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The Auto Repair Industry Needs to Fix More than Just Cars | Bryan Pollock
The Auto Repair Industry Needs to Fix More than Just Cars | Bryan Pollock
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About this episode
Bryan Pollock shares his frustrations with the auto repair industry, highlighting the incompetence he often encounters in diagnostics. He discusses a case involving a Nissan where a technician incorrectly replaced a camshaft sensor, leading to further complications for the customer. The conversation emphasizes the importance of proper training, quality control, and the need for technicians to take personal responsibility for their work. Pollock also touches on the significance of ongoing education and the challenges of navigating the evolving automotive landscape.
Topics:
diagnostic challenges
technician training
quality control
customer service
personal responsibility
auto repair industry issues
case studies
communication in shops
tools and technology
electrical diagnostics
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In this episode, Jeff Compton is joined by his longtime friend and colleague Bryan Pollock. Bryan remembers stories of diagnostic mishaps and stresses the importance of following proper service information and thorough quality control processes. Together, they highlight the critical need for ongoing technician training, investing in apprenticeship programs, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement in the shop.
00:00 Jade Mechanic Podcast: Frustration Episode
10:26 Accountability in Automotive Repairs
12:00 Cost of Staff Training Commitment
20:59 "Diagnostic Limits in Auto Shops"
25:37 "Effective Group Communication Tip"
29:13 Nissan Programming Challenges
33:58 Tool Investment Strategy
39:02 Flaws in Production-Based Pay
44:57 Multiple Children Shadowing Experience
50:13 "Social Media & Royalty Auto Insights"
53:15 Training and Career Progression Importance
59:21 Delayed Realizations and Regrets
01:05:02 Chrysler Pacifica Clutch Issue
01:09:39 "Identifix: Underappreciated Diagnostic Tool"
01:20:02 Mystery of the Lake's Knowledge
01:21:02 Cost-Effective Local Training Option
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chrysler PT Cruiser
"... shared to me about. I don't remember if it was a PT Cruiser, but it was an ESIM problem. Oh, yeah."
Car
Nissan Frontier
"... was a. This was like a 12 or 13 or maybe even 14 frontier with little. What is that, a four zero V6? Yeah. ..."
Car
Chevrolet Express
"...am heater code or something on one of those Chevy Express fans where the exhaust crosses each other. Right."
Car
Honda Element
"...lked to a guy today and he was working on a Honda Element that does some random stuff and he's telling me a..."
Car
Chrysler Pacifica
"...s disabled. Or, or most recently I had a Chrysler Pacifica with no air. A complaint was no air conditioning...."
Jade Mechanic Podcast: Frustration Episode
Accountability in Automotive Repairs
Cost of Staff Training Commitment
"Diagnostic Limits in Auto Shops"
"Effective Group Communication Tip"
Nissan Programming Challenges
Tool Investment Strategy
Flaws in Production-Based Pay
Multiple Children Shadowing Experience
"Social Media & Royalty Auto Insights"
Training and Career Progression Importance
Delayed Realizations and Regrets
Chrysler Pacifica Clutch Issue
"Identifix: Underappreciated Diagnostic Tool"
Mystery of the Lake's Knowledge
Cost-Effective Local Training Option
Select text to request an explanation
He had me draw him a map on a piece of paper of what line went where on the bpmv.
Yeah.
And then he had numbers written under it. And I asked him one day, I go, what are those numbers? He goes, that's the length that I cut that line to before I stick it in the truck. I go, why is there three of them? He goes, regular cab, extended cab, crew cab. I go, you gotta be kidding me.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic podcast. It is hot and we're frustrated and I'm here with my. I don't even call him a friend anymore. He's my brother, Brian Pollock. And Brian's been frustrated a little bit, as have I for the last few weeks because, you know, Brian's reached out and shared. We're in a group chat and we talk all the time. And he shares with me some, some things that come into his bay and Brian for people that everybody knows Brian I think by now.
But if you don't know, Brian routinely handles like between 10 and 15 Diag day at Wilco Auto Care between his shop and the other two locations. And he sees some stuff that comes in that like has already been another shop and worked on and then it winds up in his bane. And Brian always thinks it must be, you know, something kind of, you know, peculiar or weird. And he says most of the time now it's just like straight up incompetency. So Brian, how are you brother?
I'm doing pretty good. A little hot outside.
Yeah.
You're playing today?
Yeah, did a fair amount of cutting and splitting, which I shouldn't complain too much. When I was a kid we didn't have, we didn't have, you know, gasoline powered log splitters, right? Swinging ax all afternoon. So great big old. Shouldn't complain too much. Oh my gosh, that sucker. The hydraulic oil on that sucker gets hot. I leaned on it, my leg hit the tank because, you know, I can't work like a normal human being in pants. I have to wear shorts and gosh, my leg hit the tank and that thing's burnt up.
It burnt the hair off my leg where it hit the tank. So that stuff, man.
I went down and watched the, the guys weigh in at the bass tournament yesterday down here because we had a bunch of. Well, actually a co worker of mine was fishing in it. He made it the final day. He placed out of the top 10, but he did well and it was pretty cool. But I was sitting there from like four to six watching them Weigh in and give away the boat winning and the whole thing.
Right, right, right.
I drank, like, two bottles of water sitting there and watched everybody. I was like. I was glad to leave. Like, I was like, okay, hurry up, weigh the fish. Let's go. It's hot.
I found these. I found these little Gatorade packets that you drop in your water now. They've been a lifesaver.
Yeah.
I am not a colored sports drink type of person. I'm a drink water and shut up type of person. But you feel. You honestly feel less sore at the end of the day. Medical advice. I'm just saying, that's been my experience with it.
And I didn't till this year. I didn't believe in the whole electrolyte balance thing either. Right. I was the same as you. Like, man, you know, two liters of water, three liters of water a day, and be. And call it. And now I can drink four bottles of water in the morning. And if I don't have something with electrolytes at lunchtime, it doesn't feel a little poopy.
Yeah, you don't feel that great.
And it doesn't matter. Right.
Like, it's been a game changer for me. I have them stashed all over. I have them. I have the little packets in the truck. I got them in the drawer here at the house. I have a toolbox drawer with a little packets in them. Got it. You gotta have them, man.
That and the pizza seasoning. You gotta have them.
I know.
Without it.
So every time. I keep joking because every time I'm stateside, I keep looking for that and I can't find it. So you have to promise me when you come to Asta, bring me a couple bottles of pizza seasoning.
