Gil_J
11-07-2016, 04:29 PM
Where have all of our mechanics gone? I think the computer driven diagnostics pendulum has swung too far into the technology side of mechanical repairs.
It’s no surprise mechanics had to augment their skills to cope with the wide variety of electronic controls that make or break the operation of most modern over the road engines. Initially and for the most part this has been a welcome change. Diagnostic systems have advanced to the point of telling a mechanic what has to be replaced. With few exceptions the mechanic doesn’t have to be a troubleshooter any longer to be successful.
The down side of the pendulum swing is that few mechanics have furthered or even retained their skills that gave them the ability to apply logic to a problem that couldn’t be solved by computers or to question the computer system’s diagnostics. Instead, and I’ve seen this numerous times in recent months, mechanics are throwing parts at problems in hopes of a fix.
I’ve overheard Volvo mechanics saying, “Well that didn’t do it, let’s try this”. I had a valve body fail in my Explorer twice in 14,000. The likelihood of that is nearly zero. Still, the second failure included replacing the valve body and 4 other major parts. Of course, I was expected to pay for both repairs even though the first repair was probably incomplete. Both of these examples were with systems with computerized diagnostics. On the other side of technology driven repairs, I recently spent time at two different Detroit shops in Canada. The first misdiagnosed the problem. Thankfully, they didn’t have the time to do the repair because the second shop said the first diagnoses were wrong. The second shop spent hours ruling out problems that they may have heard of once or twice over the last umpteen years at the cost of far too many labor hours. In this case, technicians may have become too dependent on computer driven diagnostics. They had the symptoms, but just couldn’t arrive at a logical path to problem isolation. Another case comes to mind where misdiagnosis of a Series 60 problem came with a recommendation for an in frame rebuild. In that case, they simply didn’t fully analyze the other potential problems that could have given the same symptoms. That fix should not have taken more than an hour.
It sure helps when you have enough expertise yourself to help drive the troubleshooting effort or at least know when their path is not the most direct.
Make no mistake; there are some really good mechanics out there. The problem is figuring out which ones are the good ones. If you always go to the same shop you probably have figured that out. But what do you do when the problem happens on the road?
It’s no surprise mechanics had to augment their skills to cope with the wide variety of electronic controls that make or break the operation of most modern over the road engines. Initially and for the most part this has been a welcome change. Diagnostic systems have advanced to the point of telling a mechanic what has to be replaced. With few exceptions the mechanic doesn’t have to be a troubleshooter any longer to be successful.
The down side of the pendulum swing is that few mechanics have furthered or even retained their skills that gave them the ability to apply logic to a problem that couldn’t be solved by computers or to question the computer system’s diagnostics. Instead, and I’ve seen this numerous times in recent months, mechanics are throwing parts at problems in hopes of a fix.
I’ve overheard Volvo mechanics saying, “Well that didn’t do it, let’s try this”. I had a valve body fail in my Explorer twice in 14,000. The likelihood of that is nearly zero. Still, the second failure included replacing the valve body and 4 other major parts. Of course, I was expected to pay for both repairs even though the first repair was probably incomplete. Both of these examples were with systems with computerized diagnostics. On the other side of technology driven repairs, I recently spent time at two different Detroit shops in Canada. The first misdiagnosed the problem. Thankfully, they didn’t have the time to do the repair because the second shop said the first diagnoses were wrong. The second shop spent hours ruling out problems that they may have heard of once or twice over the last umpteen years at the cost of far too many labor hours. In this case, technicians may have become too dependent on computer driven diagnostics. They had the symptoms, but just couldn’t arrive at a logical path to problem isolation. Another case comes to mind where misdiagnosis of a Series 60 problem came with a recommendation for an in frame rebuild. In that case, they simply didn’t fully analyze the other potential problems that could have given the same symptoms. That fix should not have taken more than an hour.
It sure helps when you have enough expertise yourself to help drive the troubleshooting effort or at least know when their path is not the most direct.
Make no mistake; there are some really good mechanics out there. The problem is figuring out which ones are the good ones. If you always go to the same shop you probably have figured that out. But what do you do when the problem happens on the road?