is meant to be a blast of reality.

If you believe you would make a competent technician and have faith and trust on your present capabilities, but have not and especially are not presently working as a technician. Then you really are about twenty years short of the hard work and study that it takes to be a master technician that the consumer demands. It's not about any successes that you may have under your belt, in this trade you are only judged by your latest failure, even if you then managed to overcome it. You can only be good at limiting the failures, with genuine shop experience over a long period of time.

I was talking to a salesperson from one of the parts chains. She was telling me her sales to shops are really down since last year and she had taken some time to try and find out why. Two guys had passed away, and of course their shops were now gone. Four more simply went out of business, and she had two others who were struggling to pay their bills and on the verge of failing even though they have cars all over their lots. This is a story that is being repeated in a lot of places. In a lot of the cases the biggest problem is the shop owners need to get some management training, and that would result in them getting their techs more training and they would then get more of those cars and their businesses moving. The problem is I think these guys are all just simply burning out and are quitting fighting. That's something that consumers should actually be worried about. There is no one to replace these people and even the ones who are struggling are a lot better than you probably think they are. JMHO

He Couldn't See At Night

While we were out of state, a fellow called to see if I could look at the headlights on his 97 Eldorado.  We always forward calls from the shop to my cell, that way I’m available to my customers anytime they need me. Someday I’ll let you know what that get’s to be like. He explained that he and several others have already looked at this trying to figure it out and they haven’t had any success at all. He bought and replaced all of the bulbs and that didn’t help and trying to follow the wiring schematic in his Haynes book he couldn’t make any sense of the circuit at all.
We do our diagnostics by selling blocks of time and I do any and all testing required in that period of time. In some cases we sell an hour, and if the car is diagnosed quickly we reduce the fee appropriately. In others we sell the hour and I occasionally go over that time if I am just about to arrive at the answer. We don’t charge extra when we go over like that, because we stick to the agreed price. There are times that we have to get more time if a problem turns out to be really complicated, you never really know what you are up against until you complete the diagnostics. The customer always has the choice about whether to stop or continue. The biggest mistake anyone ever makes is to assume they have seen a particular problem before, or assume that the problem someone else’s car had is the same since the symptom was similar, as in this case no headlights.
He didn’t want to agree to an hours’ worth of time, so we set the limit at half an hour and he wanted to wait for the car. Our shop doesn’t have a fancy waiting room, every dime is spent on the things we need for the cars. That means he can watch every step that is taken and in this case he got to see some things that he never knew ever went on.
The first step of any diagnosis is to confirm the symptom and I found the parking lights and the daytime running lights worked, but the headlights were inoperative, even with the flash to pass position of the dimmer switch. Had the high beams worked in that position, it would have helped me narrow down some of the testing. The next steps take place simultaneously, between attaching the TechII scan tool and printing out the schematic the real work was about to begin.
From the schematic;
There is a parking light relay that is controlled by the headlight switch, it sends power to the parking lights of course, and it also powers up the three relays in the under hood power distribution center.
The high beam, low beam relays are ground controlled by the body computer, the main headlight relay is ground controlled by the headlight switch, or the body computer or the instrument cluster, all three components can command that relay on. With the scan tool, confirming operation of the three relays was easy using the bi-directional commands. The high beam and low beam relays were being commanded as confirmed by the audible click they would make. The headlight relay was not turning on/off with the headlight switch or through the BCM with the scan tool.
At that point a little more explanation of the wiring is in order. All three relays get the same power to allow them to be turned on, but the ground circuits for them are all different. Since the headlight relay itself had three possible ways to be turned on, and it shared the same power to it that the other two did, that meant the problem was as easy as just a failed relay, or the wire from the under hood power center to the interior of the car had failed. This is a yellow wire and it goes to pin C of the headlight switch, but again there is a splice in the harness and it also goes to the instrument cluster as well as the BCM. So the next step of the diagnostics is to pull the relay and re-install it on top of a pedestal that allows testing connections. In doing that both powers to it were easily confirmed. The next step was to check the ground control circuit and that is easily done with an ordinary test light. When I touched the ground control circuit, the relay clicked and the headlights came on.
By this time the customer was standing right beside the car. I demonstrated  that with the test light commanding the headlight realy on, I could then control the high beam, and the low beam from both inside the car, and with the scan tool.  I explained that there was still more work to be done in the way of possibly locating the actual location of the damaged wire, or it could simply be bypassed.  However his agreed half an hour’s time was up and we knew that the yellow wire in the harness was the problem. 
The only thing left now was for him to agree to have me actually fix the problem or not.

A properly labeled bottle of oil

So we are on our way back home from the work that I did in Memphis. We stopped into a truck stop and took a short break from the road. While I was waiting for my wife I took a minute to check out some of the products on the shelf. The Kendall Liquid Titanium 5W30 bottle caught my eye, so I looked to see what it said on the back.

API SN, ILSAC GF5. OK, that's the current standards. Then it had Chrysler MS6395 (T). Now that's excellent, they specified the exact rating that they met and it is the newest Chrysler specification. They had the Ford WSS M2930-B. Then they showed "GM 4718M (obsolete)". I put the GM spec in quotations here because they are open about the fact that the specification is no longer in effect by listing it as obsolete. However, the fact that it meets the Chrysler MS6395 "T" actually means it really does exceed that obsolete GM spec. But at the same time, it did not say dexos1 anywhere on the bottle. There was nothing on that stores shelf that had the dexos1 label on the front of the bottle. There were other products that met the API 5W30 and they weren't even all SN.