I'll get it.
I'll gladly pay you for it. I don't mind.
I'll get it because it's. You got to get the stuff with the sea salt. Oh, my gosh.
Because I can.
The most boring pizza on the face of the planet. You sprinkle that stuff on Little Caesars, it's gourmet. You're all set to go. What do you guys have? You guys have Little Caesars, right?
Oh, yeah.
Do you have toppers?
Yes, yes.
Oh, Toppers is good. We don't have toppers down here. That's Canadian. I learned about Toppers snowmobiling.
Yeah.
They have the pizza dipping sauce. That is just phenomenal.
And we have a new one, a new chain called Red Swan, which, if you're ever up here, as far as.
Try that next time.
As far as 15 pizzas go, it is really good. Really good. 15 pizza. Like it is. It's better than Little caesars for a 15 pizza. So it's almost as good as like cheap Pizza Hut or cheap Domino's used to be. Now a Domino's Pizza up here is like $25. And you can buy really a good pie from an independent, like a mom.
35 for pizzeria for 30 bucks.
Yeah.
There's no reason to buy Domino's. No, no. Unless you're in a big hurry. That's it. You know, so.
Right. They got them locked and loaded a lot of times, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
So. So let's talk. You kind of reached out to me, shared with me about a Nissan. You shared to me about. I don't remember if it was a PT Cruiser, but it was an ESIM problem.
Oh, yeah.
Let's whack off. Whack off. Let's get it whacked off with the, the, the. The Nissan to start. And I kind of. Because I said there's no way it can be that. No way.
The Nissan. Which one? The one with the swap cam sensor.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, the pickup truck where they. Somebody.
Yeah.
Yep. Somebody. She was complaining of a extended crank and a check engine light. It went into brand X. Brand X Determined it had a P0340.
Yep.
So they sold and installed a crankshaft. I'm sorry, Camshaft position sensor. That was on her paperwork. Yeah, it came to us. She said, yeah, it's still got a check engine light. I've already had a cam sensor done. They said it might have to be programmed. Whatever.
Okay. So that's, you know, who knows, right?
Yeah.
So she didn't say anything about extended crank. She said the. The transmission was. Was banging. That's what she said. And it was. It was shifting hard, which is sometimes what they do when they have a cam sensor issue. Seen that before.
So I go out there and I crank it over. I'm like, well, it's probably unrelated because, you know, the Nissan or. Or maybe they put an aftermarket part in, you know, who. Who knows, right? So I get in it. It extended cranks. Okay. Probably got a engine position sensor problem.
Right.
We got an extended crank. And this was a. This was like a 12 or 13 or maybe even 14 frontier with little. What is that, a four zero V6?
Yeah. Four liter V6.
Yep. So I get in the shop, I scan it, and it's got a P0340. And I'm looking in her passenger seat and she's got the paperwork from the other shop. That's what they said it had.
Yep.
I said interesting. It's got the same code. So I get on it with my oscilloscope with my Vantage Pro.
Right.
I don't, I don't bust out the pico and do 10 minutes of setup. I turn the Vantage Pro on, which takes three and a half seconds. And I get a Philz probe on this stupid cam sensor and it's only putting out three and a half volts on the signal wire. The, the signal, the spacing and everything is good.
Right.
As far as the square wave, but only goes up three and a half volts. And it's a 12 volt sensor, right?
Yeah.
So I do a little looking around. I go check the other one just to show the comparison, to get the screenshot. And as I'm looking at the other one, I'm looking at the thing I said. That freaking sensor is brand new.
Yeah.
And these guys, they. They put the sensor in the wrong side of the engine and instead of double checking, instead of doing, doing whatever it took to just make it not shipped. Wrong. They just, just whatever. Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It must be something else wrong. Maybe it took something out. Sometimes they have to be programmed or something like that.
Yeah.
Now not your. Is it still on the back of the cylinder head?
It is, yeah.
Yeah.
And of course they did the easier of the two.
Right.
The one, the one that needed to be changed was the one behind that coolant, the heater hose conglomeration. Which I ain't complaining because quite honestly I put an 11 inch Phils probe on the signal wire, saw it had 3 1/2 volts and I shipped it to somebody with smaller hands that actually changed the sensor.
Right.
So I'm not complaining.
But yeah, I remember doing those and I was hunched up over the top of the engine doing it because I didn't have a bay at the time. It was a. Like a waiter. It was actually the, the dealer owner's son's truck from that. And I remember, I remember reaching around and you can do it, but it sucks. But it's the same thing. Like, you know, you and I talked and it was like they charged the customer for diag. Charged them for a part and then installed it in the wrong side of the engine.
And the customer, instead of going to get their money back or whatever, just accepts that.
Yeah.
I guess it needs, you know, more than what they're telling me.
Yeah.
And it goes off and it's like we find that kind of stuff where they, they never even bothered obviously, to look up the service information to know which one is bank one.
It's very, It's.
Yeah.
And you and, and you and I have had the conversations. Do you even really need to look up the service info? Can you not just. Can you not just unplug in an ignition coil, fire the thing up for 10 seconds and read the code and figure out what bank.
Sure.
Figure out whether it was number one or number two coil.
Let's, let's all remember we got a cell phone in our pocket. Right. If I don't want to walk over to my PC, I can probably Google. I wonder would bank one on a frontier. If it'll tell me.
I bet you chat GTP would tell me. I bet you I could ask it. I bet you I say, hey, chat GTP which side is banquet? I bet you the thing would tell you what it was.
It probably knows by now. For sure.
For sure. Gosh. But see, it knows all the drain plug torques. If I'm, I'm not kidding you. If I'm not at my computer, if I'm at my cart or I've rolled. If I've rolled my cart out of the bay and I need to tighten something stupid like a drain plug or I need to know wheel torque, I am not, I'm not walking back to my computer and I'm not running all data on my phone.
Right. Yeah.
Chat GTP hey, what is the drain plug torque on a 2022 Kia Carnival? And it'll tell you.
Yeah.
So what. What was her response? I mean, maybe you didn't get a chance to speak to her personally, but.
