220: JC Diagnostics

Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources and hear from experts in the automotive field.

We have got Auto Rescue Tools and Isaac Rodel as a sponsor for this podcast.

Hey guys, if you're looking for programming laptops, you want the laptop set up, ready to go for programming control modules on vehicles.

You need key cutting equipment.

You need diagnostic tools.

Isaac is your guy, has all that stuff available for purchase and the support that he offers along with the purchase has been outstanding.

I bought some stuff from him in the past.

I got my dolphin key cutting tool from him several years back and again the support has been phenomenal.

Help me out along the way with anything additional I needed to make it work for me, so make sure to check that out as well.

Again, that's autorescuetoolscom.

The link will be in the show notes.

This episode is brought to you by L1 Automotive Training and Keith Perkins.

If you're looking for education on module programming, J2534, eProm work, key and immobilizer, electrical diagnostics or drivability diagnostics, Keith has a website, L1Trainingcom, that's got over 60 hours of training videos on all those subjects and more.

When I first started out doing mobile, I utilized Keith's videos on module programming and J2534 in order to get my head wrapped around what I would need for the tooling, the computers, the software setups, what kind of obstacles I would be up against when I'm out there programming modules on cars.

And it was a huge benefit to me and I continue to use the training videos that he has on his website.

So I strongly recommend checking out L1Trainingcom.

Hey, what's going on?

Automotive World.

Welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

My name is Sean Tipping and I'll be your host once again for today's episode.

Joining me on the show today is John Curtis of JC Diagnostics down in Texas.

I'm talking to all the Texas mobile guys recently.

Jc reached out to me recently, wanted to be on the show.

We're going to talk about how he got where he is doing mobile work, what he was doing prior to that, what drew him towards this line of work, and he will share a number of vehicles and case studies with us and we'll talk all about the fun stuff that we run into out there in the auto world.

So this was great to get to meet him.

Talk to him for a while.

I know you'll enjoy it as well, so let's jump in.

All right, sweet we are live.

Well, let's start with this.

So it's JC.

What's that stand for?

John Curtis Okay.

I was looking, I was like I'm not sure if I know what his actual name is.

I just saw JC and the JC Diagnostics so I was like okay, so now I know.

Yeah, so you know that's actually funny.

So I actually came out here and I intended on starting a woodworking business and doing cabinetry and it was John Curtis Woodworks and came out here and kind of reverted to what I, you know, was comfortable with and I didn't have a full shop space and I was trying to think of a business name and I was like, oh, JC Mobile Diagnostics.

And where are you at?

You're down in Texas.

Yeah, I'm in Texas, cedar Park, but pretty much Austin, texas, so if anybody asks, is Austin.

Okay, it seems like there's all of the mobile guys are down in Texas.

I was going through a list in my head this evening.

There's Zach Don.

I just talked to Ollie Malcolm and I know that I know there's a couple others too.

I mean, obviously it's a big state, right, there's lots of ground to cover, but everybody's down there.

Yeah, definitely so.

There's Don Zach Ben Malcolm.

Oh Ben yeah.

Oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank.

Oh, Brian Good which he's got a shop, but he's definitely in the immediate network.

Okay, well, that's cool to have so many strong players in one area.

Do you guys all know each other?

Yeah, keep in contact, or what?

Yeah.

So we actually have kind of one of those Facebook chats where it's just us five, and then we also have another Texas chat where it's a few more of us and actually quite a few more of us.

But yeah, now we're chatting all the time.

Zach and Malcolm are actually, I want to say, 30, 40 minutes out for me.

So I honestly, some situations I actually end up calling one of them and just because I might be too busy or sometimes it's also a business decision, in some cases I will start a diagnosis on a car and I have a bunch of, I guess, gravy work or programming and whatnot.

I kind of spend too much time on one car.

I was like, okay, I got to see if anybody else is available to look at it.

Just because it's, I got to keep the ballroom.

Yep, I get it, man, I've been there too.

It's like I could knock out three GM transmissions or I could trace this intermittent Vannos code on a Mini Cooper and maybe not end up with any solid answers.

What is the business decision?

I mean, that's clear.

What I should do is go knock out those 6L80s and yeah, that's kind of nice to have somebody to call in or take work off your plate or whatever it might be.

Just have some backup or hey, you're out of town, or something like that.

I was just on.

I went on vacation for the first time since before COVID I hadn't taken a legit vacation out of town flying somewhere besides going to Vision or AST or something in like three years and luckily now I've got a couple guys working for me so I was able to kind of fall back on that.

But man, before that, like I'd leave town and the worst is piling up and piling up and like it's not even worth it to go anywhere because I'm just slammed the whole next week.

But it was actually really nice coming back to a reasonable amount of workload this week when I got back in town.

It was really nice, yeah yeah, for sure, you know, being a business owner man, that's one of those things where it's it just weighs differently on you, yeah yeah, you can't turn it off quite the same when you're getting phone calls and turning down work, and that's a bummer for sure.

But yeah, like I said, having some people to support me Steve and Mike it was absolutely awesome.

So I was able to actually kind of relax and enjoy myself, which was cool.

I don't do that too often.

Yeah, yeah, awesome, where'd you go?

Gulf Shores of Alabama.

I'd never been there, but a couple of friends of mine had a.

They were having their wedding down there and they rented this like big 10 bedroom house on the beach and it's right there on Gulf of Mexico.

You know White Sand Beach and it was really cool.

I I tried surfing for the first time ever and I was terrible.

I was awful at it.

But there was a local surf shop.

They were.

They give lessons and the guy was super nice and really helpful and it was.

It was a blast, though there was these jellyfish floating around in the water and I had never been that close to him before.

There was one that was like as big as the dinner plate.

I asked the guy like, did they, did they sting you?

Like what happens if it like if I fall on the thing or it gets on my leg or something?

He's like ah, it just feels like a lot of mosquito bites all at once.

I'm like, uh, okay, I'll just, I'll still clear those things, yeah, yeah.

So, um, yeah, I'm actually from California, but uh, then I was here in Texas for a little bit and we actually took a vacation.

I haven't taken a real vacation, man, but uh, you go like take a little three day mini vacation over the week and uh, head out to the Gulf.

And uh, out here in South Padre Island, and uh, my son, he's oh, he was what six at the time.

And uh, no, he was five.

And uh, the one thing that we didn't tell him is don't touch anything that you, you don't know what it is.

And uh so.

So we're sitting in our tent under the beach, uh, on the beach under the tent, and uh, man, I see him poking something and I'm just like okay, I get up and I go to look and he's poking the top of a jellyfish.

Luckily it was the top of the jellyfish, so he didn't get stung, but uh, yeah.

So, uh, yeah, parenting, uh got a little parenting lesson there myself, like, okay, well, I got to keep in mind, like have these conversations, but uh, yeah, that does you know fun?

And uh, it's one of those things too, like sitting there, man I, and back to being the business owner here I was getting blown up with phone calls and uh, hey, it was.

It's one of those things, man, like I didn't shut off my phone.

I was pretty new in the business and uh, so I kept it going and I was just telling everybody, hey, I'm not in town, I'll take care of you when I get back.

And uh, actually ended up getting a call from the shop.

Um, that, basically, is the reason why I bought my uh, my Voss 6154A.

Um, just because it was like, okay, I've gotten enough calls.

And uh it, how do you say?

It is just, you're losing money at a certain time.

Yeah, you turned enough of it away and you're like okay, well, now it would have made sense for me to buy that tool now.

Yep, yep, for sure, and I'm especially like Volkswagen and Otis, that's uh very affordable.

Well it is.

You know it's a bit of a process for anybody who hasn't like signed up for Otis, installed Otis, like um, you can do that.

You can probably figure out any of the manufacturers, but once you have it, like I would never go back to not having Otis for Volkswagen Audi.

Um, the way it honestly walks you like, holds your hand through so many processes.

I'm just like hitting buttons.

I'm like, oh, okay, cool, it's doing stuff.

Oh, the car's fixed Cool, yeah, and I'm coming from.

Before that I was just trying to do like coding with Otel or stuff like that and it just being just miserable.

This, it never worked right.

There was always issues and they were.

It was a couple of brands that I really struggled with.

Uh, but man, it is for for doing the programming stuff that I do.

But even diagnostics as as lights out, get it.

If you have any, any hesitation and you see Volkswagen Audi's just fricking, get the thing.

Yeah, yeah, it's you know.

They took out the the wiring diagram.

