229: Learning From Our Mistakes, With Scott Shotton

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.

Have you ever been faced with the challenge of sourcing, installing and programming a used control module in a vehicle?

I know a lot of us have.

It seems to be happening more and more often today with the volume of control modules on vehicles, the cost of some new ones or even the availability of new control modules.

In some cases, used may be the only option.

So what do you do here?

I strongly recommend checking out SJ Auto Solutions and Tommy Oliva.

Tommy offers a cloning service for used control modules to make these things plug and play for the vehicle that you're working on.

In a lot of cases he is also able to source the control modules if you're unable to locate one for the vehicle that you're working on.

But once you get connected with Tommy, he's going to offer fantastic support from start to finish to make sure that that control module is going to work in your application.

He's also got tech support that he offers through his website, along with some free resources there as well on information about used control module programming.

So make sure to check out SJ Auto Solutions.

I can't recommend that enough.

I am happy to have automotive seminars as a sponsor for the show.

Now, if you're not familiar, automotive seminars is a diagnostic technician training company.

They've got a website that they'll be a link to in the show notes, and what they offer is top notch training to technicians like us in the field.

I've been taking their training courses for years and have got a ton of benefit out of it.

They've got top notch instructors John Thornton, scott Shotten, scott Manna and every other month they've got a two night course that you can sign up for, join in, ask questions and afterwards you've paid for the course.

You can access a recorded version whenever you want.

You can rewatch the class two years later in case you wanted some details on it, and that is a fantastic feature.

So make sure to check out the website to see what courses they have available and what's coming up in the future.

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 show.

Thank you so much for joining me On the show today.

I've got Scott Shotten.

He's been on the show a number of times before.

You probably know him Trainer, mobile guy, good friend of mine and Scott's going to join me today to talk about some of the mistakes that we've made along the way in our careers in the automotive field, and at least for me, I know there's been a lot of them and these aren't so much career moves but actual mistakes and things that we did wrong working on a vehicle or in a shop area, right, and

all of us have stories like that.

If you've been in this field for a while, you do your best to avoid these types of things, but especially when you're new, you're unaware of a lot of the possibilities of bad things that could happen.

But we'll talk about other situations where you've been doing this for a while and you neglect something, kind of lose the respect or the fear for a particular aspect of what we do, and that's when things can go bad.

But the stories are.

It's fun to look back on in hindsight a lot of these.

There's some humor behind it when you can look back on these things after you've grown or become more experienced.

But the big thing for me is when you make a mistake and some of these things are pretty boneheaded what do you do with it and where do you take it from there?

Right, how do you recover?

Bounce back, learn from your mistake, and we'll talk a little bit about that.

But anyways, with that all out of the way, let's jump into the episode.

All right, good evening, scott, and yeah, we are recording.

I'm on video this time, right.

Yeah, we're trying the whole video thing, just figuring it all out.

It's a whole new set of technical challenges to work through, which is fun.

Yeah, well, you sent me a text earlier.

Was it?

Powder your nose because you're going to be on video.

So I came home from mobile and I took a shower.

So I don't look.

I look like me, I guess, just not so dirty.

Yeah, that's usually me is.

Yeah, grease or dirt, somewhere I leave a trail.

So not nearly as bad as one is a full-time tech, but it's definitely still there.

My finger nails are still not exactly clean.

So yeah, yeah, and the significant other likes clean fingernails.

Oh, okay, I remember that with many years working in a shop, I remember coming home dirty and the stuff just does not wash off very well.

I'm kind of liking clean fingernails.

Yeah, it is nice.

I remember when I transitioned to the teaching role and I was like I can't believe how clean my hands are.

This is ridiculous.

But all it takes is one of those old Ford purge lines that were like this crumbly black material, whatever that was, and it would like smear into your hands and stuff and then it's all over, it's in every little crease.

Vacuum lines, the rubbery vacuum lines that would like, especially they were older they just crumble and get yeah, yep, yep and they're done that or anything diesel.

I was never much of a diesel guy and I don't feel bad about that, because it seems like everything you touch on the hood you're just going to be black.

Yeah yeah, trans guys are different Trans guys because of the detergent and the trans fluid.

They usually have clean hands, but they got all kinds of little cuts.

Sure yeah.

Because of all the sharp stuff, but their hands are clean.

It's like you can kind of tell my wife told me years ago she's like my cousin's husband, whoever I don't know he's like he's a mechanic and his hands are clean.

And then she told me what was going on.

I'm like, oh yeah, he's a trans guy and he might have been a great trans guy.

I don't know if I've ever met that guy, but I'm like that makes sense because your hands are nice and clean.

You just got all these little teeny cuts.

Well, what do they say?

You don't trust a skinny chef.

You probably shouldn't trust a mechanic with perfectly clean fingernails either.

Well, that could be changing.

Yeah, yeah, that's very true.

It gives me some analogy.

But yeah, I see your point.

Yeah, the laptops don't get my hands quite as dirty, which is nice.

No, that's good.

And you're also now a business owner, so you got other stuff to worry about paperwork and all that stuff that's involved.

So you got other people to get their hands dirty, so you don't have to do it as much.

Oh yeah, I sure do like doing it, though I'll tell you what I hired a guy to help me with the paperwork, the book work, the phones, that sort of stuff, and so I'm actually doing less of that now than I was for the first full time year.

And you know me, I like to be out there elbow deep in it with the cars, like that's what I love.

And you know, obviously there's a lot of responsibilities as a business owner, but I think one of the perks is you can decide what you want to do, right, I can decide what part of it I'd like to do.

And, hey, I want to be out there in the trenches, if you will, with the cars.

That's my place that I want to be.

So that's what I'm doing and I don't know We'll see what happens.

That's one thing we both have in common.

Your path and my path were similar as far as the mobile stuff goes.

Being college instructors I'm not anymore, it's been a couple of years, but being college instructors at the time you had time to do mobile and you did mobile because you wanted to stay on the top of your game, so you did the best for your college students, but completely in the same way I did it Right.

So it was time for me to leave the college and go full-time mobile and training and you pretty much did the same thing.

So we have some very good parallels there.

Yeah, definitely.

But the reason I brought up the topic tonight, by the way, for the listeners is because we both have been in the industry for a long time and we probably have some pretty good stories and some mistakes to share.

Yeah, right, oh, 100% yeah.

And I know you don't up to it and I'm owning up to it too, and I told you on the phone the other day.

When we talked about this episode, I said there's something I used to tell my college students more than I told the industry people, because the industry people probably knew it already.

But I said the second best way to learn is from your own mistakes.

The best way to learn is from the mistakes of others.

And my thought for this episode you steer it however you want to, but my thought for this episode was let's share our mistakes and have fun, be casual, just joke around and talk about screw ups made.

That's usually the thing is a day where everything goes perfect and there's no problems doesn't make for much of a story or a memory.

But man, you royally screw something up and you're always going to remember that, and a lot of the time, as long as it doesn't cause bodily harm to anyone else.

It's usually pretty funny in hindsight, right?

No matter how bad you screwed up, you look back on it and it's like yeah, I wasn't the idiot.

A couple of the stories I might share tonight could have.

Well, one of them does have bodily harm.

Okay, some of them could have had bodily harm, but the appropriate measures were taken and everything worked out okay.

And then, like you said in hindsight, you laughed after the fact because no one got hurt.

The carding get damaged it didn't cost a job thousands of dollars, but yeah, it happens.

You work in that environment for 15, 20 years.