I didn't get a chance to speak to her personally. I wonder what ours when the car went. But I think, you know, I put out, you know, Braxton. Braxton does our editing and he, he's always pretty good at grabbing some hot takes. And we put one out there last week where Mike said everything can be blamed on the shop owner. And I think there's a mix, right? There's definitely a mix. I think that we're at a point where a. The technicians have to try harder to improve themselves and make sure they're doing the job right.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's gotta happen. The shop that car came from has service information. They do. They're not, they're not working out of a storage unit. It's a legit shop that has service information. And this thing somehow. Maybe the owner wasn't there. I don't know what happened, but somehow this thing got shipped out in this condition.
Yeah.
I think it's on the technicians to look up the service info. I think it's on the technicians to make sure they're doing the job right. Because they are, they're the ones physically with their hands doing the job.
Yeah.
As far as the training, I think it's, it's the technician's job to obviously go to the training. I think it's management and ownership's job to make sure that that's happening. Yeah, that makes sense. So like for example, at our shop, I mean last year, not this past tools, because one of our employees had a wedding, so a lot of guys couldn't go. But the tools before we, we won an award for bringing the most people to training.
Right.
We shut it down.
Yeah.
The expense, could you imagine the expense of shutting 3 buildings of working people down? 3 buildings down and paying everybody and paying for the hotel and the whole road trip and the food and everything else and the registration, you know, the, it's a, it's a. Yes, it's a huge expense. But. And I'm not saying that every shop has to do that, but at some point if you're going to be committed to getting the stuff done right, there's. You're gonna have to do something about training and you as shop owner or management is going to have to do with what. Awesome. And many shops across the country do. However, it's many shops across the country, but if you start to break it down into your little area, you start to realize that like, oh, Wilco is the only one in Niagara county, in the entire county that does that.
Yeah.
To get to the next shop that will shut down for a couple days to bring people to training, I have to drive all the way to Tanawan. I got to drive to Dan and Rachel shop. And then the next one past that is another, another member of our local shop owner groups. Jim, he runs a shop called Automotive Valley. He's the type of guy, he shuts down and they bring people to vision.
Right?
Yeah.
So you've got all of western New York and in all of western New York, all these shops. And I think, honestly, I don't even think Jim's in the next county over. Dan and Rachel on Erie county, which is the next county south. Jim's shop might be another county south. You know what I mean? So, yeah, you get to a point where, you know these, the after. The after work training is a nice supplement to other things you're doing. But I don't know that the after work training by itself is an answer. I know for us it hasn't been no.
So let's, let's choose something here for a minute because there's lots of things obviously where, where the wheels fell off for, I'm going to say for that shop, for that car. I want to think that probably the technician, when he put it outside, right. Put the keys back on the door, whatever, put them on the wall, knew that it wasn't fixed because obviously the long crank is still there, which is what she probably would have brought it in. Complaining about check engine light on.
Yeah, I think she was complaining about check engine light. Now. It was.
Maybe the light won't come back on right away after he clears it, but it's going to have a long crank. Right. He didn't change anything. He did nothing. So it, it's. There's a personal responsibility on the part of the technician to do somewhat, a reasonable quality control and go, hey, this car is still broke. I might have effed up. And then there's responsibility on the tech, on the, on the leadership person, be it the manager, the owner, whoever, service advisor.
Right. People up the ladder above the technician to say, well if it's not right, we have to pull it back in. Figure out that's how it works at your shop. That.
Yep. There's a quality control process required. I can't tell you how many times at our shop We've had an O2 sensor, a downstream heater code or something on one of those Chevy Express fans where the exhaust crosses each other.
Right.
You know the one I'm talking about?
Oh, did them.
Yeah.
Okay. It gets go somewhere else. It gets the ball joints changed. It go gets the brakes changed. And the guy who's doing the job for us, he puts the O2 sensor and it needs. And then later that day I have to go back and I have to look at the oxygen sensor performance. Now mistakes are going to happen. We've put the wrong O2 sensor in multiple times, Multiple times.
Our customers have got two brand new O2 sensors for the price of one. Because, you know, it's goofy, right?
Yeah.
I'm not saying mistakes can't happen. What I'm saying is where is the QC and where is the, you know, like, like in our situation when we make that mistake, the customer doesn't get billed for two oxygen sensors. They get a free oxygen sensor. That's all there is to it, right?
Yeah.
And it's not. You guys aren't the type where you then go and. And, you know, yell the tech down and chew his head off and, you know, send him home for a day without pay stuff. It's just a situation of, like, everybody's human and we all make mistakes. And there. There's levels to these mistakes. And it's like, I understand, you know, it put it in the wrong side and yes. Maybe I got to go in and scratch my hands now and take the other one out apart or, you know, and swap it over like you did, you know, because you did that.
You swapped it to. To see. Like, I don't understand this. Like, this is too. Seems too simple.
Yeah, right, right, right.
The other. On the. On the other side and then move. Just like if we're moving a coil around.
Yeah.
I don't understand why they can't slow down and say to the technician, okay, go back and either. Let's get it one more sensor and put it in and just don't do that again. Here's a way to, you know, unplug the coil. That's for sure. Bank one, you know, you know, lesson learned. Or, you know, go back out there, take that one out of that side, put it in the proper side, go fish the one of the garbage can, put it back in. You know, that kind of.
Where's the process in that shop?
Right.
There isn't one.
Where's the process where we've got somebody where every. Every, let's say, diagnostic job, we're doing everything where the customer. The customer comes in with a complaint. My check engine light is on. And this is everything we do. Yeah, everything we do. We've done a pretty good job at teaching our guys what purge seal tests look like on GMs. So everybody knows if they've done an evap repair.
If I said that thing needs a purge solenoid.
Right.
Because it goes through the whole process. I diagnose it, and then oftentimes I'm the one looking the car over. Not always. Sometimes my workload's too high. I can't do that. But sometimes I look it over and like, let's say it needs brakes and wheel bearing and something else, right?
Yeah.
These guys know if they put an evap part in a Chevy, they have to do a purge seal test.
Yeah.
They know if they put an evap part in a Hyundai or a Kia, the scanner is going to run a test and tell them whether it's good or not. If they get one that where it doesn't have that test, it gets a B put on the top and it gets a line that says retest.
Yeah.
And I have to personally go retest it. Which, and, and that doesn't bother me. The point is why isn't, why isn't this happening? Because I won't buy that it's too time consuming. I mean we're a high volume shop.
Right.
We're a high volume shop. We have multiple. Like you can tell me it's too time consuming. I'm going to disagree.
Yeah.
I've got, I've got 42 cars on the schedule for Monday. I'm going to disagree with you that it's too time consuming to do the job right. We, we push. Jim pushes, I push. Everybody's pushing to make sure that the customer is concerned is handled and the job's done.