Yeah, it was a bummer.

But I think they just brought back.

What did they bring?

back.

There was something.

They got what it was.

PR codes.

Oh, okay, okay.

So they just brought back PR codes.

But you know the the just having the OEM toll there.

Like I deal with a few body shops.

I don't have a whole lot of body shops just because ProTech is absolutely everywhere here.

Well, you got ProTech L-Attack and, I think, all clear diagnostics, but the body shops that I do deal with, the majority of what I end up seeing there is Volkswagen, audi stuff and then I guess, a lot of Nissan, but usually airbag stuff.

The way that Otis has you deal with the airbag stuff is, I mean, it's airbag diagnostics, I guess.

But it'll give you, you know, specific values and everything and it's just oh, test here, do this, do that.

And it really does hold your hand through the whole process.

Right.

Right, not the most friendly user interface, I would say, but once you kind of get a feel for it and you can navigate it a little bit, it's it's not bad.

Honestly, I like I enjoy having it as far as a factory scan tool set up.

And, yeah, I was able to snag one of those 6150 4s because I was using my iScan with the IMS 2 function prior to that.

But I had some issues with version 11.

It wasn't, I don't actually just stopped working, if I remember correctly, because there was.

I had the KARDAK first.

When I very first got Otis, I was using the KARDAK and it wouldn't do the key cycles, so I was limited on some stuff.

And then I got the IMS 2 version with iScan, which emulates the, the factory tool.

But then when 11 came out, just like a few months later, that stops working.

I think they have that straightened out now, but that's when I was, and actually Ali helped me out.

He was able to connect me with the guy who was selling them, and so that was awesome to get one of those things.

But yeah, you know it's just, I have definitely, and still do struggle with European stuff, but having that factory setup is the way to go.

This is my next one.

I've been dragging my feet on it and I just haven't.

I haven't gotten around to it, but that's my.

That's my next one I'm getting set up with.

Yeah, yeah.

So you're not.

You don't have an icon.

So I have a cloned icon and I wanted to buy a legit one.

Couldn't find one at the time.

I was like ready to drop the money, like they just weren't available, so I bought this cloned one.

Everybody says, hey, this, those clone ones will actually work just fine with with the factory.

It's a.

I haven't tried that, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I I just gotta get in this.

Hey, tell me if I'm wrong, but based on whatever tells me is, I want to get my just a laptop setup for that, and it's my BMW laptop, and so I gotta, I gotta do that, and I think that's what I've been dragging on my feet on recently.

Yeah, yeah.

So with BMW, I know a lot of people from what I heard before I actually started doing them is oh, they take you know an insane amount of time eight hours, whatever and I mean they.

They typically run you know 55 minutes, maybe an hour and 15 hour and 20 minutes.

And the ones that you got to look out for is the F chassis up to like 2017.

Any F chassis up to 2017, those head units, like you'll get everything going, everything's completely fine.

Just make sure you buckle on the driver's side seat belt, otherwise the car go to sleep and then you either end up breaking the FIM or the the oh gosh, BDC.

Okay.

So, so just if you're programming a BMW, make sure you got that driver's side seat belt buckle in before you start.

Yeah.

Because you don't want that car to time out on you and go to sleep.

And then next thing you know you can't shut off the ignition and you're basically dead in the water.

And then, once you disconnect the battery, well, you can't ignition it on which there's some pretty easy methods to recover on, but you know that's.

That's a whole different discussion.

Right If you just buckle in.

If you buckle in, it's save me some heading.

Buckle up for BMW.

I like that.

Yeah, I've.

I've heard from a couple of different people those head units breaking during a, as far as I understand, a 100% legit programming operation.

Right, they got the factory tool, they got the factory program, they've got a voltage maintainer, they're connected, they're hardwired to the internet, all that good stuff, and it still just goes to shit.

So, yeah, and my, I've asked multiple people this and everybody tells me you can't do this.

But I was like, why don't you just unplug it or pull the fuse on that module before you start?

And so just, maybe would it just skip over that?

But everybody says no, it doesn't work that way.

So I don't know.

You know, that is actually something that I've considered doing, but I honestly didn't know if it would work and, honestly, I haven't had the balls to try it.

Right.

It's one of those things that's like what'll happen if I do that?

And I don't know If I, if I end up in that situation, I'm probably the guy that'll give that a try.

So if it works, I'll let you know.

Yeah, yeah, for sure Fuck around Yep, I find myself in that place quite often actually, and as I've done this longer and longer, I'm a little bit more brave when it comes to that stuff.

I'm like, well, you know, this module is probably only like 500 bucks, so let's, let's give it a try.

I actually just did a.

It was on a.

What year was that?

2017?

X3, I think is the yeah, 17 X3,.

I have a little touch display screen that's up on the dash, I believe that is.

I believe that is the head unit for that particular vehicle.

The screen was out and I was able to source the screen just the screen itself for 70 bucks plus some shipping, took the thing apart.

Incredibly easy to take this thing apart, like they pull it out of the dash and then you take it apart, swap out the screen, put it back together.

It worked perfectly fine, and so that was that was.

I was like okay, so I can start looking for these sorts of things and just a little extra.

You know a service that I can offer shops when stuff like that happens.

I ended up doing a Camry for that same shop that had a touch screen issue and, as you do some Google searching, you can find screens for most of these things pretty easy, so that was kind of cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's cool and you know, being able to offer services like that definitely adds value to the shop and brings value to our business, helps them help their customer and, honestly, it's one of the things that sets us apart.

Yeah, I'm always looking for something to add on to what I do, not in the mindset of just like grabbing everything possible I can and never really getting good at one thing.

But you know, our industry is always shifting and there's always other players coming in and, like you said, like there's, there's other big box companies coming for the kinds of work that we do and there's remote programming coming for a lot of what we do, right, so I just don't want to have all my eggs in one basket.

I want to be able to pivot.

I want to have other, you know, income streams and skill sets that can bring those in.

So I'm always just kind of like feeling out like okay, where else could I provide a service?

What else could I do for shops out there?

What's the need, what's the broken thing that people are running up against in their day to day?

And so if I can, if I can pick some of that stuff out and get ahead of it, that's kind of my goal.

And that was just one thing.

I'm not going to make a business off of that, but I mean it was easy, I would do.

I would do that again, for sure.

Yeah for sure.

So you know, speaking of switching out that display screen, I haven't actually worked with this one shop in a while, but it's a commercial shop Actually I'm not sure if I can say the name on here but so they ended up calling me.

Their technician ended up breaking the plastic on a Fiat cluster, a Fiat 500.

And so they got a replacement one.

And I was like okay, like do you want me to do the mileage correction?

Because we can.

We could get the odometer to stop flashing, but we're still not going to have to correct mileage, we're not going to have this like.

But what do we want to do here?

They're just like whatever, just, we just need to get this squared away for the customer.

So I ended up grabbing it, running home, realize that there's only a couple of clips holding on the front plastic.

Just pop that off real quick.

It was maybe a five minute job.

Pop on the cover real quick, went back installed and it was good to go.

Nice, Nice.

Yeah, some of the stuff's not as bad as you think.

You get into it Like, oh well, that was easy.

I was like, yeah, like that.

So I've got like what do you call it?

The ACDP.

Sure and Fantastic tool.

So, yeah, no, for sure, for sure.

So one of my shops they actually I've only been working with this shop for about two and a half to three months Honestly, one of the only valuable customers that I got from a marketing campaign that I did.

But you know, this one particular shop is feeding me all kinds of oddball work, to say the least, doing all kinds of like clusters, mileage corrections.

They gave me a what was it?

A EIS for a 2014 Mercedes, and they're like, well, the dealer diagnosis said it needed a steering lock, and then they said it needed an EIS, and so I guess they sold the steering lock, but honestly, I'm not too sure what work was actually completed on this thing, because a car is actually an ongoing project and I have an emulator on its way.

Anyway, they gave me a W207 EIS and it's used, and I was like, well, I'm not quite sure if I can make this one happen.

I know I've cloned other EISs, but I just haven't done this one and it doesn't look like any towing that I have covers it exactly.

So I ended up finding out a solution and going over to the vehicle with everything ready to go and they plug in the original EIS and they turn the key and it recognizes the key position.

Okay.

And it lights up.

And right away, I'm just like yeah, yeah, so right away.

I'm just like we're going to be in the same position here yeah.