There's going to be an accident, there's going to be a car that falls off a hoist, and when it happens it's like, oh, my freaking god I don't know if you're recording this how big my eyes just got.

Yeah.

You know it happens, but as long as no one's injured, then you deal with it.

And then you know, and some of them aren't that bad, but in hindsight, like you said, hindsight they can be funny.

Yeah right, the car off of the hoist thing.

I have never actually witnessed it in person.

There was a shop I was working out where it happened on my day off and luckily no one was hurt.

And that was one thing that we really stressed to the students in the college was hoist safety.

So it's like you can screw up a lot of stuff, you can break a lot of stuff and that's going to happen and whatever, but boy, you're under that 2,500 Silverado and that's extremely dangerous if that thing you know the hoist on kicks out or something like that.

Let me fire it off and share a story because you're right on the topic.

Okay.

So the shop that I worked at and this was two decades ago when I was still turning wrenches all day long, that's what I did at the time A coworker and this most of my stories are about me.

This one was not about me, but my coworker had backed in a.

It was a small pickup, so Ranger, s10, tacoma, whatever, a small size pickup, right, he had backed it into his hoist and the way the shop was situated, you had to kind of back in kind of a little bit of a corner, and then the back of the truck was near the wall and the heater was above it.

Okay, and you're from up north, like me, so you have snow, the bed had a bunch of snow in it, all right.

So he racked it, raised it up.

Symmetrical hoist, so it doesn't matter if you pull in forward or backwards, everything's good.

Right, he racked it, right, everything was good.

He raised it up.

And then the shop that I worked at was they always took break at like 10 o'clock in the morning and everyone would sit down and have their coffee and do whatever for half an hour or whatever.

It was just kind of the given.

It was the culture of the shop.

Uh-huh.

Right, we take a break, all right.

And then we walk back out the shop and all of a sudden I hear water spilling.

I'm like what, what?

And I look over to the guy's name was Lee.

I looked over to his hoist and he is between the wall and the tailgate of this pickup truck.

The heater had melted the snow and changed the weight distribution in the bed of the truck and the truck started tilting down off the hoist.

Oh my gosh, he was holding the bumper, he was holding the bumper and I said hey, lee, are you okay?

And he didn't say a word.

I can't blame him, but he had ice, cold water all over him and he's just holding it.

So I had to run over and lower the hoist.

Right, that's first thing we're going to do you okay, it's not killing you, it's not.

We're going to lower the hoist, get this down to the ground, and then we'll, you know.

So I had to lower the hoist down, but that was an accident, that wasn't a mistake, right, technically.

Maybe now you learn go, hey, if there's a bunch of snow in the bed of this truck, you know, rack it a little different.

I don't know.

But you know for sure he's looking at every pickup truck he ever pulls in.

after that, though, yeah, yeah, so yeah, but that's how you learn.

Yep, yeah, the hoist stuff.

Thankfully no one got hurt.

No one got hurt, not a scratch.

He probably had to go find some dry clothes, Probably January in Chicago, you know yeah.

Yeah, we, luckily, like I say, I've been pretty good with hoist, but there are.

So one of the first shops I worked at when I was still in tech school actually, so I'd work evenings there and close down the shop and just getting you know, acclimated with being in a shop and stuff like that One of our duties at the end of the night was to pull the tow truck in, because we had a tow service and it was just like a two wheel but it was a Chevy one ton truck.

So we pulled it in to the bay and it just stayed inside overnight when the shop was closed and we do that and we're doing the rest of our cleaning stuff and it was attached to a gas station.

So we were up front in the gas station, the two techs that were working in the back and we were just screwing around talking for 15, 20 minutes.

We come out to the shop and the tow truck where we pulled it into the bay is now up in the ceiling of the shop and so the hoist went all the way up with the tow truck.

We didn't set it.

So this is a single pole hoist and the arms weren't set.

It just happened to catch it like on the bottom of the transfer case.

The front arms were up under the tranny, the back arms were on the drive shaft and it lifted this thing all the way up and we're like, well, because we didn't raise the hoist, but the hoist in that bay it was one of the air, the pneumatic and hydraulic versions.

Air hydraulic Yep.

Yep.

So if you didn't have, if you didn't have the air completely, you know, shut off, it would like leak and the hoist would go up on its own.

And they had told us about it.

But we're just kind of like, oh, whatever, you know, we just we didn't really think of it that much.

And then all of a sudden that tow truck's up through the ceiling when we walk out there, and luckily you know there was a.

There was a hole in the ceiling where the cause.

We had a light bar on the top as a tow truck and that was.

That was pretty much the worst of it.

The drive shaft was bent but luckily it didn't like fall off or anything like that.

But I remember walking on like holy cow.

For the listeners.

If you have any issues, technicians, you have any issues with your hoist, please let management know, please, let your owner know, please, because it's it's not something to screw around with you.

You, you made me think of a a new story, and this for me was very early in my career, probably 1995, 1995, something like that.

Okay, I was working at a Ford dealer at the time and they had air, hydraulic, two post in-ground lifts and the.

The safeties didn't work.

So when, when, on a Friday night there was a vehicle and I don't know what the vehicle was, I don't remember, but there was a vehicle on the hoist and the tech did his due diligence and put a screw jack underneath to take the part of a safety, which is not necessarily a bad idea.

But a very similar thing to what you're talking about is, the service rider came in on Monday, turned on the power and air, pushed that hoist up a little bit and the screw jack fell and stuck through the door of a Corvette in the bay next to it.

You know I mean so it's like they had a good idea per se, but you know what it should have?

Just maintain your hoist, yeah.

So that that was an accident, you know, and the mistake would probably be on the, the service manager, whoever was in charge of maintaining the hoist and stuff like that.

So yeah, and there's.

I've had a couple of hoist accidents, but nothing catastrophic.

Yeah, I go in the I'm gonna still give you a hindsight.

Hindsight, it's like this, this shouldn't have happened.

Yeah, most times I go into a lot of shops, right, just like you do with doing the mobile.

And yeah, man, the condition of some of these hoists and some of these shops is ridiculous.

And there was one in particular that I told the guy.

I'm like I'm not working underneath this car.

I needed to be under it for the dyag, but it would get like three quarters the way up and it would shoot up like to the point where it bounced off the pads.

And then the text like, oh, it's just kind of how it is.

I'm like, no man, that's not how it is, it's extremely dangerous.

And there's, yeah, like you say, the safeties are non-existent.

You can tell it hasn't been engaged in forever or they've got like some contraption permanently releasing the safety or whatever it's sketchy out there for sure.

And it's so easy to take that stuff for granted.

There's probably a couple of hoists.

I don't think they make them anymore, but I remember being underneath.

I replaced a clutch in an F-150 pickup for a stick shift trans.

Obviously I'm gonna guess it was a 1994.

That's my guess, doesn't matter.

But you got the timeframe right.

So the hoist is up in the air and it was one of those hoists where on each arm it had the little pad that had threads on it so you could screw it up and down to change the level, so you could lift the car level.

But it also had and this is what I did not like they look like dumbbells.

They were a thing that you slid over the top to extend it, you know, six, eight inches, but they just sit on there and they're putting the weight of a car on that.

I'm like I never liked those hoists.

I never did.

But this truck was in the air and I had sent to bleed the clutch because I put a slave cylinder in it too, okay, the one that went around the input shaft and right.

So clutch and a slave cylinder, and I'm bleeding the clutch, and one of those we'll call it a dumbbell One of those dumbbells flipped out, oh geez.