Right.
I don't, I don't think it's too time consuming.
Yeah. Now you and I have said sometimes and again, we don't mean any disrespect or throw any shaded, any buddy out in the industry, but some people that should be in the leadership role of even like the processes you just laid out what you do, we're speaking another language to them. They're not even thinking about those kind of concepts. Right. Of, of, of a retest after the fact or whatever. Right. They still look at a, at a snap on scan tool as like a part number generator.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Glorified code reader. The codes are the part numbers.
Yeah.
Once you laid out is, is a process that a lot more people I think need to adopt. And it's like anything else, the more you do it, the more you get done in the day, the faster you become more efficient. Right. You navigate the scans a little faster. You go over to the bay test. I did it with every Chrysler ever did an evap repair on. I ran the bay test after it was done. I didn't necessarily hook the smoke machine up.
I ran the bay test, passed out the door. It's just the way I was. I had to do it. I had to be trained.
Yeah. Now that they put the fuel tank pressure sensors and we've even found a way to run small leak. Just go park the thing in the shade for an hour.
Yeah.
Start it up and start a timer on your phone. You can run small leak by watching generic OBD2 data without even. You don't even need a bi directional control if you've got an OBD2 scanner that'll read the OBD2 data. If you can see the fuel tank pressure sensor, that's all you got to be able to see.
Yeah.
You know, once it hits 600, key it off, key it back on, set a 300 second timer. If it doesn't go above negative 200 that it's not coming back. Yeah, but people won't do it. And I'll tell you what. And we catch ourselves. We're not perfect. No, we catch ourselves where? A, sometimes, sometimes we misdiagnosed it from the get go. B, sometimes I put that ESIM switch wouldn't change and I got in there and the pigtail was rot out.
Right.
The status wouldn't change, pigtails rotted out. Put a pigtail and a switch on it. Go park it in the shade, wait an hour, go run the small leak test. And guess what? It had a small leak too. That ESIM switch. Yeah. That pigtail was routed out, but so is that retaining ring on that sending unit.
Yeah.
Right.
And you still didn't ship it out the door with their concern, which was my check engine light is on.
Yeah, yeah you can.
And that happens often. It's to a point where I'm stocking the ESIMs and I'm not calling the customers, I'm putting them in and I'm running the test to make sure there's another problem before the customer gets called.
Yeah.
And that's the thing like, you know, and you and I talk about this all the time. Is there situations where maybe some people shouldn't be saying yes to, you know, diagnostic and check engine lights in shops? And I, I'm kind of, I'm kind of with you, I guess, on, on saying yes. There, there are some shops that just shouldn't because, just because you can get the code out of it and you can get identifix. What you just kind of laid out was a, a much better understanding of how the system can be interrogated and tested and verified. That's above what a lot of people even walking around, you know, that understand this.
Yeah. In the OBD2 theory and operation, once you read the OBD2 theory operation and understand how the PCM tests the system, you realize that the PCM doesn't carry a mini smoke machine around with it. And now you can.
Right.
I've, I've seen a lot of, I've seen a lot of shit. I never seen a PCM whip out a mini smoke machine and start smoking itself to make sure the evap's good.
Right.
So once you understand how it works now the whole, you know, okay, well how do I make sure this thing isn't coming back? That starts to get easier.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
And you know, we do good by doing the first check and saying, yeah, oh, look it, I found the green pigtail at the ESUM. And you know, I put the ESIM on and 99 of the time, according to identifix, the ESIM fixes it. It really does.
Yeah.
Now we're getting to where we're seeing the perch, the birds. Fuel tank pressure sensors are skewed. You've had a couple I've seen. Right. And it's like Brett Fadley had one. Like we, we Chrysler guys are not used to having to even look at that. You know what I mean?
Yeah. For years it wasn't a thing.
Right.
Jams like you always. Yeah. They didn't even put them in until, you know, 2013, 14 or whatever it was. Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, how do we do. We slow down Brian in the bay and take a little more time. Like what you're famous for saying, read the F in manual and understand that kind of stuff. Or do we. We give our techs more time to.
I think we give the text. Need to be trained on the systems. Yeah, the techs need to be trained on the system. Some sort of comprehensive training. You know, we like, we like to use today's class. The guys get training. They get four questions every day. And it's not just the questions, but it's the, the question will say something.
It'll. It'll have a question and it's like basically at the bottom it'll say, don't understand what we're asking. Hit the link to read more.
Yeah.
So then if they don't understand the question, they can hit the Read more. It gives them a thorough, in depth explanation of the system they're asking a question about. And it's educating them.
Right.
Yeah.
And you can track this stuff. This stuff is helping us big time.
Yeah.
But the idea that you can sign guys up and I'm not and I don't have a problem with the twice a year after work class. In fact, we attend those as a supplement to all the other training that we do. But to act like that those eight hours a year are sufficient is just, it's just silly.
Yeah.
You know, I think in the. In, you know, in the greater. The way it would work the best, unfortunately is probably out of reach of most. Especially in a shop your size is like when somebody finds something really cool or there's a real. I call it an aha moment. Right. You've heard me say the light bulb moment is that we can stop, pull everybody over to Brian's bay. And Brian do that.
Yeah.
You know that.
And it's hard with a shop our size. So what I do is like when I see a situation arise where, what I've been doing lately, when I see a situation that arises and something like clicks in my head, I'm like, oh, yeah, if it does this, that means that.
Right?
Yeah.
And it's something that's not common or something you're not going to find in service info or put together unless you really know a system. What we've been doing lately, as I have one of those big, I don't know, it's a 32 inch touchscreen monitor on my snap on Zeus diagnostic works.
Yep.
I'll have Jim come over, he'll take a video with his cell phone and I will teach what I am seeing, pointing all that stuff out and it goes in the group chat to everybody.
Yeah.
And now everybody understands that when they see this happen, we, we don't have to pop the hood, we don't have to lift the vehicle, we don't have to leave the driver's seat of the car. The only way this can happen is if part X is bad. There's no other way that can happen.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's. We, you know, we teach little tips.
Like that, you know, and that's what's cool, is like. So there's, there's another tip for everybody listening. What Brian is saying is like everybody in the shop is on a group chat on their messenger, on their phone. Right. So that when he does put up something like that, everybody eventually, if they're following the chat, does see it now, does it sync for everybody? Maybe not, you know, like some people just don't get it or don't.