So, so, anyway, they did that and I ended up swapping it out and, you know, adding the key, because that's that's what I was there to do, and the other part of the job had to be activated.

When it's on the car and you know, after that is just like hey, it's hard to break the news to you, but you know we did what we were asked and the car is not fixed.

But, but you know they threw that one at me and then I've gotten to do a couple of the eight speed ZS on the Pricer Dogs Jeep Ram variety, and that's apparently well, according to this shop, they are having a hard time getting them brand new.

Yeah, I've run in the same thing with those eight speed transmissions in the like trucks and Durango's and stuff like that where shops are having a heck of a time and so it's weird.

On those I've actually run into a couple where the shop had already installed the used one and really under no other anything needed to happen and I was able to make it work without really doing well, not doing any cloning really, and just some scan tool functions and it worked.

But then the complete opposite to I've seen them where you have to clone it.

That's the only way that it's going to work.

And I don't know, I'm sure there's applications where it just seems to matter more than others, or maybe it's how different the software and the transmission is from one to another.

That might be the case in some of them.

But yeah, those the eight speeds you're talking about, is that strictly like Mopar Chrysler stuff or have you done any of the other ones like the?

I think there's eight speeds in the BMWs too.

So the eight speeds in the BMWs.

I've actually been doing those for a while but I haven't been cloning Okay.

So there is, I've got the Altel IAM 508 and for the eight speeds it works really well on the F chassis to reset the EGS Sure.

Sure, you transfer over the coating when you do that too.

Yeah, okay, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've only done one of those, but I did the same thing.

I used the Altel and was able to transfer that over, so that worked out pretty well.

That was another one where the shop had no clue and they called me and they're like, hey, this thing won't go into gear.

I'm like, yeah, no, it's a huge transmission.

Can you do anything?

I'm like, well, I can, but hey, next time maybe give me a ring before you do this massive job and you know, or trying to deliver it to the customer.

Yeah, yeah, being able to provide those types of solutions to shops and to customers is huge.

That's, I think, where it sets you apart, because I don't know, I don't think you're going to find a whole lot of like big box places that are going to be doing that sort of thing.

But it takes some work, right.

It takes tooling and it takes to understanding, right.

So for somebody listening to you talk about that Mercedes and you rattle off like two or three different acronyms and they're like I don't even know what those components are, right, like you have to do your homework just to figure out what components are involved and then what tools I need, and then how do I do it and what's required, and it's a lot.

I did one of those steering lock went through that on a couple different Mercedes recently actually, and the first one I did is like it was a night's worth of reading to kind of get my head wrapped around everything that I needed to be aware of what was going on, what the issue was, what the options are to fix it, how to fix it, the order of programming, all that stuff.

It's a ton of work, but you charge properly for it too, right?

Number one you got that Mercedes logo on the front, so that just kind of brings the price up all on its own.

But then it's a big job, man, and, like I just described, it's a lot of legwork to get to that point and tooling and understanding.

So it's good work once you figure out how to do it.

You know one of the things that I try to focus on, but also on the other side of things, like there's quite a few guys and I actually see more and more people doing e-prom and cloning out here the majority of them tend to do like airbag stuff.

Sure, they can have that.

Yeah, yeah, no for sure.

That is nothing I want to get involved in, actually just thinking about this right now.

So I started a miller campaign to mill shark back in oh gosh, june or July, and no, no, no me.

So, in around for like three months or 10 weeks or something like that, milled out, you know, 5000 millers to 1500 shots and the amount of used car lots that call it's wild.

Yeah, that's my number one, the people that have asked me about crash resets on those modules, and so when I first started getting into this e-prom stuff, I did a couple of them for some friends.

You know texts that I know and they're like, yeah, I'm just I bought this vehicle and blah, blah, blah, and so I'm like, all right, I just want to see if I can do it Right.

And I did it and I just felt wrong about it, you know, because the odds of that thing working are pretty likely.

Right, it's, you're just resetting data, but what if it doesn't?

And as far as like a business side of things, I have no interest in getting involved with that at all.

Plus plus, here's the other thing If you go on eBay or whatever and you find these people offering the services online, they're doing it for like pennies on the dollar, like I saw like $40, $50 for this reset.

And so I'll tell people I'm like it's not even worth me considering doing it for that dollar amount.

Just mail it to those people.

They can take on the liability.

I'm sure they're.

I'm sure they won't at all.

It'll be on the person who actually is, you know, putting it in the car.

But no, thank you, I have no interest in that.

But yeah, use car lots for sure, they always want that.

Let's get that use crash mod or that, that crash module that was in there to be reset and have that crash data wiped out of there.

There's not something I want to get involved in, put myself at risk there and there's just so much more money to be made.

Exactly, exactly.

There's so much more liability free, or a lot less liability tied to more lucrative work, so they can, they can have those, yeah, yeah for sure.

Well, we probably should have started with this.

I'm pretty good at just like getting into the conversation and then going back to the beginning.

So you mentioned earlier he started with woodworking, and then how did you get from that to doing mobile programming and diagnostics?

Yeah.

So okay, I just had that interesting cars for a really really long time kind of something I wanted to do but never actually considered it professionally.

I've just always had this thing where I've had to know how things work and since I was a child, getting into computer programming not, you know, module programming, but actual writing code and stuff like that playing around figuring out just all kinds of different things and doing a lot of things for fun, hacking just see if I can, you know, remote into a computer honestly, just the

curious side of me and going from there.

And then I ended up doing investigations.

I left to investigate Well, I was lost.

Prevention kind of worked my way through the chain, started doing investigations and then left there and then started doing the woodworking and when I was doing the woodworking, I wanted to move out here to Texas and ended up coming out here to Texas and quickly realized like I didn't have sufficient space to do everything that I needed to do and because I

had that interest in cars, I actually had learned out of necessity in a lot of cases.

I had a oh gosh 04 Colorado, spent a lot of money on it, could not get it fixed anywhere and I got to learn about the five-hole reference.

Then Just looking online like five-hole reference code, I had a I don't know $60 reader from the parts store and finally it took me forever.

I honestly had no idea what it was, but finally got around to getting that thing fixed.

And then you know, just helping friends and family and stuff get their stuff sorted out.

And then I actually had a Mitsubishi Clips and that thing, so I had a parasitic drain on it.

And.

I could never pinpoint it.

So I had my Clips.

And then I had a 01 Silverado, because those things are tanks and my girlfriend every time she would drive it, it would have the parasitic drain.

And I couldn't figure out what it was.

And every single time I went to go look at this thing, it was never acting up.

And so one day I ended up taking it to work and I realized that when I shut the doors the headlights turned on.

So it's just like, well, that's interesting.

It was a really silly.

It was a multi-function switch that went out on that thing and sometimes and it didn't happen all the time when you would shut that door it would complete a circuit and, yeah, cause the drain.

And then same vehicle actually she was driving it and it just stopped on her on the way, actually back from work and I'm just like, okay, it's probably a fuel pump, we end up towing it back.

Well, I picked her up and had the tow truck tow it back and hooked up the scanner and I couldn't communicate with the engine computer and I was like, okay, so there was actually a few things that had happened there, but just that one really got me learning how to read wiring diagrams and this is man quite a while ago and so just doing that

, and the interest was there, the ability to kind of think about these problems was there.

So I honestly got hooked on scanner denner and that guy is probably the Godfather of a lot of guys' careers.

Yeah, that's an understatement.

I think just about anybody you talk to in this field has something good to say or some things to give to Paul.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So I was actually at a shop the other day and not to sidebar here too much, but the other day I was at a shop or here too much.

But the technician there he was like man.

He was like if I run into something because it was my first time working there he was like if I run into something, can I call you?

He's like usually I look on YouTube and there's this guy, scanner denner, who's helped me out a lot of times, but I don't fully grasp everything and it's definitely a lot to grasp, but so anyway, that guy, though he's made a world of change to me.

And those fundamentals, five different types of sensors, how do you approach this?

And just getting that very basic understanding in.

When we look at cars, nine times out of 10, it is the most basic things that end up fixing the car.

Yeah, it's usually a bent pin or broken wire or bad connection somewhere, or it's honestly not that often something truly crazy Sometimes.

Sometimes that happens, but usually it's something really simple.

When I came out here.

I had this idea of being a mobile mechanic.

Not the brightest idea, just people are super cheap.

I was charging not accordingly, not at all, but getting to use car guys and doing stuff and people's driveways and doing just more or so R&R work and some diagnostics.