And the truck did a teeter job, right.

So like tilted and tilted and we're like this truck's going down.

Well, the guy that was pumping the clutch, he freaked out and jumped out of the truck.

Right, he opened the door and jumped and he was full height because I was underneath bleeding the clutch.

Oh man.

And I moved out the other direction and the truck never felt.

We lowered it down and fixed it.

But I'm like yeah, yeah, gotta be careful with stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, I never liked the.

I used them for years and years, most of my technician career, but I never really liked the pads that were you flip up, Like there's the short one and there's the long one, that you flip up and they are centered on this pin.

And I never liked the looks of the pin when you got the long arm up.

You know, on this big heavy truck and obviously you want to make sure it's rated for the hoist, but still I those ones were never really my favorite.

I just I like something a little bit more solid.

We had a few, you know, pinch welds crush just from rust, right, like you get it up in the air if you said everything right, eric goes once it's up in the air.

That's scary.

Yep, yep, and I didn't really have a problem with those flip up ones like you're talking about.

But one thing I always told my students, and this is basic hoist safety this is not really where I wanted to go tonight.

Yeah, yeah, we can, it's okay it works.

You know, if the front ones are flipped forward, the back ones need to be flipped backwards.

Yep, yep, because if they're all flipped the same direction and since we're doing video right, if they're all flipped the same direction and someone pushes on the front of the car, they can go bloop Right and yeah, it's no.

So I mean, there's a lot of thank God I didn't drop a car myself.

Mm-hmm, same here Does not look like a fun experience.

I'm glad I avoided that and hopefully everybody else can do that too.

You know, like I say lots of mistakes to be made and I make plenty of them, but when it comes to like the real serious stuff, I'd like to think that you can have enough focus to do that stuff right, you know.

So let me ask you a question.

We'll change the subject a little bit.

Sure, same subject but a different issue.

How many cars have you caught on fire and I mean really on fire, I don't mean I'm torching off a sway bar link and the rubber boot caught on fire and that, yeah, like real fires, like fire.

Not on fire.

Well, I mean, I guess you could have one of those too, but you know, I can think of two.

Yeah, like.

I like you first.

Fire to the point where it caused damage to the vehicle.

There was an Impala that I was spraying the underside off with brake clean and it went and it's up on the hoist running and you got the hose but it melted some plastic and stuff.

That wasn't too bad and a couple other ones like that.

Where it's usually involves brake clean is where the fires were, or the torch right.

You can start a few components on fire and for those who found themselves.

We're gonna have some talks about torches tonight too, because there's a safety aspect there too.

Yeah, yeah, sparks, sparks from that.

The worst one probably was, and it didn't actually catch the vehicle on fire, but the whole shop might as well have been on fire for this one.

So it was actually my personal truck and I was doing it after hours at the shop that I worked at, as the owner said.

By yourself.

Yeah, all by myself.

And the owner said yeah, you wanna work on your vehicle, go ahead, just do it after hours.

Okay, cool.

So I'm doing two things I'm doing a pinion seal on my rear diff on my Chevy truck and I'm doing a U-joint.

The pinion seal went out because the U-joint was bad, so pull the driveshaft out and it's the middle of winter, like you mentioned.

So we got the drip and there's water pooled up on the shop floor.

Because it was an old shop, it wasn't, you know, it didn't drain very well, so we've got puddles.

You see, even watching salt and stuff melting from the car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.

So I'm standing in a puddle underneath there, I do the pinion seal and I spray it off with brake clean, right.

So spray the whole thing down, whatever, and I even blew the differential off with air once I was done, just okay, whatever.

So now I'm gonna go down and I'm gonna change my U-joint, which is kind of resting underneath the vehicle, and it's the style of U-joint where it had the plastic inserts.

It's a GM truck with the injected plastic and you heat it up to get the up.

Yeah, so you know where this is going.

So I wasn't thinking about the brake clean, but what had happened is it fell, it dripped off of the diff and it just sat on top of the water.

It was just hanging out there and I went to hit the end of the U-joint with the torch and I'm right there next to this puddle and the hole underneath of the truck is on fire, like my truck's up on the hoist, and there's flames going up underneath it of the gas tank, and again by myself I'm like oh shit.

And so I was able to grab the garden hose and hose the whole thing down and get it out, and it actually wasn't too bad to get out.

But then the whole shop, of course, is full of smoke, smoke alarms going off and everything, and I had to open the door in the middle of winter and air the place out and I just I felt like such an idiot and luckily nothing really bad happened, but it definitely could have.

It's just like like-.

Yeah, well, you know we're about to resolve the situation but yeah, I've seen people freeze when it comes to fire.

I worked with a guy on a Dodge Ram looking for a vacuum leak, hit the distributor right under the hood and he's like this like you're in the headlights and I'm like, what are you doing?

So I ran over and grabbed the hose, but that was what happened with him.

I don't know.

Let me tell you about the day I learned how to repair plastic fuel lines.

Okay, I'm bored, because some of you that might be listening that are as old as I am, fuel lines didn't used to be plastic but in the late 80s, early 90s they became plastic right.

So I probably had it was a Ford Taurus.

I remember it was a Ford Taurus, but I don't know what year.

Could have been 89, could have been 2000, or 90, I'm sorry, not 2000.

I don't know for sure, but they used to have those plastic sway bar links Right.

There were plastic one on each side in the front and they had an 18 millimeter nut.

That was the big nut that held it in place.

But then the end of the stud had a 516, so an eight millimeter.

And if you try to take them off of the wrench you bust that eight millimeter off every fricking time, especially if you're in the rust area, like Sean and I are.

Yeah Right.

So I got to the point where with the blue wrench right the oxy-settling torch, I would just cut them off, cut the nut off, whatever, put the new sway.

And I think at the time where we were using Moog replacements which were greaseable and metal and cool, you won't have the problem again which had torched off.

Well, I didn't know it, but I was doing the right front corner.

I remember I was doing the right front corner and there is a plastic shield that runs up through there, because we got plastic fuel lines that come from the fuel tank and this is a return system.

So you got a high pressure line that comes up through the right front fender and then goes up into the engine compartment and then the return line comes back down after it goes past the fuel pressure regulator, right, but it's kind of hidden so you don't see it right.

So, and when you shut that car off, it's stupid Fuel pressure spec is 39.5

PSI.

If you look it up in service information, it's basically 40 PSI, whatever.

So I'm torching this thing, but the heat, not the flame.

But the heat went far enough that it melted through the plastic line and 40 PSI of gasoline sprayed directly back into the torch head and it burst into flames.

And I immediately, you know, dropped the torch and there was a fire extinguisher right next to my toolbox and I think it was a CO2 fire extinguisher.

Whatever the case, I put it out.

I didn't get burned.

Thankfully I didn't get burned.

I could have easily got burned, because that flame came right at my face.

Oh geez.

But I didn't get burned, but I put the fire out.

Next thing I do is I look over at the office because there's a window from the office and my boss, who was the one of my two bosses, was the service writer.

He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window to see what's going on, because he heard the fire extinguisher go off and once he saw it was out, I think he decided I'm not gonna ask any questions, move back forward, move back forward and keep working on this stuff.

And then I had melted fuel lines to repair and that was literally the first time I repaired plastic Ford fuel lines because I wasn't running a whole new fuel line for the whole car.

I had to make a patch and do it legit with the right tools and that kind of stuff.

But yeah, that was a little bit frightening.