Yeah. And it's usually not complicated stuff. It's just usually how to identify like, what's a good ex. How to identify a leaking esim.
Right.
A lot of times the most recent one I did was a leaking evap system integrity switch.
Yeah.
And the, the more it purged, the more it leaked. So when the purge command goes up, the tank pressure would actually go down.
Yeah.
Well, we're done. If it's purging more and the tank pressure is going down, the only way that's possible is if it leaks through that seal.
Yeah, we're.
We're done. Yeah, we're putting an ESIM in it. We haven't left the hoods not open, the fuel doors not open, the car's not in the air. We are Done. That's the only way that can happen.
What Brian's talking about, guys, is a lot of. You know, I can still remember Brian and I talked about it years ago. A guy in IIT and Alban Moore, who used to talk all the time. Sean Miller and I talk about it, too. We've been talking to group chat. He used to do so much diag right from the driver's seat, he would say, I'm old, I'm lazy. I don't even want to lift the hood. And what Brian's just talking about is just using that scan tool and your data and the understanding of it to.
To. That's how Brian gets through 10 to 15 a day is. He's so good at using the buy controls on his. On his.
Yeah, we're not. We're not unplugging connectors on each end of the car and running voltage down them and getting through that many cars a day, that takes too long.
Brian's not racking 15 cars a day, some days to get diag done right. He's using what his scan tool and the knowledge of the system can tell him. Like he said earlier, you know, looking at it the way the computer looks at it, the ecm and. And coming to the conclusion of what it's going to need and I. I might need more testing. I have to now rack it and put it up.
Sure.
I used to do the same thing at the dealership. I used to walk out. Now again, it's pattern failure. But you always had little things that you're always looking for. It's there, yes or it's not there, no. Okay. That determined where I went to my next step. That's how I was able to diagnose so many cars in the parking lot, keep my bay being utilized for something else.
A brake job, a steering rack, and get the diags triaged to. To know, okay, we got to order this, we got to do. Brian does all that stuff.
I have a Milwaukee pack out. I roll around the parking lot and I throw a set of sunglasses on. Sometimes if we're. If the bays are jammed up, I'll be out there with a pair of sunglasses on. Triaging cars in the parking lot.
Yeah.
So it's funny, then this shop, and you had another one, you had a Nissan you shared with me. That was kind of like. And I was going to ask you before we started recording, what was the fallout from that? But it was, you know, I had seen that exact failure years ago when I worked at the dealer and when the car was relatively new. And I remember my steps to go through it. And I'm like, well, there's a fuse bomb. Okay, cool. Then they put a fuse in and then it starts up and runs for like 20 seconds and then it shuts right off.
Use again.
Yeah.
And they're like, oh, okay. I just. My simple brain. I didn't immediately pull the wiring diagram or anything. I just started. Okay, well, maybe it's got a shorter coil and that's like kind of share with us with that one you. You went over for. To do programming at a remote for.
Yeah, I did a programming job. Long story short, I had to kind of do some backdoor stuff because it just wasn't acting right with the programming. And if you've ever done some Nissan programming, it's suck. I'm not gonna say I don't want to use the word tricky. I don't know what word I want to use. It's not, it just, it doesn't make sense what they have you do compared to, you know, if, if you're, if you're not into programming and you've programmed a couple GMs and you're like, all right, I'm ready to do the next thing. Don't go do a Nissan Blank Path pcm.
Right, yeah.
That's not like the next logical step. But anyways, yeah, we programmed it or whatever and it wouldn't start when I was done. And long story short, it had a blown fuse. Now, I didn't really investigate. I didn't, I honestly didn't look at a wiring diagram. I said, there's got to be ignition coil fuse somewhere. So we went through and found the initial coil fuse and it did have a melted coil. They had changed the coil.
Right.
Coils. To their credit, they put a six pack from the same lot number in the vehicle. I don't disagree with that decision. I think that was a great decision. But, yeah, you know, here we are with a. Blown. With a blown fuse.
Right.
Now, you know what came first? The chicken or the egg? Was the driver and the PCM on. There's a bunch of unknowns.
Yeah, Right.
But I just, I just, I just wonder that in that shop they do. They do some pretty good work over there. And I just, there's just so many things I see in the industry. Like I, I just, I look at what we charge for diagnostic time and how we're doing it, and I'm like, I. And believe me, you know me, I'm one of those people you have to charge for this time. It's literally the hardest part of the job.
Yep.
Right.
And I'm not taking away, you know what, swinging hammers and running a ball joint press that. That ain't easy either. We got a whole fleet of guys who freaking bust their ass for us. That work is hard, too.
Yep.
The diagnostic work, you have to charge for it because you have the most chance of having to go back in and do more.
Right?
Yeah, that's just how it is. And I just wonder, when I look at some of these, you go online, you look at some of these Facebook posts. My favorite one to cruise through is the auto shop owners hangout, and you just wonder how much are they charging the customer for what they're doing here. You're 19 parts into this thing.
Yeah.
And I'm like, hey, dude, you might want to check this. Or recently there was one where there's a guy working on a truck and he posts in a forum. And three months ago I told him not. That's not true. That wasn't three months ago. End of May or something like that. I told him to do an injector return flow test.
Yeah.
So he still hadn't done the test yet. He's asking for ways around doing the test. I told him in May to do this test, and he still hasn't done it. So now you're telling me this customer has been without their $70,000 truck since May because there's only two solutions. He either doesn't have. Doesn't have the knowledge to do it. Which I refuse to believe. Yeah, I refuse to believe that he doesn't have the knowledge to do it if he's this far.
And I don't. I don't think that's a knowledge issue. I think we're in a situation where, well, you know, to do this test on this engine, I'm going to have to go buy this tool to do it properly.
Right.
Okay, well, okay, I get it. You don't want to go buy a $300 tool to do a test. So bolt the thing together and send it to somebody who's got the $300 tool to do the job.
Because you and I say all the time, if you don't have the tool, why'd you say yes to the job?
Yeah. Hey, man, we say yes to a lot of things we don't have. We. We end up diagnosing things that we don't have the tool to fix. And I'll tell you what, I. Thank goodness I wasn't doing this 30 years ago. Thank goodness we have Amazon.com I can have any tool I need in two days now.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So. But I just, I. I understand that they don't have the tool and that they said yes to the job because I've done that before, too. But I'll. I'll go get the tool. I'll get it one way or another. I'll borrow it for somebody from somebody. I'll go buy it.