If a GM vehicle owner that requires dexos1 had to add oil, that Kendall was the best choice, especially since it meets the newest Chrysler spec. But they made it very clear that it isn't approved for the dexos1 specification. So this morning I checked and guess what, there is a brand new list for dexos licensed products. (Feb 20th 2013) Kendall does not have one. Now the next time you are out at the store, compare what you see on the back of their bottle, to what you find on other products.

http://www.gmdexos.com/licensed brands/dexos1licensedbrands.html

When consumers, shops, and techs understand how to choose the correct products for given cars, they will find the correct products on the store shelves.

BTW, there were no products suitable for any of the European vehicles on that store's shelf

Oil Myths

There is so much to talk about when it comes to engine oil. Consumer advocates are constantly trying to tell vehicle owners how to take care of their cars. Along the way some heard that you cannot tell whether its time to change your oil by just looking at it. It didn't take long at all for them to assume that just because oil is dark, it doesn't mean that it needs to be replaced, the problem is they didn't figure for the opposite condition. Just because an oil isn't dark, it doesn't mean that it is safe to continue to run in your engine.

You will see recommendations that advise replace your oil at least once a year if your maintenance reminder system doesn't command a service. Here is a picture of my dipstick with some of the engine oil from my 2007 Mustang GT.

That oil has 4800 miles on it, and was put into the engine November 9th 2011. The car does go into storage each winter. We had the chance to take a trip with it the last week of February 2013, so I knew it needed replaced. That oil was just short of sixteen months and needed to be replaced. This just goes to show, you can't tell if it needs serviced by just looking at it.

Diplomacy isn't my strongsuit

Well this should be interesting. I've been approached by some members of the dealers association to assist them in getting more training programs running in the secondary schools again. They also want my input on exactly what the curriculum should concentrate on. Yea I can do that, but there is a problem. Why should I do that? A couple of posts ago the NVLD (natural vapor leak detection) module was mentioned as a likely cause for the hard to fill fuel tank on the Fiesta. The labor time is .4hrs under warranty. If you really understand a technicians job, that .4 is to get the repair order from the service writer, and find the car. Pull it into the shop and connect the scan tool to retrieve the trouble code and start the diagnostics. The next step is to check the TSB's and then if one is found as mentioned earlier, follow the steps as outlined. Now the tech needs to go to the parts department, (wait his/her turn) and get a new NVLD which they hopefully have in stock, and then replace the part as described. Now the codes get cleared a quick self test is run to make sure no problems occurred as a result of doing the repair, check for any fingerprints/grease marks and park the vehicle back outside. All for a whopping .4hr.

If you have done this a few times, and you don't actually test anything it's likely that you can come close to that time, (.4hrs) but there is no room for any surprises at any point in the exercise. It's pull the code, and slam the part and run to get the next ticket. That is how "flat rate" works. The tech gets paid by the labor time billed. This same repair if it is customer pay would likely have the diagnostic time alone be .5 to .7 hrs and the labor to replace the NVLD is .7. That's a problem because the kids that we need to attract to the trade today, who are smart enough to work on these "robots in the driveway" are also smart enough to know that isn't a fair pay system. You can't pay someone .4 on one car to replace the NVLD, and then turn around and get paid 1.2 on another and call it "flat". That just doesn't pass the sniff test.

What's worse is it encourages a sloppy routine, in fact it rewards it so long as everything goes perfect while it is ready to duly punish the technicians at the first sign of a flaw for any reason .

I often refer back to the NBC sting operation that Mr Reed of Edmunds was involved in. They "exposed" dealer employee's over selling maintanence items. NBC did a second story on that reporting about how it was just dishonest employee's who were no longer employed at the dealerships that got caught. Their intent at that point was to exonerate the dealers from any wrong doing, and that is a load of bull IMO. If the service manager/dispatcher feeds warranty job after warranty job to a given tech then he/she will end up not producing the number of hours that the dealer demands of them and they would lose their job, even though they may be a talented, hard working technician simply by how the numbers look on a spreadsheet. If that same tech gives into the pressure and starts selling the maintenance items, then their productivity rises without them working as hard and they make more money and their job is secure too because now they are producing $$$$. They manipulate the techs into selling and then abandon them if anyone raises a question about it, and that is what NBC actually exposed.

I can see how this is going to go because when I get in front of that room of dealers, one of the first things that I am going to talk about is what I just wrote right here and then I'm going to ask them a few questions and to make a list for me.

One of the questions will be; Would you want your son/daughter to become a technician in your shop? Yes or No

The next question would be would you want your son or daughter to be a technician in someone else's shop? Yes or No.

The next one will likely have some of them wanting to head for the door.

List the reasons why you would, or would not want your son or daughter working as a technician in your shop.

Now list the reasons you would or would not want them working as a tech in someone else's

Think about this, if they wouldn't want their own kids to become techs, why should anyone else? This has been the problem that has been getting swept under the rug for decades and now it's really come back to haunt them. This is a problem that has grown under their watch, its a measure of how poorly they have managed the service and repair side of the operation.

They have to establish a plan to make the job become one that they would want their kids to have, if their kids would want to chose to. Anything short of that and we aren't going to get anywhere, and that's a consumer issue. Before I can commit to helping attract anyone else's kids to this trade for them, it has to become a trade worth entering. As the title says, diplomacy isn't my strong suit. I'll have all of the ugly details laid right out there and they will have to address them up front with a clear plan or I'll be more inclined to stand in their way instead of trying to help them. Hmmm, looks like I already started doing just that