So yeah pay attention to where you point that torch.

Yeah, no kidding, welding, torching, whatever.

It can get pretty easy to just focus in on what you're looking at, what you're torching.

Well, there's a lot more happening with it.

And yeah, there's, like you say, there's a whole thing on torch safety.

It's just as dangerous as racking a vehicle.

Yeah, and half the people listening to this podcast don't use oxycellene torches because they're from down south.

That is true.

It is always interesting.

Yeah, it's nothing.

Right, yeah, it's interesting to talk to somebody from down south, especially in those attack and do an alignment, just, for instance, like the torch live next to the alignment rack.

That's just where it was in the shop, because good luck trying to adjust any of these vehicles if they're 10 years old or older.

In Minnesota it's not happening unless you have a torch.

And then you have to do like the calculations of you know, if you heat something up to move it, well it's gonna expand and then it's gonna contract when it's cold.

So you have to like figure it out so that it ends up in the right point of alignment once it's all done.

That, yeah, that was.

I don't miss any of that stuff.

I did something similar to what you were talking about with that torus, not with a torch, but it was actually.

Again, my car is one of my first cars.

It was a Chevy Corsica.

I think it was a 1990 or something like that, and it was pretty rusty at the time because it was after 2000.

And I don't even know what I was doing, but I was in the shop.

It was at the shop at school and I was going to jack it up, take the tire off or something.

And when I did it I stuck the jack under there and if you remember those Corsica's, they had like all of the brake lines and the fuel lines together that ran underneath the driver's side, and so I just kind of like stuck the jack under there and started going to town to lift this thing up and I got it up in the air.

Well, I crushed all the brake lines and all the fuel lines on this rusty Corsica.

So, yeah, I got to learn brake and fuel lines on that one too, and I think I was just like going to inspect the brakes or something like that and just oh, let's go.

I don't know if you remember.

Do you know what an Omni GLH is?

I can't say that I do.

It's a turbocharged four cylinder Dodge Omni from the 80s and.

Glh, if I'm not mistaken, stood for goes like hell.

But this car was in shitty condition, rusty, and when we lifted it on the hoist it was actually one of the employees cars we lifted on the hoist.

The car almost split in half.

Oh geez, just the hoist arms push right up through the floor pan and yeah, I guess this car's done, yeah, yeah.

There's been a couple trucks like that where the frame's so rusty, you see, like that little bit of a of a bow to it almost but well, I got another fire.

I got another fire story, if you want it.

I like fire.

It has nothing to do with fuel, though.

Okay.

It's completely different.

Okay, and this, ironically, was a firebird and it needed a starter motor.

It was in for two things.

It was it was a no crank, no start, diagnosed a bad starter motor and we're talking a little bit older, but still, you know 350, chevy, whatever.

You throw a starter motor in, no, no problem, we're good, we got power in the s terminal.

If we want to go through the diagnostic spine, it needed a starter motor, right.

So I put a starter motor in, and this again was when I was really young, really early in my career, put the starter motor in.

The other thing it was in for was an oil leak.

So I got the starter motor installed, got the vehicle to start, then we raised it up in the air on the hoist while it's running and we're underneath looking with flashlights for where's the oil come from.

Fair enough mm-hmm right.

So that's what we're doing.

All of a sudden, I think it was the right side, I think it doesn't matter, but all of a sudden there's flames coming out the engine compartment like what the hell.

So what I did, again learned from my mistakes.

When I installed that starter motor, the positive battery cable going to this starter motor, I had tightened it down but it was touching the exhaust manifold oh so when the car ran and got hot it melted through the insulation and now we have a dead short between the positive battery cable and the exhaust manifold.

So it started an electrical fire.

So my boss, who was looking for the oil leak with me thank god he was there too, because it took two of us to get this done he grabbed the fire extinguisher and was putting it out while I'm lowering the hoist down.

But since it's an electrical short, it kept relighting.

Sure, put it out, it would relight.

He put it out, it rewind.

The whole time the the car's coming down.

We get it all the way down.

He's still putting out until I can pull the battery cable off, like all right, well, I guess I'm replacing a battery cable.

It didn't really do much damage to the car, but right, lesson learned yeah, yeah pay attention to where you run those cables now, was that the same boss as the boss for the Taurus was the same guy yes, hey, boss.

Well, I worked with that shot for 14 years okay, you know, oh, I got another story.

I got another story about that boss too, but it has nothing to do with fire.

Yeah, they were great to me.

If they're listening they're probably not, but if they're listening they were great to me.

I still have a great relationship.

I still do programming and mobile for them, but they were.

They were the shop that that I literally worked almost half of my automotive career turning wrenches at, and and they treated me very well.

And then I started getting into you know, education and stuff like that.

So but yeah, I still go back and talk to him.

You know so sweet.

So if I, if I throw him under the bus, I don't think they're gonna be too hard of a time yeah, he's got plenty of ammo for on you too, I'm sure oh yeah, I'm sure yeah, I had an electrical fire and then this was actually more recent as doing mobile, it was a Honda Odyssey and I think it was.

It was either the stereo or the DVD player didn't work and it was all in the center console of this Odyssey.

It was like a early 2000s.

And so I'm doing my checks and stuff and nothing's working and I end up finding a 30 amp fuse that's blown in the under hood fuse box and it happened to be for the DVD system or whatever audio unit I was trying to diagnose and it's blown.

I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna throw a fuse in there and just let's see what happens.

And so I put a fuse in there and it doesn't blow.

I'm like, okay, well, I'm gonna continue with my testing and see maybe it works.

Now, you know.

And so I'm testing and it doesn't work still and I'm looking at circuits and stuff, trying to figure out what's going on.

And I'm really focused in on the center console because it's really component is there's, there's a screen up top in the center area, but like nothing even works on the dash.

So that's kind of where I'm focused to see like what am I missing here?

And I, even after the fuses replaced nothing.

And I'm doing my thing and testing whatever, and like I smell smoke and so I'm like I'm looking around, I don't see anything.

And finally I look up and it's like billowing out of the headliner, just like, and it's smoking a lot by this point.

And what had happened was where the, the DVD screen was underneath the headliner.

Somebody had been in there at some point or another and just took I don't know a big snips and cut the whole harness.

For what reason, I don't know.

I'm maybe it was in a wreck rebuilt auction, who knows.

But somebody just went with all the wires and so they were all together touching at the end of this harness, right, and they were also sitting on top of the headliner, which is like this foam insulation type stuff, and yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so this thing's going and I'm just like I'm out in the parking lot, right, so I don't have a fire extinguisher on me.

I'm like what am I gonna do?

I don't want this car to burn down to the ground.

So luckily I keep bottles of water in my van just for me, because it's hot out in thirsty.

And so I grabbed like four of these plastic bottles of water and I I waved down the guy in the shop.

You know like, hey, fire, fire and so.

But I'm up there with these little ice mountain water bottles, squirting them up onto the headliner, because I can't pour it yeah, I can't pour it on there, I have to like, just squirt them on the ceiling.

So I did manage to get to a point where it wasn't, there wasn't flames anymore, but that was.

That was a scary moment, for sure, and and I was completely unsuspecting, right, because if you didn't pop and I really wasn't thinking I was gonna find anything, like I did, and all of a sudden, oh shit, this thing's on fire.

I guess.

I guess part of the point is I don't care what technician you are, you know where your fire extinguishers are.

Yeah, don't underestimate the importance of that, because accidents are going to happen.