Hopefully. Hopefully, if it's. If I'm only going to use it one time, I'll go buy it at a somewhat discounted rate. So I don't have a ton of money tied up into it. If it's something I'm going to use a lot, something I think I'll use in the future, I'll go. I'll go spend money on the Kent Moore tool. Right. Way back in the day when we started dealing with GM direct injectors on equinoxes, I'm like, we're gonna have to take these apart all the time.
I'm going, I'm calling up, getting the Kent Moore freaking GM direct injector service kit.
Yeah.
And I've used it 800 times since 2012, and I'm happy I have it.
Right.
And it's paid for itself.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Now, do we think maybe that shop. Maybe the reluctance to spend 300 on the tool is because his diag isn't going to come out to 300 bucks?
I don't know. I don't know him that well, and I'm not. And I'm. If he listens to this, I hope he doesn't think I'm running them down. It just, it just doesn't make sense to me to hold on to a customer vehicle in limbo for months on end over not having the right tool to complete the next step.
Yeah.
Right.
It doesn't make sense to me. I think we got a list of parts. You know, I've put two. Two sets of injectors in, two pumps to this, to that.
Right.
I get it. I get it. You're out in the weeds and it's frustrating, but we have to. In order to get you from the weeds, towed back on the road, we need this piece of data. And the only way you're going to get it is by running this return flow test.
Right?
Yeah.
So if he's listening, I hope he doesn't think I'm running them down. I've been very frustrated with vehicles, too. I've worked on a 6.0powerstroke every single night, standing on an alignment stand for three and a half weeks straight, from 6pm till midnight after the shop closes, trying to fix the stupid truck. Okay, I get it. Not running them down. I've had the same struggles.
Right.
Do you know why I had that struggle? Because I didn't have an air test tool to hook into the freaking high pressure oil rail. Guess what? You know how long that takes me? 27 minutes now.
Yeah.
Because I got the tool.
Right.
So.
So think about that.
He was.
You were six hours a night for three weeks.
I put 40 out. I put probably close to 40 hours into fixing one symptom, one no start issue on one six zero powerstroke back in.
Oh, gosh.
Back in 2010. Yep. Every night.
And now you do. Now you.
Jim would go home, he leave the shop, he'd go have dinner with his wife and kids. He'd go. His kids were little at the time. Heck, it was 15 years ago. His kids were little at the time. He'd help the wife put the kids to bed. He'd come back through, he'd stop it. Stop at Hoover's Dairy, grab a milkshake, bring me a milkshake.
And he'd sit in a chair, and if I needed something, he'd go get it for me. He'd say he put all the time into. He said he was there helping out. If I needed this, he was up there. If I needed him up on the truck doing stuff, he was there. But, yeah, we put in. We put 40 hours into a 6, 0 power stroke to try to figure out how it worked back then, you know?
Yeah.
Not intentionally. We put 40 hours into it because I didn't know what I was doing.
Yeah.
And I had to learn what I was doing.
But now that, like you just said, you do that test in 27 minutes or 37 minutes, right?
Oh, I know all about it. You can hold a random. You can hold a random bolt or an O ring from the cylinder, heads up on that truck, and I can tell you where it goes.
He's not me. He's not kidding, folks. Not at all. There's probably not too many that are more familiar with that platform than Brian.
Yeah, it was a rough start.
Worth every penny.
Yeah.
So what, like, because we talk about this and, and you know, I come at it from sometimes from a different perspective. Right. Than you because you're. You're a little more, you know, you kind of. You kind of see a shop owner perspective a little bit better than me. And I see the technician perspective, you know, in a different way than you do. Not saying you don't see it, but it's like you're, you've got a broader understanding of the business side of it and I'm still very much locked into that.
I see the technician perspective of it just enough to piss off most shop owners.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I go right for the juggler, like.
Yeah, yeah. You don't, you don't tiptoe into it.
I'm hard.
Here we come a marching.
Yeah.
I'm hard to blame the tech most of the time. I want to say they work for a holes.
Yeah.
But you know, going back to it. So how do we instill, Brian, the personal responsibility the technician has to have? Is it a money thing?
I, you know, I, I wish I knew the answer.
That's the million dollar question.
Me, I'm just a kid with ADHD that liked cars.
Yeah.
You know, I'm Keith Perkins and I have that joke. Although he's, he's way more into the electrical and programming side than I am. Long story short, we're just kids with ADHD that decided we were going to work on cars.
Right.
I think that, I think that a lot of shops where they have people on production based pay plans, I think it pays more to change the parts. In fact, I just had a very, a very, a very good friend of mine in a big group on one of the Friday night Zooms. And I won't, I won't say his name because those aren't recorded. And I don't know that he wants his name said, but he said that paying a parts changer, that the way some of these businesses are set up with their hours and everything else, paying a parts changer, a guy to hang chassis parts, a metric ton of money, and not preparing him for the degradation that's coming to his body and not training him on the technical side of things. You're doing a disservice to that technician.
Yeah.
And that's one of the conversations we've had with all of our guys, you know, the real young ones, you know, the ones in their early 20s. Right. They're banging parts and they're making money, they're working overtime. We're giving them extra cash because they're doing such a good job banging parts. And that's not forever. No, that's not forever. And I'll tell you, I really listened to what he said on that Zoom meeting and I never really saw it that way before, but he wasn't wrong.
No.
And the gentleman we're speaking of is a very, very, very successful, very sharp individual that we've. You and I have gone and talked about for years now. And you know, I'm not going to name him either, but he is exactly right. And he is another one of those gifted people that see so many perspectives at once.
Yeah.
And, and understand he's the big picture kind of guy. He sees big picture.
Yeah.
And that's the thing. Like there doesn't all used to always think that there had to be a natural progression of a technician starts out, you know, and we're going to go to that again. That brought.
I know I hate Alphabet tech, but I still can't figure out my way around it.
Right. We used to think that there was going to be a natural progression. You started out as like a C tech and then you, you know, you, you did a little bit of maybe some scans or some programming, you know, and you did, you became a B tech and, and, and then you A tech. I'm starting to think that that's not a progression that just any tech can do. I think that, you know, we, we have our strengths and, and you know, a guy that is really good at the, the B level kind of heavy line hanging parts kind of thing, he may never get to the A tech level. And there's varying levels within the A tech. Brian and I, I call myself an A tech. Brian's an A tech.