And I knew for a long time, just watching Paul and Keith DeFazio, I wanted to get into that side of things and really focus on it.

So I ended up just decided one day you know what I am going to start shifting my focus, not stop what I'm doing right now, but I'm going to start the shift and start working toward getting shots and so just approach them, get a couple shops around me and they started calling me more and more.

And it's one of those things too where I started to see like these shops are.

I honestly don't it's hard to say, but some of them maybe are good at R&R but they just don't have that diagnostic side and I mean we need those.

I mean there's some kick ass technicians at R&R.

Some guys have helped me get some stuff, get some stuff done in very efficient manner.

When I'm just looking at something and I'm like man, this is going to have me pull this radiator and I've got to pull sorry, not the radiator, pull the oh gosh AC compressor to do a starter in an Eson.

So somebody was like, well, no, you just loosen up these bolts and put a piece of cardboard here and do that and save me a lot of hours.

And so some guys are just amazing at R&R and me, not coming from that shop background and just really grasping the most basics of electrical.

It gave me the chance to kind of fill in pieces where the shops tended to struggle.

Yeah, yeah.

There was a time where I was definitely that R&R guy and I could rock it out with the best of them, 100 flats a week, I was cranking the R&R workout.

I haven't done that since full time, since 2017.

So I'm looking at some of these jobs when I'm in shops I'm like I mean, I know I can still take some stuff apart.

I did a water pump in my van a couple of weeks ago, so when I went out, I'm like, all right, I still got it, I still beat book time.

But, man, I'm looking at some of these jobs and I'm like I don't think my skills are quite where they used to be and so if I had a big job, I might just take it to somebody in one of these shops I know say, hey guys, you guys are gonna do this a lot easier than me on the floor of my garage.

But that's the thing, though right Is, that is its own skill and you can be really, really good at that skill and that can be your thing.

You can make a lot of money doing that too.

But I've talked about this before on the podcast.

It's like, as a general automotive service technician, we're asked to be good at so many things, to be an expert at so many different areas, and I think it's too much for your average guy.

There's a few people out there that can handle it all and be really good at it all, and those are outliers.

Right, those are unicorns.

That's not your average person in a shop.

That's just not your average person.

Be good at so many different things, they're gonna gravitate towards one area or another or apply themselves in one area or another.

Right and outside of the automotive world, we don't ask that of people.

Right, you don't have a house repairman.

Right, you have a plumber, an HVAC or electrician or a roofer, a painter or a carpenter or a carpenter.

Right, people have applied themselves to be really good at one area.

And I think what's happening right now in the industry with and I'm probably biased because it's all the people I talk to, but like the kind of the rise of the mobile people in this industry, it's just the need is there for guys who are specifically good at this thing and we're there to provide support for everybody else who doesn't have that person in their shop, and they probably don't have that person in the shop because flat rate doesn't pay a diag.

Well, that's probably how we got to where we're at.

But I mean, I don't think it's a bad thing.

I think it's good to specialize, get really good at one specific area of the vehicle, because it's too damn big to try to be an expert on all of it.

Again, there's guys out there who can do it, and more power to you, man.

But you know, it's just, why not specialize me really good at one area?

I think that's the way to go.

Yeah, no, definitely.

I mean we've got, you know, HVAC AC, we've got to deal with the electrical, the end of mechanical side of things.

Now there's the ADOS and just so many different things there, suspension stuff.

I mean I you know, not having that shop background, I honestly like I've been asked to look at some suspension stuff and I'm like, nope, I'm not your guy and but you know the same shop.

They'll say, hey, we just, you know, we did some work on this, drove in and now it's not starting.

And you know.

So you go out there and it's like, okay, well, this sensor right here looks nice and shiny and it's got a wall of wings on it and it's pulling down your reference voltage.

So yeah, right, right, right.

So how sorry if you already touched on this, but how did you like decide?

Okay, I'm going to get into the programming stuff Like what, what did that look like?

What did you go out and buy?

How did you start that?

What began it for you?

So there's a lot of frustrations.

Now, when you're diagnosing something, you look, and the first thing I'm looking for is a TSB.

And a lot of those TSBs start with oh, there's a flash update, and I ran into so much of that and then having to send it to the dealer for the shop to turn around and have me go back and look at the car again, because I mean, you could chase your tail on it, sure.

And so at a certain point, actually it was a oh gosh, a 2010 Chevy HHR I think it was, and it was actually an individual and they asked me to look at it.

So I looked at it and it is kind of as I was phasing out you know mobile service in that aspect, but I went to go look at it and it had a VIN mismatch code in the ABS module and I really wanted to get it resolved and I didn't have the ability to, and actually that day or within a few days, I was just thinking about it and it was

just kind of weighing on me and it's kind of one of those things where it's like, okay, enough's enough, and I started looking around and all of a sudden, a Passu Pro 4 popped up on eBay and it was in like the final hour, I think it was, and it was only like 700 bucks and the thing was in like it didn't even look like it had been touched, and so I was looking at it.

I had no idea if it was.

You know, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing.

I just knew that it was time for me to start, you know, throwing there, and I ended up picking it up for about 800 bucks and I just grabbed a laptop and installed GM, and GM and Ford were kind of the first ones that I dipped my feet in.

I just kind of grew from there.

Yeah, yeah.

So you know, went from there and then ended up doing you know some Chrysler stuff and kind of stuck with the big three for a while.

I had done a couple of Nissan's and Honda's like here and there, but not with the J-Box or anything like that.

It was, you know, vin registration and mobilizer stuff using a little.

What is it?

X431 Pro S mini or something like that.

The little China launch.

And so yeah, so you know, just going from there kind of expanding there and then got a little heavier into the Asian programming, and then at some point I was just like, okay, I'm gonna try to do everything that I can.

So you know, now I'll go do a Mercedes clone or, you know, have some different methods, because I don't have this entry.

But you know, I can definitely go out there and offer it to a shop and help them get what they need done.

And you know, Jaguar Land Rover.

Jaguar Land Rover actually turns out to be one of my biggest, probably the biggest European money maker for me.

Maybe, Volkswagen and Audi, I don't know.

There's so much of it here.

It's actually like, honestly, I see that everywhere it's so weird.

That's one brand that I rarely get calls on here and there.

Here and there I'll get a Land Rover.

They need something diagnosed on it or whatever.

But yeah, for whatever reason.

And it's weird how brands are like that across the US, Like there's places where nobody sees any super-roos.

I see a ton of super-roos all the time, but yeah, anyway.

So you know, Jaguar, Land Rover.

I don't see a lot of the Topics Cloud Pathfinder vehicles, but I do see a bunch of the SDV vehicles and what I do see on like the Topics Cloud and Pathfinder vehicles, you know it tends to be headlights and nothing's super exciting, but for whatever reason I just get a whole bunch of them and you know it's funny.

I talk to like I go down to a BMW specific shop and I repair FRM models for them and you know when I first actually talked to them and just gave my spill, they're just like well, we do not touch Jaguar Land Rover because of the cost to the shop.

Is just so far higher than anything else.

So that may be something where you know people don't want to get involved with them just because of the cost of the parts and I don't know what it is the European car owner.

Especially when you start getting into the third owners, they expect you to have nothing.

Yeah, that thing's bellied out and has a transmission out of it and the instrument cluster's locking up and it's in an ANFF state and you know it's like, okay, how much money, how much money are you gonna put into this thing, man?

But yeah, the European thing.

I've just been forcing myself to get more involved with it as time has gone on, because it's not necessarily easy, it's not necessarily cheap in a lot of cases, but it's good, lucrative work once you figure it out, once you bite the bullet, you get the tools, you figure out what you need to figure out.

A lot of people that own those vehicles, or just they're just used to it like it's gonna be expensive to fix, you know that's the way it is, and so you know you can be much higher than some of the domestic counterparts and nobody blinks an eye.

They're just like, yep, it's a BMW, okay, $400,.

All right, that's the way it is right, and so it's good work for sure.

And so I definitely shied away from, you know, even just the repair side of it, but especially diagnostics, earlier in my career.

But hey, man, let's go bring it on, I'll take it on.

See what you know, sometimes I get beat up, sometimes I don't win, but you know how else are you gonna know?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's how you get good.

I mean, you're not growing, doing the same thing over and over.

That's right.

Yeah, you gotta get outside of that comfort zone.

If you wanna get better, you gotta take on that challenge, that thing that you know you're not that good at, you don't know that well, but yeah, that's the only way you're gonna get good at it is by giving it a shot.