Right, they're gonna have you gotta.

You had a water bottle, okay, at least you had something you know.

It reminds me I should put on Amazon a couple fire extinguishers well, I mean our industry, I mean there's a lot of potential.

There's a lot of potential to have fires mm-hmm you know, from electricity, from fuel, from you know even oils, lubricants you know it's.

I know someone that poured oil into there.

It was an old Hyundai.

They poured oil into it, they spilled it on the exhaust manifold and the oil caught fire on the exhaust and in the parking lot, you know it's.

It's like, okay, I never would have thought about that, but they were in the parking lot, so where's the closest fire extinguisher crap?

I?

got one inside you know, yep, I had a.

I had an Audi Audi or Volkswagen go up in flames like two weeks after I worked on it at Firestone.

I had done a water pump on it and the the customers were, and rightfully so but blaming us and saying, hey, you guys just worked on this thing not that long ago and now the thing burnt down and luckily no one was hurt, but the car's gone, obviously, and so that was the nice part about working for Firestone is they were able to hire a third party, like fire investigator whatever the title is for that to go in and actually determine what caused this fire

, to see is Firestone liable or not.

And I was sweating it.

I felt pretty bad about it.

I just assumed why must have screwed something up.

And they went through it and they ended up finding out it was a power steering.

One of the lines burst or something happened to the power steering line, went down onto the exhaust, and that's what ended up starting the fire in this thing.

And so we I don't know what Firestone ended up doing.

I know they did something for the customer, but it wasn't.

You know, it was determined that it wasn't our fault from doing the water pump that caused it, but that's.

That's a crappy feeling to be like.

Oh man, I burned down a car like I was.

I was bumming for a while because it took them weeks to get the answer on that.

I got one that's a little bit different, and this will probably be my last old car for tonight, I think okay but we'll see all right again.

It was when I was very young, in my early 20s, mid 20s, whatever the case and I had to do sorry, young guys, I had to do a timing cover gasket on a 3.8

liter GM engine.

That was probably a 1989 Pontiac Bonneville okay, I think that's.

It was maroon.

I remember you remember stuff like that, right, and I did the timing cover gasket.

And for those of you that don't know, when you take the timing cover off, crank pulley comes off.

You take the timing cover, water pump and all that stuff too.

But you take the timing cover off, the oil pump is in the timing cover and it's got six or eight torx bolts that hold the pieces together, right.

So you take it off, you clean all the gasket material off.

You got to clean it all up, you clean out the oil pump, and then I had a tub of Vaseline on my workbench.

So anytime I took an oil pump like that apart, I would pack it with Vaseline.

So, number one, it's lubricated.

Number two, it gets a prime and the Vaseline is just dissolving the oil.

And it were going to be fine, right, you could use grease, you could, whatever the case, but you got to pack it with something.

Sure, you make sure you get oil pressure quickly, okay.

So I did all this stuff, put it all back together and it was kind of a pain in the butt for those of you that have done this before.

You got to line up the pulley not the pulley but the gear for the pump perfectly with the crankshaft.

It's kind of a pain in the butt to get it together.

Once you get it together, you're good.

New new front crank seal.

You know, did everything correctly.

New gasket new, everything right.

New water pump.

New belt new.

Yeah, put the whole front of the engine back together and the reason it was there was for a leaking.

Timing cover gasket right until.

August.

It was a timing cover.

I go drive it afterwards repair verification and the engine freaking locks up while driving it and it wouldn't start.

It wouldn't start, it would start.

Finally, I did get it to start because it locked up about a block from the shop.

I did get it to start and drive it back to the shop and shut it off right away.

What ended up happening was and there's a lesson to be learned here what ended up happening was was on the weekend we were closed on Saturdays and Sundays one of the let's just say, employees it was the same owner was was working on his project car and his aluminum intake manifold.

We're talking like a early 70s carbureted you know what, what it doesn't matter what, it is okay the, the aluminum intake manifold.

It had a little clearance issue with the valve covers that he had for this v8, right.

So he had the intake manifold in the vise with a sanding bar and he was he was cleaning off aluminum to make clearance right, okay.

Well, he was doing on my bench right next to my tub of acilleen oh so all the aluminum shavings not all of them, but some of the aluminum shavings went into my vaseline tub and I did not know it oh man, when I came back and packed that pump.

All I did was grab a handful of acilleen, pack the pump, yeah, and it chewed everything up.

He's still, to this day, won't own up to that.

I ended up, I ended up putting a motor in that they, they, they got a used motor.

I didn't have to pay for the motor, but I, I put the motor in and they didn't pay me labor for it.

But you know, whatever, I'm not going to argue.

They took good care of me.

So, but that that's another weird one.

So the lesson to be learned there is put caps on all your stuff yeah so nothing falls in there.

You know it's like a brake clean, not brake clean.

Brake fluid is a no-brainer.

You leave the cap off and it absorbs water, fair enough.

But you know some of your other odds and ends is take the extra second to put the cap on because, yeah, yeah, I will never pump an oil pump with, or pack an oil pump with, a grease or vaseline that I don't know.

I'm like no yeah, my thing was parts, like if I had an engine apart, it was pretty much specifically engine components.

Right, you want to keep them clean maybe a transmission, maybe a differential but in a busy shop, keeping them in an area where it can stay clean, I know it's always kind of a challenge for me, like there's not going to be somebody walking by and kick something or, yeah, like somebody grinding away and sparks are flying into here.

So I had to get creative with you know, where do I put the stuff?

Like, if it's a pickup, can I put it in the back of the bed or something like that.

You know, that was definitely a challenge.

The motor I wrecked was, want to say, like a 2006 Audi with a v6, and I had never really done any Audi engine work before, but I'd done timing belts and that's what we were doing on this.

One was a timing belt, water pump, thermostat, all that stuff, and this is one of the ones where you have to have the big bar that goes across to hold the can shaft.

I think I've done one of those, but yes, I know, exactly what you're talking about because the the sprockets aren't keyed and so you, you loosen it up, it holds the cams in and then you can put the sprockets wherever you want.

There's a pin for the crank, whatever.

And it was a.

I was excited to do it because it was a big job.

I hadn't done anything like that and I had done some, you know, timing chains and belts and stuff, and I was like this is, this is a cool challenge, because you pull off the whole front of the car and everything.

It's whatever I'm doing the timing belt, and at the shop that I would do without pulling off the front of the car, by the way, it's just a little tight yeah, right, yeah, the service mode or whatever they they call it.

Um, so I, at the shop that I worked at, I was not only the technician but also like service writer.

They didn't have dedicated service writers.

So we answered phones, we ordered parts, we sold jobs and then we did the jobs and it was very inefficient.

I wouldn't recommend that to anybody, but that's what we did at the time, that's what I did.

And so back and forth, back and forth phone call, write an estimate, call a customer, get this car, whatever.

I forgot to tighten up one of the nuts on the idler pulley for the timing belt.

I put it on their finger tight, like it was there, but it didn't get tightened down, didn't double check everything.

Yeah, distractions, distractions, mess that up, yep, yep.

And totally my fault, right, you know, like I got it apart, I need to make sure that I double, triple check everything.

I after that I would have someone else just double check it for me, like, hey, just make sure everything's tight under there before I put it all back together, whatever.

But I didn't and I left it loose and it ran just fine when I started it up is great, timing's perfect.

Yeah, I nailed it All right, I'm cool as, like two weeks later came back on the hook and the, the, the valve, this thing crashed when he was going down the highway.

