Inside the Mind of a Working Technician – Weblog
When a car comes in with a faulty daytime running light, warnings in the dash and a worried customer. And you see this.
But this was repaired a few months ago, she can’t understand why it’s happening again.
Well, this is why it’s happening again. One of the worst wiring repairs I’ve seen in quite a while.
I found these parts on my workshop floor a few of weeks ago. At first, I thought that a strut mount bearing assembly had failed and these were the remnants.
I haven’t changed out struts recently so it wasn’t from a reassembly gone wrong.
Continue ReadingLike a lot of people I drifted away from Twitter a while ago, I can’t get used to calling it X, but lately I’ve been checking in there again.
The fact is that the news and many other interesting things are still mostly happening there. This was confirmed with the NASA Artemis account in the last few days.
So I’m giving it another go and trying to ignore the noise.
Sometimes this can just be the sign of a bad oil cooler. We can replace the cooler flush the system and it’s job done.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the case here. We ended up doing an engine replacement in then end.
It’s very possible, almost inevitable, that in the near future people won’t even remember manual gearboxes existed in cars.
Most younger people I’ve done work for recently, enthusiasts aside, can’t even understand why anyone would want to shift gears themselves.
In the pursuit of finding a problem it can look a lot worse than it is.
The story of this diagnosis is a long drawn out saga that finally came to an end after many twists and turns.
COVID threw quite a few curve balls my way but it did not ultimately change how I do anything.
At the time some car manufacturer workshops were advertising that a pollen/cabin filter was now part of a service.
Wasn’t that always part of a service?
I haven’t had a chance to listen to everything in my podcast playlist recently, I’m slowly working through them. Today in the car I hit shuffle and the first one to play was Pizza Boxes by The Economics of Everyday Things podcast from Freakanomics.
It was so good I turned off shuffle and queued up another one from them, Car Washes, which was equally interesting.
Living in NE Ohio Im surrounded by car washes so it piqued my interest.
The other day I got a call from someone concerned their car was shaking violently when braking. They couldn’t figure out why it was happening and it was starting to worry them.
So let’s list a few things that could cause this, how it might happen and what to do when it does.
Continue ReadingIt’s not impossible until we fail. If we fail, we fail searching for greatness
Ferruccio Lamborghini
I think that my job as a mechanic has been one of the industries that has changed the most. Computer technology is the main reason why. The two have grown side by side.
When I first started over 30 years ago, your toolbox could fit in the trunk of a small car. Now you’d need a small truck just to move it. Back then, a basic set of sockets, screwdrivers, pliers, spanners, and a good hammer would get you through a surprising amount of work.
It’s the car that – almost – kicked my butt! A few years ago I had a VW Touareg in the workshop with a crank no-start complaint. It came in running, but not well. And it was pot luck if it would restart once switched off.
This Volkswagen came in with a lot of strange stuff going on. Don’t under estimate the power of a ground!
Pun intended.
Todays @WordPress.org prompt was about confidence. It ties into working on cars perfectly. Confidence will get you through the job, it’s about having faith in yourself and your ability.
Someone recently told me that clean cars get a better level of diagnosis and I laughed. But the comment stuck in my head and after a day or two of it rattling around in there it started to make sense to me.
If you’ve ever been stuck on a job and feel all avenues have been exhausted its not failure to ask someone for a second opinion. In fact it’s probably the best move you can make.
Making assumptions about important decisions in life is something very few if any will do. But when it comes to cars some technicians seem to take this approach in the hope of getting to a fix quicker.
Mostly this ends in frustration and added costs. But why is this happening?