Yeah, maybe you're gonna fail, you're gonna screw up, you're gonna look stupid, cost yourself some money.

You know brick in a module or whatever it might be making a bad call on a dyag, but you know how else you gotta jump in.

You gotta give it a try.

Yeah, yeah, you know, bad calls definitely happen.

I know like a big part of our business is to be what Accurate and everyone I mean.

Sometimes it happens and heck.

Sometimes when it rains, it pours, but yeah.

Man, I'm glad to have a network of guys that you know have been there to help me grow and maybe give me a right direction or maybe be like hey man, like double, I wouldn't be making that call, or you know, just things like that.

There's, you know, one where I seem to I said this in a group the other day it seems that the majority of my bad calls that I end up making are pin fit men problems, and that's one of those things where, like there's one in particular, I was super frustrated with it because, man, I was so close I ended up calling an ECM on a oh gosh, some sort of Buick

and I.

It's one of those things where it's like, wow, how did I miss it?

But essentially Shab brought it in and did some work to it.

I think they swapped out the engine and now it is a no crank.

Okay, I Run through the process and I'm like, okay, well, we're, we're getting.

So there's a.

The rain censor sends out a signal to the, the ECM, and that's how the ECM sees hey, this is where you know, this is where it gives it the ok, saying hey, we're a neutro or we're in part, we can go ahead and start the car and.

And so I check it and I see that we're grounding and I see that the ECM is not seeing the signal.

I Look at the connector and I actually did a pin fitment test on it and it passed the pin fitment test, but it was the actual connector itself that it wasn't fully latching down and is because, honestly, I don't know exactly what happened there if it was sabotage, but the technician that was initially working on the car wasn't there at the time that I got called in to look at it Was no longer on this job, oh.

Okay, okay.

And so it ended up being you know that connector problem, but you know, it's things like that.

It and you get burned enough on something, it's just like.

Okay, like you gotta remember those, ask kickings for the next time.

Yeah, that's.

That's the thing is, when you get your butt kicked on something and you eventually get to the other side of it, bad call and all.

You're not gonna forget that, like that is now, hopefully, hopefully.

The ideal would be that is burned into your brain and next time you come across that that's the first thing you're checking.

Yeah, so um Couple of things I kind of wanted to just mention here on the chat.

Just a couple of you know, cases where I've actually ran into and honestly I don't know if guys are really gonna be running into this.

So one of the first things that I kind of wanted to bring up was a, I want to say is like a 2007 F-150 and I had been asked to replace the PCM on this thing.

And so I get out there, I program in the PCM and they replaced it because it didn't have AC operation and it wasn't controlling the compressor.

So, so at this point I'm like, okay, well, everything's programmed in.

And I asked them hey, do you want me to diagnosis?

I start jumping down diagnostic path and I'm looking, all the inputs look good, you know, just very basic scan data, not not to go like crazy, crazy detail.

But I started jumping down a rabbit hole.

I mean typical, you know Electrical diagnostic path on why aren't we Getting compressor activation?

Yep.

Can I pause you real quick?

All right, I want to do something here.

I'm gonna write down.

I'm gonna write down on a piece of paper what I think it is right now and then I'm gonna wait until you tell me.

But we'll see if I'm right.

Just only because I feel like I've run into this before.

But okay, I got, I got it written down, so we'll see if I get this correct or not.

Keep going.

Yeah.

So you know, I go through everything and I'm like, okay, everything is intact, circuit wise, everything looks good, input wise, and One of the things that I didn't pay attention to was my pre scan.

Just because it's it's, I scan it.

Have it there for documentation's sake.

And so I end up going back to my pre scan and Inside of the instrument cluster.

I don't remember the exact code, but there was a code in there pertaining.

I don't remember if it was a Venn mismatch code or if it was a configuration mismatch or something like that, but, long story short, turned out to be the instrument cluster.

Have the incorrect as build data.

It's mine backwards.

Yeah.

It's, it says cluster.

I think my screens mirrored.

But yes, it says cluster for that exact same thing.

I was it, I was a firestone and I probably got my butt kicked for two days on this thing because I'm like everything's here and I didn't have, I don't recall, like a mismatch code or whatever.

But Eventually, by it digging and digging, excited into any programming at the time, I'm eventually found out and talk to the customer and yeah, we put a cluster in that not that long ago.

It was a used one, blah, blah and Okay, all right, now we finally got it figured out.

But man, that was, that was a bear, because, if I recall right, you can tell me if yours was the same there are no data pins in the cluster that indicate what you want to know, or no helpful information.

Because, yeah, the AC request is getting passed through the cluster to get to the PCM goes HVAC medium speed can cluster high speed, can PCM?

Yeah, and there's nothing in there to help you.

There's no data pins indicating that anything's happening.

And yeah, I mean you got to pay attention to the diagram, the system operation, to even know that the cluster is involved period.

But then once you do, yeah, it's, unless you have that programming Capability and understanding, it's still not real clear whether the cluster is doing what it's supposed to or not.

You just see, hey, I'm pressing the button.

The PCM is not seeing the request, but everything else seems to be there.

Right that that sort of thing is really weird.

Yeah, yeah.

So, um, you know, I I got to a point where I looked back at it because, you know, jumping down down the rabbit hole there and Kind of lose back to Follow-way process.

In my case, I was lucky enough to have a data PID which are not a data PID, have a code when that would have told me what I needed to know.

And then, yeah, you look at the diagram, you see that the instrument cluster is involved.

You, you can see that the, the can, passes through it.

And once I seen the code in the cluster and I was like, wait, this is on the diagram, kind of put two and two together and, and you know, I just went in real quick, did the as build data AC was operating and Nice, no, I just think that that's one where man, I definitely I mean the shop got their ass kicked on it.

I would have got my ass kicked on it, I would have made a bad call if the shop hadn't already made the call and what I already was in a program.

Yeah, actually, you know that, that truck, that I think it was a 2010, if I remember it, but that particular truck and spending two days on it was the reason I bought my first hotel I had been using the shops.

We at the time we had this awful, awful, terrible OTC Pegasus and it was the successor to the Genesis, which actually for an aftermarket tool.

At the time.

The OTC Genesis was a great tool and but they followed that up with the Pegasus, so they tried putting a scope Into the tool and it was awful probably one of the worst scan tools I've ever used and I hated that thing so much.

But the I never owned my own scan tool up until that point.

As a tack, and the shops had scan tools, why would I buy one?

I had a code reader and that was it and that Motivated me to go out.

I'm like I already find something that, because I wanted to code the cluster after I figured out that's what it was.

I'm like I want something I can do this and I wasn't at the point where I was buying laptops and ideas and stuff yet but I was like what else can do it out there?

And I ended up buying the, the DS 708.

Uh, I tell, and that thing, that thing was just a freaking beast because they stole everybody's software.

I remember the first time seen seeing the Ford power balance on a scan tool.

I'm like what is this?

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna hear like a caveman using mode six to chase these stupid coils down.

And now I got this like real-time graphic of misfires on the fours.

I'm like this thing's, this is a gold mine for me at the time.

So yeah, that I I'm glad you brought that up.

That was the truck that got me to buy my, my first Auto on my first own personal scan tool that I owned.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

You know I go into so many shops and a lot of the tech still don't have their own scanners.

Right, right, and I mean, hey, In the certain situation you shouldn't have to own that.

The shop should provide the tools to fix the cars.

Right, like, yeah, if the scan tool is an obstacle To getting the car fixed at your business that fixes cars For compensation as a business owner, why the why would you not buy the scan tool that helps you text to the job, that brings the money into the business?

I Don't get it.

But, um, yeah, like, I don't think it's actually have to buy their own scantel if you want to more power to you and that's gonna help you, but I don't think you should have to as an employee, yet a business.

On top of that, some of these shops, man, they don't have service info.

Uh, there's oh, dude, quite a few.

Yeah.

I don't get it.

I.

I have no idea Like that.

That's one where it's like, okay, you're not a you, you just you don't understand any of how this should work, or you come from such a different background or Side of the business I don't, I don't know the.

I can't even comprehend getting through the day.

Um, and so I deal with a lot of shops.

Um, there's a lot of Vietnamese run shops, um, that I that I have serviced in the past, and some of them I still do, and they were definitely some of them that just no service information, would just use youtube and google.

Um, come on, guys, because, well, here's, here's the thing I would get up.

I'd be like replace this component, like, well, where's the component?