So the, the motor was moving when the, when the valves crashed and we ended up I did the motor.

Similar situation to you.

The shop didn't make me pay for the motor, but I put it in free of charge.

As far as labor costs go, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong.

At the time in my career I was perfectly happy with that because I didn't have the money.

Yeah, I had the money to go.

well, I got to buy a new engine for this car because and we're I wasn't even sure if it was my fault or not because of what happened with the Vaseline Right.

Yeah, but I mean they were.

they were cool about it but yeah, yeah, but the the piston, when I took the cylinder head off of the motor that we took out of there and the valve like the face of the valve is like sideways stuck down in the top of the piston.

I'll send you a picture later.

I still have the picture of it.

I mean, there's just catastrophic what happened to this thing when it went.

But catastrophic failures.

Pictures of catastrophic failures are always funny, rod sticking out the side of the block.

You take an oil pan off and there's 27 different pieces of metal laying in the bottom of the oil pan.

You're like that's part of a wrist pin, that's part of the connecting rod, that's like yep, yep, yeah, that's the one that comes to mind as far as smoking an entire engine.

I've broken all kinds of stuff, but I'm trying to think if I killed any other motors.

Oh, we probably both did a couple that weren't as memorable.

Right, right.

But what can I ask this question then?

We've all been injured.

We've all got cuts, we've all got scrapes, we all got bruises, we all hit our head on a hoist.

We've all had to deal with blood and paper towels and all that kind of crap.

Have you ever injured yourself badly?

I got a story, but I was going to ask you the question first.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean the contusions.

I just sent you the picture of that valve if you want to look at it.

You know, hitting my head on stuff, the hoist or control arms of a vehicle yeah, that was that, I didn't even watch it.

There we go.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, I kind of forget I'm doing video, that's perfect.

But yeah, you know, bumping your head, cuts, scrapes, smashing fingers that's a big one, right?

I've lost fingernails and stuff like that, some pretty deep cuts at times where probably should have had stitches.

But some superglue and electrical tape works too.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But the worst one that I recall from being in the shop was I opened up a radiator cap on a vehicle that was overheating and should not have been opened up.

But I grabbed the top hose and even though it had pressure on it, it was relatively cold to the touch or what I thought was like, well, it's not hot, right, and the car also hadn't been running for what I thought was that long.

Well, I was wrong about all of this, and it was.

It was a Nissan.

It had like a really weird cooling system where you had to get the airlift if you wanted to bleed this thing out, and I didn't have that and it was.

It was the coolant that was in there was ready to boil as soon as that cap came off.

So I cracked the cap loose and it came up and it burned my whole hand and wrist to the point where it was like blistering.

My skins are just like falling off, and that that's because then my whole, my whole arm I had to have wrapped, you know, and I'm still trying to come to work the next day and coolant got everywhere, all over my box and everything, and that's that sucked for sure, and I mean a tough way to learn a lesson.

And then I knew like hey, don't open the radiator cap on a hot car.

But I'm like grabbing the hose, I'm like, oh, it's not that bad, hasn't been running that long and just volcano out of there.

So what you're saying there kind of relates to the story I was going to share and I was going to keep it kind of simple is when, when, when you lose fear, you get too comfortable with a particular tool or a particular system.

Like if, if, if you use a circular saw or a table saw all day long, you start to lose some fear.

Yep.

That's when you cut off a finger, right?

I've seen it happen to people.

Um, I did the same damn thing with an air hammer and it was stupid.

It was stupid.

And please ever listen to this story because it was, uh that I don't know what day of the week it was, but whatever the case, I went in the morning.

My first job was a pinion bearings on a rear wheel drive a domestic vehicle, I don't remember it was a GM or a Ford or whatever.

But you don't.

You take the pinion gear out.

You know, take the pinion nut off, take the pinion gear out.

Then you got a.

Uh, well, usually I would.

I would cut the cage for the, the main, the bigger of the two pinion gears, cut the cage, drop all the bearings, then maybe cut the cage.

But then you put the pinion gear in a vise with a big clamshell type of thing, right, so you use a press Okay, our press wasn't that good at the time, but I I had good luck in the past put, put that clamshell on and then taken a dead blow hammer and and driving, driving the pinion gear down out of the the race, right?

Well, I happened to set it all up and my air hammer was connected right there to the hose, sitting right next to it, and I'm looking at the end of the pinion gear and there's a little indent right.

I'm like I'll just use my pardon, my language, I'm sorry, that's uh, and I'll just, I'll just, you know, push it right down with the air hammer will be done and I could press the new bearing on and all that kind of stuff.

Well, me, and if we're doing this video, I'm holding, I'm holding the pinion gear like this and my air hammer is coming in this way, and it bounced twice and then it fell off and it went into my hand and before I could release the trigger, I felt it bump that bone two or three times.

Right, I felt it.

I'm like, oh, all right, so of course it's a dirty air hammer.

So now I got grease in a hole and puncture wound right.

And I went to the bathroom and I cleaned it up and I did what you were talking about.

I'm like, okay, well, I got it cleaned up as best I think.

I got it cleaned up, got it cleaned up, put some paper towels on it, electrical tape, got the bleeding to stop, went back to finish the differential.

As soon as I started working my hands, again it started soaking the damn thing.

I went back and cleaned it up again, wrapped it up.

Bleeding stop, I'm going to go back.

I did finish the differential.

I did get it done.

But as soon as I was done with it and filled the fluid back up and everything like that, then I went and told my bosses.

I'm like, yeah, I think I need to go to the emergency room.

You know there's a hole in my hand and I can't stop the bleeding and whatever.

I'm glad I did.

They x-rayed my hand no broken bone.

I'm amazed because I felt that air hammer hit that bone a couple of times.

But when they irrigated it there was black stuff.

There's no way I cleaned it good enough, but they cleaned it up and since it was a puncture wound, it only took two or three stitches.

It was deep but it was centralized.

A small hole, just an air chisel bit, a center punch type of bit.

So, yeah, so I taped it back out and went back to work.

Yeah, so my point of that story is do not lose fear.

You know what power tools any tool for that matter, but power tools I mean they have potential to do a lot of damage.

And as soon as you get a little too comfortable, that's when accidents happen.

You don't want to run a worm drive circular saw across your thigh, which I've seen happen because the guy got too freaking comfortable with the dual chainsaw accidents Same thing Right?

Yeah, we're not even talking the same industry.

Right, oh geez.

My buddy Sly says I have finger open recently with the chainsaw.

Yeah, just getting too comfortable.

But what you were saying actually reminded me of one of my other probably my other most significant injury in a shop and had to do exactly with what you're referring to just being too comfortable.

And so this is.

Another dangerous area of the car is the coil springs with the strut setup.

I mean any coil spring, but especially with the strut setup, because you got to load them down in order to change the strut out right, and that's what I was doing and the make some good tools for that and then make some bad tools for that.

Yeah, Well, they make some really sketchy stuff for sure I would not recommend any of those.

But the setup that we had was out of somewhere in between.

It could be used safely, but you really had to pay attention and not be, you know, just like I was just kind of careless about it and I didn't have it.

I had to set well enough to compress the spring and everything, but the nut on top didn't want to come loose.

And I'm working it and I'm doing some different things, and then one of the little arms slipped off this coil spring and I got super lucky here.

Like this could have been way, way, way worse, but when it went off and you have no time to react because, especially if you're standing right over the top of it, like I was when it went off, my hand was between the coil spring or I should say, the little top plate that's on there Strip out, yeah.