There's a million levels between Brian.
I don't know about that, but I don't.
So what, what this gentleman that was talking about is, he's saying if you're not enabling them to get to the next level as their body ages and you're holding them back and you're pigeonhole in them, whatever, you know, euthanism we want to use, you're doing them a disservice because the natural progression for me as I'm nearing 50, Brian's got aches and pains and body issues too.
Oh yeah.
Ought to be doing less of swinging a hammer and lifting and more of using our brain to. In a leadership role or in a. Okay. I can triage the car. Somebody else can get, like Brian just alluded to earlier can get their, their sp. More hands in there and get that cam sensor swapped out and make some time on the job. This is what we need to be doing with our, with our people is, is preparing them for this evolution. Now some are just not going to make it.
I work with a, you know, I've worked with guys that were 50. They had no interest in touching the Scans, Ryan. Seen them. Right.
I. Man, I got guys that work for us that are like, I've had guys coming and out that worked for us that were like that, you know, and.
But we have to make it always available. If they put their foot down and say, this is not for me and I don't want to, it's no big deal. Don't force them. Don't try to make a fish fly.
Y.
But always, we cannot slam the door and say that they're never going to make it or they can't. This is not for them. Or I want to keep this guy doing only that, because you're just. You're just. You're only going to hurt your own business, you know?
Yeah. We're always. We're always hunting down entry level people.
Yeah.
As a conversation Jim and I just had was how do we get. And we're going to be taking part in a career fair that we're invited to at our local high school technical center. Not like ecc, not the college. We're going to the high school. Because how do we get entry level guys in?
Right.
Because the worst thing you can do is hire a guy. You hire an entry level guy. Right. And you know how this goes for these entry level guys. They got to be taught how to change oil. They got to be taught how to change tires. How to change tires.
Right.
And then they're. They go through a tire season where they're freaking. Might as well grab a dog chain and chain them to the freaking tire machine. They go through all this, and the last thing you want to do is have a guy 25 years old still doing that.
Yeah.
Right.
My goal is once we see the potential. I got. I got one right now, and he's still. He's not complaining. He's still hammering away on the tire machine, hammering away on the oil changes. But he's got potential. It's time for him to start doing breaks, Right?
Yeah.
It's time for us to.
All right.
You spent a long time. You've done a lot of great work for us. It's time to take you to the next step. He started to buy a couple tools here and there, a couple more than we provide. And, you know, it's been time for him to start doing breaks. And that's why we're always looking like. We're like, okay, let's do this career fair. How can we solidify our relationship with this high school technical center to instead of hire two kids out of their year, hire three or four.
Yeah.
Right.
Because that's what it's all been. I mean, we've hired every group of shadows we've had over the years. We've hired at least one per year out of the high school shadowing program.
Which is way better, I bet, than the national average, like I'm sure it is.
Yeah, we love them. We love, you know, man, and you get, you have to, you can't just have one kid shadow. And I know these shadows, I know they're a pain in the neck. I know they're in the way. I know they're asking a ton of questions. But if you take one, you're like, I'm always taking a shadow and it's not, well, guess what? We take four at a time. In the springtime when they had their shadowing, we had four in the morning and two in the afternoon. We had six.
We had six coming every day. Four for a two hour slot in the morning and two for a two hour slot in the afternoon. And we got one. We got one. That's a good one.
Yeah.
We also had ones that stared at their cell phone and played with their hair.
Yeah.
And we're to a point, not kidding. That's a joke. If Jim listens to this, he'll be laughing. We used to send each other pictures of us playing with our hair. Anyways, anyways, we. And then, you know, it comes, okay, how do we solidify our relationship? How do we. The next step, which Jim brought up, and I thought that was a great idea. He goes, I'm going to write a list of expectations, what you can expect to be doing here while you're shadowing.
Yeah.
Right.
So I think that, I think it really all comes back to how do you grow these people?
Right.
So we have a training problem.
Right?
We have an obvious training problem.
Yep.
So the best thing we can do is grow the people that we have.
Right.
Because it's hard to get people in. So the only way you grow the people that you have is to keep stacking from the bottom.
Right.
So you can bring these people from base level up to level X wherever they're going to end up, Right?
Yep.
I think that's the best thing you can do. And I just, I see a lot of shops, let's say. Well, I don't, we don't have time for an apprentice. And I, I can understand, I can understand. Here's. You have two choices. You cannot have time for an apprentice, which I, I still don't understand how you grow people then. If you don't have newer guys Coming in on the bottom.
I don't care what you're doing. The only way you can outrun that is with payroll.
Yeah.
If you're too busy for an apprentice because it's causing you, you know, to be jammed up, well then plan on having to always go find 50 plus an hour people.
Yeah.
That's the only way you're going to get there right now.
What about with Lucas's conversation the other day where he made that post and he talked about, you know, if you're starting out and you're small and everybody wants to go higher. An apprentice, a GS. Right. A brand new child kid.
I don't know if it's a good idea for a brand new shop either, so either.
But there's a.
Plenty of established shops that I hear the same thing over and over again.
Yeah.
We don't have time for an apprentice. We don't have time for apprentice or.
You and I know, you ask them, well, what's their apprentice do? And it's like, well, they might do an oil. A few oil changes in the rush in the morning and then they're doing a lot of like they're taking the scrap metal out to the bin. They're taking the garbage out. They're not. And how do they get why they're staring at their phone a lot of the time? Because we're not engaging them in.
Okay. You know, that was partially our fault for taking four in the same time slot. That was a lot to take. But one of those kids, by the end of two weeks, right. He's a junior. He's a junior in high school. He's going into a senior year. By the end of the two weeks, he was doing a set of oil cooler lines on a Chevy pickup.
Yeah, right, right.
Like so. Okay, we found the one.
Yeah.
We found the one that's got a mechanical aptitude. And he's, he's working for us. He's on summer vacation. He's working for us a couple days a week right now.
That's awesome.
Right.
And he'll. We'll slowly. We will roll him in. He will work for us.
Right?
Yeah, that's. That's what's going to happen. And we've done it multiple. I can't. We just went through, just the other day we were talking about how many apprentices we've hired that are still with us. And it's like, it's, It's a bunch. Yeah, it's a bunch. I mean we have a, we have a company that's built on hiring 18 and 19 year olds and growing them.
Right.