I'm like, I'll look it up.

I guess that's my job to tell you where the part, like, if you can't figure out where the part is on the car, like, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

But yeah, I don't know, man, it's, it's wild out there, it's there's, there's such a, there's such a variation in levels of shop, and I'm sure you see it out there, like some of these places are on their game, really really well run places, but then the complete opposite end of the spectrum too.

Um, it's.

It is pretty crazy to see what's out there.

And other people said this too.

Um, I know pj recently.

Yes, I can do it like you.

Just he didn't fully grasp the state of the industry until he started doing mobile and just like.

Wow.

I, there's a place, there's a place up here and I don't work with this guy anymore for a number of reasons, but he doesn't have heat in his shop, like it's Minnesota.

It gets really cold in the winter time, like 30 40 below zero when it's January, february, and he doesn't have like a heater.

Every shop has some type of heater, whether it be, uh, the, the big, you know, gas furnace.

Some of them will have these long tubes that go across the ceiling.

Some of them have inflow heat.

But like you have heat in your shop and he doesn't have that and he would run these little propane sunflower heaters In the winter time and it's like 40 degrees in the shop.

Um, I just If you would have told me that prior to doing the mobile stuff.

I'm like no way, this bs, there's no way that guy runs a business year after year but he does and for some who knows who knows why reason he has tax that work there.

I don't, I don't get it.

But yeah, it's pretty crazy man.

Yeah, yeah, no, it definitely is, and you know, when I first started, it was very demoralizing.

Um, I mean, going into shops I mean not not just the the lack of service, info, um, sometimes, like, there's one situation where the shop, the the technician, he had the right idea, but the shop owner didn't give him access to what he needed, and actually that tech ended up quitting and uh ended up going to work

for a european shop that had everything all the euro tools, everything, and uh, you know night and day difference there, but the the technician, he was just super upset and um, anyway, when I went there, though, he actually shadowed me on the diagnosis, and I I don't remember what vehicle this was.

All I remember is that there was a sensor pulling down the five volts, and Um, oh, it was a cam sensor.

It was a cam sensor.

I think it was on a toyota.

I yeah, it was a toyota, because I remember um Trying to figure out, um the location of a specific component, and I couldn't figure it out exactly.

Um, I was like Goodness, uh, just drawn such a, such a blank right now, but he shadowed me on this thing and I was having a hard time finding the location of the component.

I only had one service information at that time, um, and that was all data and I had kind of jumped back and forth between all data and identifix and um now.

I've got both of them, but I was having such a hard time locating um Specific diagram that I needed.

I want to say there's like internet issues there and uh the, the metal building I.

I think that was my problem.

Oh yeah and so I at some point, yeah, yeah.

So at some point I'm like, okay, I just got to start doing something here and so I just unplugged a sensor, um.

And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna look for everything with this color wire because I could not, for the life of me, uh, pull up service info in that shop and event.

Actually, the second, uh, second sensor, ion plug, was you know the, the sensor that was causing the problem?

Nice, yeah, that's.

That's a really good uh idea to bring up.

When you're just, you're kind of lost in a diagnostic or maybe you don't even know where to start, right, and you're just like man.

I feel overwhelmed by the problem or the system or whatever, and you, you should do your homework and try to get your head wrapped around it.

But sometimes they're like we all end up there right for one reason or another.

Just like man, I just just start with something.

Just start somewhere, do start doing something within the system.

Start testing some things.

Even if you don't think that's what the problem is going to be like, it might get your brain flowing.

Maybe you'll find it right, maybe just get lucky.

That happens to the odds or so that you'll be.

You could stumble upon it, but it's gonna get you involved with the system.

It's gonna get you eyes on it, hands on it, start testing stuff.

And I've definitely found myself in that position where I'm just like I feel stagnated in service info and reading through codes and tsb's and flow charts and diagrams and and looking at scan data.

I'm just like I don't really know where I'm going with this.

Just start doing something.

Unplug Something.

Take a vacuum hose off.

Unplug that math sensor Right, block off that through, smoke that, smoke the throttle body.

You know, whatever you don't think there's a vacuum, like okay, just you know, obviously this can be a waste of time, but like sometimes you just got to start with somewhere and see what happens, see where it takes you.

Um, that's, that's a really good point to bring up when you're Frustrated, hey in.

in that case, I was um, and then, even though I paid for service information, I didn't have access to it, simply because the metal building, um, it's just, you know, move, try, try to keep going, try to keep the ball rolling and, uh, in all honesty, the basics I mean fundamentals- um.

So much of it is really fundamentals.

I mean, uh, the other date well, probably about a month now I was down at the one of my dealerships and they called me out there To look at a I don't know some sort of a jeep.

Uh, and I go out there and there's a code for, like, the fuel-rural pressure sensor.

Um, maybe it was a Chrysler pacifica, so some sort of you know cdj are garbage and uh, I go out there and I see the code, so I pop the hood.

You know, first thing I want to do is a visual inspection, like it's all about a process.

And so I go and I look and I'm like, well, we have Obviously our sensor right here and somebody's been down this path before because, well, they've got the uh all crimp connectors on them and so it's like okay, well, what do we do from this point?

um, I, you know, tested the.

The basics is a three-wire sensor and it's a pressure sensor.

So, you know, just go back down to the basics and I'm like, okay, well, this has absolutely everything that it needs and that sensor is also nice and shiny and it's an oem sensor.

Um, so For a second there I was like the computer's doing what it should be doing, the circuit's all good, pin fitment is perfect, and I looked for TSBs and I didn't find any TSBs.

And I ended up getting a phone call and they're like, hey, there's a star bulletin on this and that new sensor should come with paperwork that says hey, you need to relocate pins because there's an updated sensor design.

So that kind of comes back down.

Everything really comes down to the fundamentals.

Well, mostly comes down to it.

But that's following your process, yeah.

Yeah, I have that process.

It's huge, kind of similar to what I was referring to before is go through your process and even if you don't feel like I'm necessarily on the hunt, there are times in diagnostics where you know you're close, you just got to sort a few things out and verify a few things.

But then there are times when you're not.

You're just like I don't have a key suspect just yet, so I'm just kind of grabbing that stuff.

But if you follow your process and you go through the things like, hey, this engine won't start.

Okay, fundamentals, air, fuel, spark, how do I check those basic things you go through it and you might stumble upon where the issue is, even if you're not really dialed into what exactly it was.

I had an equinox.

I did an episode about it where I just happened to find that the injector harness was backwards because I was doing an injector flow test and the fuel wasn't coming out of the right cylinder.

I was like, well, I just did four and one has fuel.

Like what's the deal?

And no point thought in my mind that I was going to find it in a backwards injector harness I was looking for.

Is there fuel getting through these injectors?

Because that was part of my process of fuel delivery.

I just need to check fuel delivery, air fuel spark, what am I missing?

And I just stumbled upon it because, you know, within my testing I realized something wasn't quite right, and that happens a lot, and the better you get at this, the more, hopefully, you can just be like I feel like it's this, I need to go after this.

This is definitely the circuit or the component that I'm testing.

But hey, sometimes just go through, this is what I need, this is how it has to work.

Let's just go through everything and you might find or get a little closer to the solution.

That's a big thing.

You see a lot of videos and stuff out there of everybody.

Just like I had this car, I tested these four things because I knew what to check and then I found the problem.

Like yeah, it doesn't always work that way.

Like sometimes she's just like I don't know why this thing's running rich.

I'm really not sure.

Nothing's standing out to me.

Okay, let's go through the things that could cause it to run rich.

Let's start testing them one by one and eliminate things as much as possible.

That's my strategy.

Some days it really is.

Yeah.

Yeah, figuring out what's not the problem is very valuable.

Yep, yeah, definitely, definitely, and yeah, and that all comes back to the training and the education to be able to do those tests and know what's good and what's bad.

But yeah, sometimes that's the approach to figure these things out, man.

So I got called to I honestly don't remember what year BMW this was I'm not a car guy, by the way.

I confused BMW and many and Toyota and Lexus, All the GM brands.

I probably show up and I'm like, oh, I'm here to program a Chevy.

They're like we don't have a Chevy, I'm Cadillac, Buick.

I know it's of the same variety there.

But so I got called to look at a BMW.

The shop actually asked me they're very happy to win modules in cars and it's you know, there's different shops Like I know, when this shop is going to throw a module in the car, it's probably not going to work out.