Strip out.

Yeah, it was between my face and it.

So when it came up it actually knocked my knuckle into my chin and if you look right there, I tooth went right through my lip and that was just from my hand.

I can't imagine if it was the spring that hit me, but it went like this went up and it went across the shop and hit the ceiling on the other side of the shop and, similar to what you were saying, I stayed and I fixed the car, but my lip is like this by the time.

I'm done doing it.

I'm like yeah, guys, I'm going home.

I like how your voice changed.

I like how the lip is, like whew, that's exactly what I sounded like.

And then everybody asked me for the next month, like what, are you like a fight club now or something I'm like?

No, I just got in a fight with a coil spring and I lost.

Yeah, I've heard.

I haven't seen an accident like that happen with the spring, but I've heard many, many stories.

I think my brother-in-law might have got knocked out cold by one.

Oh, I've seen people get knocked out by a wrench, like pulling as hard as they can, and like I saw a guy get knocked out cold from that.

Yeah, and you know there's certain things that you learn with experience.

Like I was even okay, I don't have access If I called shops.

I do mobile for I could probably borrow a hoist right On a day when they're closed, borrow a hoist and whatever.

But my 14 Silverado needed front brakes the other day and I did it in the driveway on jack stands and you know, I just I did it.

It's like, whatever, I'll go buy new rotors, buy new pads, lube, everything, do it right, Right, but I just did it in the driveway because the weather was nice enough, but I still caught myself that these big 18 millimeter bolts that hold the bracket for the caliper on and I got these long straight snap on wrenches right, so to get a little leverage, because I'm not even using air tools in my driveway right, like to get a little leverage.

I'm like, all right, cool.

But I got to push this direction and I'm looking at it going.

If this slips, my fist is punching the concrete.

So I went open-handed right, push it open-handed, something that simple, right.

So if you're pushing a wrench, a ratchet or whatever toward something, go open-handed Right, because if you slip you're just going to smack it, you're not going to punch it and bust your knuckles open.

And that's just experience of practice.

Yeah, I think after you do it for a while at least I can speak from my experience you get this sense almost.

It's like another feeling when something around you is potentially dangerous, yeah, right, yeah, like the torch or something sharp, even right, just like a pick or a screwdriver I'm very aware of the amount of force I'm applying to it, in what direction, and that's like it's a weird thing to explain because I don't think about it.

It's just I'm very conscious of this thing that I know is potentially dangerous, whereas- that's yeah, just starting out you don't have that as a newbie, Like that's not there.

But the more you do this, it just sort of evolves.

Yeah, that counts to my experience and it's the same thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're talking about is when you start to do a procedure, you're starting to do something with a wrench or a ratchet or whatever, and as soon as you start to do it, you go uh, this is a bad, freaking idea.

Uh-huh, yeah Right.

Let me adjust a little bit.

And okay, there we go.

And yeah, oh that but again when I was 23, 24 years old.

That's something you almost can't you almost can't teach.

It almost has to be from experience.

Yeah, you gotta smash your knuckles a few times You've gotta blast your muscles a couple times to figure it out.

Yup, Well, I mean and it goes back to what you started the conversation with is it is very good if you can learn from others like us talking about these things don't do these things.

But, man, you're never going to forget it once you do it yourself and once you experience that, yup, you smash your knuckles or you put a whatever through your finger or you're bleeding all over, you're like boy, that was stupid.

I'm not doing that again.

Hopefully that's the goal, as you can learn from it and not do that stuff in the future.

But I think that's going back to what I was saying.

Like that's the sort of sense that you develop with working with tools and working with your hands and around.

You know belt drives right.

That's another dangerous area.

I watched a guy, one time buddy of mine.

It was a GM3-8 and the alternator fan.

It had a fan but it was on the outside and when it was running it looked like a solid piece of plastic.

You could have touched it with his finger and I heard him go ding.

I've seen the same exact thing happen.

So I leaned on it and it took like chunks out of his hand.

I'd be lying to say if I hadn't got dinged by a few radiator fans, that's definitely happened.

Oh yeah, you're trying to do something while the engine's running to find a noise or listen to a water pump bearing, or something like that, and it goes ding, ding, ding, ding oh.

Oh yep that happens.

Well, I got a different one for you.

I got a different one.

And this is what called the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast right.

This one's a diagnostic one.

Okay.

And it's old school but it's basic and it's a mistake that I made and I learned from it.

They weren't called Expresses back then but it was a full-size GM van like a G-van.

Probably it was OBD-1, so it was probably late 80s, really early 90s, something around there.

Okay, and I followed the diagnostic chart.

Again, I was not at I'm not saying I'm the rock star, but I wasn't at the level I'm at now, right, so I was still learning and I followed the chart.

Okay, check for powers and grounds.

The GM chart at the time said you know, disconnect this connector.

Take your voltmeter, because we know GM likes voltmeters take your voltmeter.

Check for power here.

Check for power here, check for ground.

So I did everything exactly the way the chart said and said replace the ECM.

So I called the ECM on it, told my boss I got an ECM, put it in and this is before programming.

This was probably swap over the memcale kind of days.

Right, take that little cover off and swap over the memcale and plug it in and it's good to go.

So no, didn't fix it and I went back and, you know, went through the whole thing again.

I think I used a test light and when I checked power.

I had power with a voltmeter, but I didn't have a lit test light.

You know where I'm going with this now, right?

Yeah, I'm like I did not understand voltage drop that well back then, and that's one of the things that caused me to learn voltage drop.

And I actually found out that the GM charts broke on that particular car.

They maybe they fixed it by now, but they probably don't care about a car that was anymore Right.

But yeah, and that's how I learned about it.

So there's lots of podcasts, lots of classes talk about voltage drop and you know, you and I go out and work on cars and like it's got power here.

Why do you double check power?

Because you don't know how they check power.

Yeah, and it could give 12 volts or 14 volts on a meter, but it might not light a headlight the whole concept.

So that is a lesson I learned about voltage drop the hard way.

Grand, it was probably only $125 module, but still I never forgot it.

Yep, never forgot it, and now I always think about it.

I'm like, all right, cool, I checked power is really quick with my voltmeter and we still got this weird problem.

You know what?

Let's go break out the headlight or let's look at the wiring diagram and do a second or a better test, because I don't want to make that mistake again.

I don't want to tell, I don't want to tell a shop you need a $1,200 computer because I mistested a power wire that had a little green fuzz growing somewhere in the middle of it.

Yep, so that was a mistake that I learned from.

Yeah.

The diagnostic mistakes, man.

I mean, just listen to my show, and I've been actually trying to focus on a lot of the case studies that I've shared recently of like, hey, these are the things I struggle with, these are the ones I've screwed up.

Here's why, here's how maybe you can learn from it.

Here's what I learned from it, right, and so I think that's important stuff to share.

You know it's real life and, again, center of what we're talking about.

You know other people can hopefully gain something from it, but you know, all the mistakes that I make, I try to make it worth it, like you're saying, is to not do that same thing next time, right, and then, yeah, okay, laziness can happen, that's definitely a thing, and maybe you miss something.

But hopefully, if you're doing everything that you can, you're able to do all the tests to get you to the right answer.

But then even still, sometimes you miss something, you misunderstand something.

You're wondering because service info is, you know, not exactly described the way that you want it to, or something doesn't make sense.

I had this Ford Focus recently where I told him to get a fuel pump driver module for it, because everything I was coming up with was the fuel pump driver was bad, like I could run it on the broadcast.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yes, I could run it.

I could run the pump without the driver.

It worked fine.

Check my duty cycle.

Fuel pump control, fuel pump monitor, everything.

It was there as far as what service info tells you and there's a chart it says the duty cycle for this fuel pump module.

And fuel pump module from Ford right part number didn't fix it Same thing and what ended up fixing it was the PCM.

We put a PCM in there and that changed what the duty cycle looked like on the control, which then satisfied the fuel pump driver module.

Both of them didn't matter which one I used at that point, but I measured it and according to what I saw on the chart that Ford has, at least in all data and identification, it was right.

And according to what my scope was measuring as far as duty cycle frequency, it was right, but it was different with the new PCM.

It was actually used when we put in there, but we programmed it and it worked just fine fired right up.

I was wondering what happened with that car.

Yeah, and my assumption is that you had a hard time pulling the trigger on the PCM.

Yeah, yeah, making that decision.

But that was my same thought.

I'm like, yeah, it's almost to the point where you're going to have to try PCM, but I don't want to pull a trigger on it either, right, you know, because you covered your basis, right I?

thoroughly check the circuits between the PCM and the fuel pump driver modules.

I'm like if there's some voltage here that I'm not, you know, I'm not observing I don't notice because there is voltage on the circuits that's produced by the modules, but Didn't find anything they low tested find between and.

So I was kind of down to either a we've somehow got Too bad fuel pump driver modules to do the same thing.

I'm like I don't, I was really didn't or or it's a PCM.

But the other thing I was thinking I was like well, what if this code Definition is incomplete, like sometimes they they don't have everything in there and the fuel pump driver modules actually upset about the pump for some reason, like a weird voltage on the pump or an amperage on the pump.

That's not, it's not described.

And so that's what I was kind of weighing and I tested the pump and it's like six amps.

I'm like I believe that's normal for this particular pump and it's making pressure, it runs on it.

So I'm like tell you what man my guts going with PCM on this one, and I didn't have a known good to compare to.

I do now.

So if anybody needs known good for FPC, fpm on a 16 focus with a two liter GDI engine.

I've got it and I will tell you I kind of want to do a case study on this one, so I'll have all the details, but the duty cycle that is present on there does not match what's in the chart as far as a good valid off signal, and so that, really that really threw me off.

But that's yeah, it's the sort of stuff we're up against every single day and you're bound to make a mistake here and there doing this, you know.

Can I share one more with you?

Please do.

We've been going for over an hour.

I don't know how long you you want, though you want the podcast to be about to share one with you really quick, and this actually doesn't necessarily have to do with a Automotive per se.

It's just a mistake to learn from, and Some of you listening know me, some of you don't, it doesn't matter.

I've been training in the industry Sean's been in my classes and stuff in in many years past for about two decades and I never screwed up teaching a class as bad as I did not too horribly long ago, and I'm not gonna tell you what class it was or where it was if you were there.

I apologize, but I've learned a lesson I got.

I got diagnosed with COVID, covid positive.

A couple days before this.

This actually happened and I was coughing really bad and Getting fatigued, but I had to suck it up and drive on.

I'm like I'm not gonna give up.

And and I had an allergy medicine that I took and then I took a.

Again, I'm not gonna name the medicines either I took another cough medicine so that I wasn't coughing during the class.

Apparently the two medicines, coupled with my slightly low blood oxygen level from COVID, made my performance deteriorate throughout the course of the class, and I've never been more embarrassed.

So I apologize anyone that was there.

But the lesson to be learned and I learned this lesson is when, when stuff says don't mix medicines, don't mix medicines.

I can't imagine if, if I was turning wrenches at a shop and I was working on a customer's car In the condition I was that evening as it deteriorated, that would not have been safe.

So again, just another is more recent lesson for me, but you know, lesson learned.

Yeah, it's, it sucks and it's embarrassing, so I hope no one's got hard feelings for me.

Yeah, I mean, that's the.

That's the thing about us in our industry is you just keep on going, you keep push through it, you work harder, right, and it it feels good, right.

They say like, yeah, I just worked for 12 hours today.

You know I'm tough and this, and I and I do have a lot of respect for that right it.

I respect people that can push through and make stuff happen, that have that grit and that determination, but there are times where you got to realize like, hey, I need to take care of myself, I need to back off the throttle, whatever that looks like for you.

I.

Your story actually Reminds me of a gentleman who runs a shop, local and a really good shop, and he's a really good guy and I do a lot of business with him and he's been in the community doing repair for a long time and it very similar situation.

He was on a few different medications for various things and I went in to talk to this guy and he's usually very sharp, he's on it hustles right, and he was so out of it and I thought.

I thought he was drunk at first and it was later in the day.

It was like four or five o'clock when I got to the shop and I was talking, to him.

That's what everyone assumes right off the bat.

Well, and that's what it's, because he was like slurring his word and he couldn't, like he couldn't get through a sentence, he would lose himself and again, just so, very different from the normal.

And so I was.

I Was just sort of cautious at first, but I went and talked to his technician.

I'm like, hey, is he?

Is he okay?

Like something?

Something is up.

Here is a case been?

He's been really weird all day, and so we talked to him and Made sure they got home safely, because that was something I was kind of concerned about.

But it was, it was.

It was a combination of a ton of stress, wearing himself, you know, thin for a really long time, and then, yeah, medications and Sickness and he had to just back off a bunch of stuff and take care of himself.

And he has sense that they, they, they're parking lots well, less cluttered, he takes on less work and it's a good lesson for everybody, right, especially myself, like I'm saying that I'm the absolute worst, like anytime I have free time.

Well, just find something else to do for work, right, and it is really important to like focus on, on taking care of yourself and know you know when you're at that limit, right, and medication obviously can throw a whole nother you know wrench in there where you're not yourself, but that that can happen to any one of us in this industry, right, it just it drives it's.

Anything else, so should we call it a night, because we went over an hour.

Yeah, no, this, this is this, is just fine.

I appreciate you sharing.

Hopefully everyone stays on, stays and listens to the whole thing.

Mm-hmm, get bored with us.

No, I thought those are.

Those are pretty interesting stories and I'm sure the listeners out there have a few of their own, so they can.

They can share on the comments for this one if they want.

Just learn from it.

That's it.

Yeah, for minor things.

Learn from yours, but learn from mine first.

Mm-hmm Great.

Well, well, yeah, thanks for sharing and thanks for taking the time this evening, scott.

All right, that's gonna do it for today's episode.

Another big thank you to Scott for taking the time to join me this evening and share all those stories.

I Enjoyed that and it was fun kind of going through some of the things that I screwed up along the way, so hopefully you enjoyed that too.

Hey, if you got some stories of your own, feel free to share in the Facebook group, or you can just message me too.

It's always good to Hash out some of the the war stories.

But anyways, thank you for listening to show.

I really appreciate it.

Keep all the feedback coming.

Always appreciate that.

Even if I don't get back to everybody right away, I do try to get back to everyone at some point or another.

So with that, all the way, let's get out there.

Start fixing the world, one card a time.

229: Learning From Our Mistakes, With Scott Shotton

Chevrolet Silverado

Toyota Tacoma

Ford Ranger

Chevrolet Corvette

Ford F150

Lucid Air

Chevrolet Impala

Byd Seal

Dodge Ram

Ford Taurus

Dodge Omni

Pontiac Firebird

Honda Odyssey

About this episode

Original notes