And they called me and they say, hey, we've got this and it's got a mass airflow sensor code and it's a crank no start.

Do you think it could be the ECM?

And I was like, honestly, I can't really give any insight.

I could program it.

If you want to change it, I could diagnose it and we could be 100% sure.

And so they opt for me to diagnose this thing.

And you know, when they said it I was just like, okay, a mass airflow causing your crank no start?

It just the thought process there.

I don't know, I don't see it.

I guess to some degree, but I really just cannot see that thought process.

So you know, I go out there and there's a couple of observations that I make, but first thing I want to do is crank it over, see if we have spark, see if we have injector pulse, the absolute most basic.

Let me go grab a test light.

Well, I have both of those things and it's just like okay, so we know it's, you know, not a security issue.

So I go back and I current ramp the fuel pump and everything looks good at the fuel pump.

So I grab a fuel fuel testing gauge and I take a fuel sample.

And I kind of thought it was going to go that way to begin with, because when I walked up to this vehicle there was no cover for the fuel tank and the gas cap was missing.

And it had just rained that weekend.

So I take a fuel sample and it's just like okay, well, hey guys, we've got bad fuel.

So that's what it is on the car.

Clean out the tank, you'll be good to go here, and that's.

You know.

Another case where it's like the shop is not thinking about the process and whatnot.

I talked to the technician there and he was literally afraid Well, I can't say afraid.

The technician was uncomfortable with it being a European car and it's just like I don't know.

I don't know BMW.

And it's one of those things where it's like well, man, like suck, squeeze, bing, blow.

Yes, 12 volts to 12 volts, and let's start there and keep everything the most simple and fundamental that we can and we can go more complicated if we have to.

Yeah, the laws of physics don't care what emblems on the front of the vehicle, it's still going to work the same.

And yeah, some of the little intricate stuff or, honestly, it's probably more different on our end of the programming side of things than the diagnostics, because, yeah, it's electricity has no references to what vehicle it's in and air fuel combustion, right, that's all.

That's all going to work the same way.

It's just a little different setup, a little different instruction.

But, yeah, you still need all those basic things for it to happen.

Yep, yep.

So there was that one, and, man, there was one that I actually drove all the way down to San Antonio to go and look at, which, about an hour and a half drive from me.

And this thing my buddy Ben asked me to look at this thing for months and he had a PCM put in it.

I don't know exactly who is making what calls where, but I know it was at a shop.

Before he got it I had been out of commission for, I want to say, eight months and so it's a 2020 Ford Escape and it is a crank no start.

But after you crank it that one time, that's it.

It will not crank again for probably 10 to 20 minutes.

Okay, and it's like okay, well, again, he had been asking me to look at this thing for quite a while, so at some point in time, this thing got an ABS module thrown in it, and the ABS module on this is an immobilizer component.

So he actually in the process of this.

He got his VSC programs, the ABS module, and still crank, no start.

And again after you crank it once it's done for about 10 to 20 minutes at random.

And so I go down there and you crank it over and the first thing that you notice is that the dash, where the mileage is, it just knolls out all across it.

So you lose your mileage.

And this is a collision vehicle and it's a I want to say it's like an ambulance vehicle.

Maybe they do like dispatch or something in it.

But so you know, start kind of going down that process and I jumped down a rabbit hole, you know, not sticking with the process and kind of getting that, getting those blinders on.

And but you know, to kind of reel it back, what I should have done, you know in hindsight, was there was a communication code that would pop up every time you'd crank it and you see all those dashes, which is an indicator of no communication, and I should have just focused on that.

You know the basics powers, grounds, ability to communicate and I would have gotten it a lot faster had I done that from the get go.

But you know, I ended up getting it.

There was actually a voltage drop inside of the fuse box, right right in the corner where it was hit.

Okay, there was voltage drop, yeah yeah.

So it got hit right there on that side.

So the fuse box took a, you know, pretty good impact there, and so whenever you would crank it, it would drop down to, I want to say, like four volts or something, something that was low enough to where the PCM wasn't happy.

And you know it couldn't keep.

It couldn't keep the voltage up for that five hole regulator to keep the PCM, you know, alive and talking.

And so I end up eventually getting on the right path.

I throw some powers to it and get the car running and it's like okay, well, and this has one of those funky fuse boxes where it's not super ideal, but you can test the power going into it and you can test the power coming out.

And so you know, I simply scoped that and cranked it.

Didn't have voltage drop going in, had voltage drop coming out, and so that was a fun one, simply because time in between testing was so far in between each you know test result.

Yeah.

And it took me way longer Honestly, it really took me way longer than it should have to catch onto the pattern.

Yeah, that intermittent stuff, man, I don't know, I keep running into it and it's obviously, it's a thing that's out there and people, you know, if the car stops functioning often enough, they want it fixed and that's why it's in the shop and I'm up against it with time.

You know, I'm trying to yeah, trying to knock out a lot of work every day.

I got a lot of shops calling me, I got a lot of appointments and it's just, it is a very challenging one for me.

If I had all the time in the world, I'd love to take it on, I'd love to drive your car around, for maybe I wouldn't, but it'd be cool to get through some of the weird problems.

Right, that only happens, you know every.

You know once every 45 minutes or whatever.

But I can't spend 45 minutes just to experience the problem and then maybe it doesn't happen for another 45 minutes when I get my stuff hooked up.

I have a Lexus right now that this has intermittent parasitic draw on a 17 IS 300.

And I first looked at it.

I'm like 60 milliamps guys, and the battery is full.

I don't know what to tell you.

And then the next day they're like yeah, the battery is dead.

Okay.

Well, it's like well, you guys want to just test that battery, make sure the battery is good.

I tested it.

But you guys do the same thing, Like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good, it's good, Okay.

So do you want to come back out?

Look at it?

Come back out, Look at it, 60 milliamps, Okay.

And so they leave it sit over the weekend, Actually while it was gone on vacation.

I come back and they're like yeah, they're pretty sure this has happened a number of times.

We take another peak at it.

I go out there after it's been sitting on the weekend, it fires up like after sitting all weekend.

I'm like I was like I don't even really need to check it for a draw at this point.

I know there isn't one, but I did and it's 60 milliamps and they really want me to go after it and it's a good shop.

That's my issue.

It's like I really have a good relationship with the shop.

But I'm like guys because he's like.

Well, I saw this one time on this Mazda where the shifter didn't go back and apart.

I'm like I'm sure you did and that's a great find.

But this is, this is Alexis.

So like the odds of it being exactly the same are pretty unlikely.

I mean, think about all of the different electrical components on this thing that might be coming on Like good luck trying to guess at which one it is.

I just I don't.

I don't have the time to do this.

It would have to be something where it's set it up in the shop with a scope with multiple amp clamps going off of different legs of the battery, and I get it onto my Pico, which I they'd have to be amp clamps that weren't battery powered, and then you just let it sit there and set an alert on your Pico for which leg off of the power feeds of the battery or the ground distribution spikes

.

Okay, well, now I can at least limit it down to a fuse box, and then you go.

You go deeper from there.

But that's a.

That's something where I'd have to have it set up at a shop with the equipment.

And I mean you're charging a boatload of money at that point too, which I guess that's fine, but doing the mobile thing limits you on.

Intermittent is the.

The short version of that story is like I just don't have the time yeah.

So so do you do draws at all mobile.

I do.

I do like parasitic draws.

Give me, give me If it's a hard fault.

I freaking love parasitic draws.

There are some vehicles where they're definitely more challenging than I thought and depending on how the power to distribution is set up and access to components and that sort of thing.

But for the most part I can nail those things.

Some of the ones that are real small, you know, you have like 150 milliamp draw and it takes 40 minutes to go to sleep.

That's challenging Intermittent stuff.

No thanks.

But man, if it's, if it's up over half an amp, I feel like I can nail that one pretty quickly.

I say that I'm going to get some stupid vehicle tomorrow.

That just kicks my butt.

But yeah, yeah, every time Interior lighting circuit that has 50 legs to it.

That's what I'm going to get tomorrow, just for saying that.

But yeah, I do, okay, okay, yeah, I try not to do them.

If I do do them, I I tell the shop hey, look, get it in a bay inside.

I want to check this thing first thing in the morning.

Yeah, there's a lot of things it's like okay, I need to be able to prep a certain way.

I need them to have a good battery on this thing, yeah, so there's a lot of criteria that have to be met in order for me to even consider it.

Um but it's.

It's one of those things too, where I I try to stay away from it just from a business standpoint, and try to keep the ball rolling.

But, yeah, it's also.

The curious side of me is, like man, I want to figure out what's going on.

Right, right, yeah, if I get into one, I get involved with one.

Yeah, I definitely want to solve it and figure out where that, where that draws, coming from.

But it's, yeah, there's definitely more lucrative work out there than those that you charge appropriately, just like anything else charge appropriately.

But sometimes they can be.

They can be fairly time consuming.

I don't want to take one on it Friday afternoon, there's no way.

But I'll definitely take those because a lot of people don't want to do them.

Those little snicker, bar sized amp clamps those are.

Those are beast for those, because I'll just hook them around the different legs off the battery and get an idea of, ok, what power distribution source has the draw.

Ok, now, I've limited it down to there.

Can I amp clamp anything else off of that?

Sometimes, no, ok.

Can I amp pound the tops of the fuses A lot of times, yes, sometimes, no, ok, lasses, or what can I pull out of here?

I avoid pulling stuff because it wakes stuff up on a lot of cars, but sometimes that's your, that's what you're down to.

You can also look at what's the size of the draw.

What's the size of the draw and what could potentially be on?

Is this a module type, draw, you know, six, six tenths of an amp.

Or is this like two, three amps, like something's on doing some work, or maybe there's a network awake, that's the other thing, like this whole series of modules awake, two, three amps.

Right, you can use clues to kind of help guide you towards what's staying on.

Yeah, there's some pattern failures there too, although with modern vehicles, man, I think the unique ones are so much more common now.

And I got my butt kicked on a Ford Edge one time where the tire pressure monitor module was turning off and turning on and turning off and turning on and turning off and turning on.

So the parasitic draw well, I wouldn't call it intermittent, but it was pulsing it would draw for about two, three minutes and then it would go to sleep and then a couple of minutes later it would come back on two, three minutes, go to sleep.

And that one killed me.

I even made a bad call on that.

I put a cluster in it and I fucked around forever and finally got to the source eventually.

But I just had one a couple of weeks ago where I put my amp clamp around there and I watched it turn on and off and it was like, oh, I know where I'm going with this.

I went right back to the tire pressure module and plugged it, fixed it, and so I like to think my hours put into the first one saved me quite a bit of time on the second one that I saw, you know.

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure that's.

You know you get your ass kicked on that one car and a lot of times.

You don't forget it.

Sometimes you do, yeah.

I find myself there too.

I know I fixed this one before.

What did I do?

Yeah, yeah for sure.

So there's something else.

I'm not sure if I'm going to lose you here.

I wanted to pull up some notes here.

Okay.

Okay, okay, this, honestly, it was just because it's the most recent dyague that I got to deal with.

Okay, so I dealt with a 2020 Jeep Compass and they asked me to program a PCM in this thing, and so I go through, you know, do the programming.

And it was kind of in a particular situation where this is a GPEC 2A, so I ended up having to do some eProm magic to make it happen.

I do have my vehicle security credentials, but in this particular situation, it was from one shop to another shop and the other shop's customer and couldn't do anything in like an efficient amount of time, so I just you know, ended up going to eProm route, and so I get everything back together though and

go plug it in and I go to crank this thing up and the dash, the needles are just like flickering like this, and it's just like, okay, maybe the battery voltage.

I checked the battery voltage and I'm like, wait, we're good on the battery voltage.

Okay, I looked down at my scan tool and I lost communication with my, my micro pod, for a minute and I end up going and talking to the shop and they're like that's what it was doing before and we thought for sure it had to be the ECM.

So I'm sitting there in the driver's seat I can see out over, like on the bench.

They have a power distribution center, Well, the fuse box, and then they've got a whole harness.

And then you know, we just finished doing the PCM on this thing and you know, the first thing that I noticed, like looking at that and after throwing a scope on it, you know, right there at the battery check for voltage drop and see what that battery is dropping to and it looked great.

I mean the car wasn't really cranking, so I mean not a whole lot of amperes going through there.

But you know it's trying to pull something when you see those gauges flickering.

And every time that I'd lost communication with the micro pod I had a hooked up to my breakout box and it was jumping down to like three volts.

And at that point I'm like, ok, well, let's, you know, do a check here.

And sure enough, it was dropping down to three I want to say 3.2

volts.

So I'm like, ok, let's go and go from the battery and start checking all the different fuses.

Right there at the battery You've got all the different legs that run to the PDC and so I check everything there, everything's good.

And I'm like, ok, well, I go and I just pick any random fuse.

I honestly forget.

I just remember his fuse, number 30.

I don't remember what that ran and why I went there, but I took the AES waves kit plugged into it, went to go crank it and, sure enough, same exact voltage drop happening.

OK.

So, on this thing though, you know I'm in this fuse number 30 slot with a wave kid and I see the voltage drop there, and you know, I check everything right there at the battery, at the fusible links, right there at the battery, and everything checks out good.

So I ended up just jumping a power into the fuse box, the car starts and runs.

Now, mind you, this was basically two, two different tests done in just a couple of minutes.

And the tech, when he heard that car fire up, he just like looked at me and the look on his face was like he was just completely shocked that the car was running in just a couple of minutes of, you know, testing there.

Yeah, so I was talking to him about the night.

You know, I'm just walking through exactly what, what I was seeing and why I did what I did.

And then, you know, I went through and started to kind of jump down and try to dig through it, but just because of the setup on this vehicle, it wasn't ideal for me to, you know, get to where I needed to do any more testing without Asking for more time from the shop.

So you know.

I just approached the shop owner and I was like, hey look, this is where we're at.

We do know that we have a voltage drop problem.

It is not the battery.

It is not here across these fuses right there at the battery, but it is, you know, somewhere from the cable to the PDC.

Okay.

And maybe even in the PDC, but they just replaced that.

So that that's one where, honestly, I'm hoping that I get to go back and look at it again, just because I want to actually see what the real fault was there.

Yeah, sometimes that sucks as a mobile guy.

You don't see the conclusion.

And yeah, it's like I would expect most shops to get back to me if I made the wrong call and it didn't fix it.

I'd expect that.

And hey, that happens sometimes.

They call me.

Okay, you told us put in this and it didn't fix it.

But I always wonder, like when I never hear anything back, I'm like, hmm, I wonder if that actually fixed it.

I wonder if the customer proved the job.

I wonder if they were able to get parts or whatever.

I always like that conclusion.

But you don't always get it as a mobile guy.

Sometimes you just move on with your life and you never.

If I go back to the shop I'll ask them.

I'm like, hey, what happened with the blank?

Oh yeah, we put that thing in there and it fixed it or whatever you know.

But yeah, not having the like concrete conclusion in front of your face kind of sucks sometimes.

For sure man.

Yeah, for sure.

That's part of the gig.

But cool man, thanks for joining me this evening.

This was cool and we definitely got to meet up at one of the training events.

Sometimes so, when you say you're going to, you're going to a vision.

Yeah, I definitely plan on going to vision.

Hopefully I can get out to more of the other training events here, but it just really depends.

Yeah, great, that's tough.

You got to set aside the income from the time that you're gone and then catch up when you get back, and so it is a bit of a sacrifice, but I try to make it to at least a couple of years, if I can.

Yeah, yeah and, honestly, like I love going to vision.

The biggest thing, though, in all honesty, was just networking.

Oh yeah, 100%.

That's worth the price of admission.

Even if you didn't sign up for any classes, if you just hung out in the hallways the whole time with other people, that would be worth going.

That's where it's at, man.

But I really appreciate you having me on here and maybe I'll run into you sometime at a training event.

Yes, sir, I look forward to it, thank you.

Okay, that's going to do it for today's episode.

Thank you, jc, for sitting down with me and thank you all the listeners for tuning into the show and all the feedback that I've got.

Really appreciate all of it, appreciate everybody listening and if you got any ideas for the show, you know someone that you'd like to hear from on the show or you want to be on the show, reach out to me.

You'll find my email in the show notes along with the Facebook group.

You can contact me through Messenger, probably the quickest way to get the response.

Sean Tipping on Facebook.

Otherwise, let's all get out there, start fixing the world, one card at a time.

220: JC Diagnostics

Toyota Camry

Fiat 500

Chevrolet Silverado

Nissan Pathfinder

Ford F150

Hyundai Genesis

Chrysler Pacifica

Ford Escape

Is300

Ford Edge

Jeep Compass

About this episode

Original notes