Our, our arguably one of our strongest service writers is a kid that started with us when he was 15 years old. I'll never forget the, one of the first things he did, it took him, it took him six hours to wash three garage doors. Right? And you just like, you look at you like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do with a guy that takes a two hour job and turns it into six hours? How the heck, how do I even get through this? And here we are. He's one of our, the customers love him.
Yeah.
He's not afraid to tell people they got to spend money. He worked in the bay for, I don't know, probably, probably four, four or five years maybe. Worked in the bay. He's got an idea. Jim's son, also a very strong service writer, started with us, you know, 18 years old, started with us, made him, Jim made him work in the bay first. Wouldn't let him go behind, wouldn't let him go behind the counter first. So you're going to go bust your knuckles for a while, buddy.
You and I know, you know how much I love the social content creators and all the online stuff and we watch them both, right? You and I. I, I don't know if people know this when we talk about Royalty Auto Service and we talk about Sherwood and Sherwood Jr. And Sherwood III, the professor, his son has alluded to several times in the conversations that his son worked with his dad as a tech and he said he was terrible, awful, right? Like he. And, and of course the professor stands up for him and goes, no, he wasn't all that bad. But some people, he'll say this, some people just don't have it right.
Right.
That boy, though, that boy, Excuse me, that young man, Sherwood, is he his dad? Well, has Sherwood train. Every service advisor now at their two locations is all trained by Sherwood. Everything's done exactly the way Sherwood Jr. Wants it done. Without question. They said he is his father. Sherwood says that he is probably the best service advisor in the state.
Our guys were, our guys were all trained by Jim, which is, which is perfect because the customers are used to that attitude and stuff. They're, they're. My point, I call Justin JJ sometimes for Jim Jr. My point being is.
That like, so what, what Wilco did with this guy is they realized, okay, so he's not going to be another superstar tech, but these are his, his strong suits. These are what he's good at. And they've found a place for him where he's kill. He's killing it. He's doing.
Yeah. And he wasn't a bad tech either. I mean, he was. Gosh, this guy, we used to call him the plumber. He used to have. You know, as you can imagine, we do a fair amount of brake lines on older Chevy pickups back in the day before they quoted them Right. Back in the back in 2012, you were doing a lot of brake lines on Chevy's, right?
Couple a week.
Yeah. He had a map. He had me draw him a map on a piece of paper of what line went where on the bpmv. And then he had numbers written under it. And I asked him one day, I go, what are those numbers? He goes, that's the length that I cut that line to before I stick it in the truck. I go, why is there three of them? He goes, regular cab, extended cab, crew cab. I go, you gotta be kidding me. He goes, yep.
And he would put. Justin would put five brake lines on a Chevy pickup truck in an hour and a half. I seen him do it smart. And they'd look good. They'd look good. Now there'd be brake fluid everywhere. Everywhere. On the floor, inside his socks, who knows? Everywhere there is brake fluid and rusty brake line everywhere.
But the thing was bled out and it was done right. And he got under there. You looked at it, you're like, man, that looks pretty good. You know, he did that for a couple years for us, like every day. Put brake lines on Chevy's every day. And yeah, he's, you know, he's not super technically diagnostic capable. He's not unable to do it either. You know, he can if he has a scan tool in his hand and he needs me to tell him what to look for.
He's more than capable of doing that.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I think that. I think there's. There's a couple things that go into this whole training deal. And one of the things, obviously, we've got to make time for them to get trained, whether that's shutting the whole shop down, whether that's bringing a trainer in, whether that's having some sort of mandatory web based training, something. So they're getting description and operation of how these systems work. Yeah, that's one part of it. And the other part is you got to give these guys somewhere to go. You can't hire a guy out of high school, find out that he has some mechanical ability, he shows signs that he wants to do more, and then chain him to the tire machine for five years.
You got to Get a replacement. You got to get a replacement in to come do his job so you can move him up into. All right, Bud, this is the alignment machine. This is what we're doing. I'm going to take you with me. We're going to go to this alignment class. That's what I've done. I've done one on ones.
When ATG comes through town twice a year. They do. ATG does very thorough training classes I've taken. Guys. Okay, Bud, you and I are going to go to this programming class. Okay? You and you, the three of us are going to this meter class. We're going to go take this how to the basics of using your electrical meter. Do I need to sit through the class? No, no, but you go, you sit there, you.
You engage them. And you don't just say, well, you know, I sent them to the plate. You know, the place has pizza, you know, the Napa Auto tech or whatever. And I'm not. And I'm not running down Napa Auto Tech training. I'm just saying that having them go to that one class twice a year and then that's. It isn't. Isn't the answer.
It's a supplement to a whole program.
Right.
We hear in the. All the time, you know, in the, in the group's discussions about how they don't want to hire a technician or, excuse me, they don't want to hire a young person that comes from the dealer because they get there and it's like, what did you do at the dealer? All I did was the door latch recalls, say. Or all I did was like the oil changes and stuff. And it's like, you know, if they can get to where they're doing those door latches in a pretty good amount of time, they've got some ability because those times suck. Right.
Yeah. I don't mind. I don't mind hiring a young guy out of a dealership. I don't mind hiring a guy that's been at a dealership for a long time. There's a certain threshold in the middle of those two.
Yeah.
Which are tricky.
Yes.
And it's not their fault. It's not their fault. I'm not running the guys down. They've been set up to fail outside of that environment. That's what's happened to them.
They're.
They're not. It's not like, oh, that guy's stupid. No, that guy was trained. They were trained that this is how things work and this is what you're going to do. And this is why you're going to do it that way.
Yeah.
Okay.
I struggled when I left and it.
Works great in the dealer world. Yeah, it works great, right?
Yep.
It doesn't work great when they get to us.
Right.
There's no, there's no pull the codes, pull the freeze frame and send the, the, the data to tech, to tech assist and pull the next car in and do the whatever recall that you've mastered to make a ton of money, right?
Yeah.
That doesn't exist at Wilco Auto Care llc. It's okay. We're going to pull this car in. This is broke. Oh, what does that mean? Well, I don't know what it means either. We're going to go figure it out.
Yeah.
There's a section in the middle there that does not do well with that. There's a section of older guys that before all this fixed up training and coaching came into the dealerships, they had to do it the old way where they had to do the real live detective work.
Yep.
And they do pretty well with it. And then there's some younger guys whose minds are so fresh and they don't have. They haven't got into this whole routine of doing it. I guess I'll just call it incorrectly. They haven't gotten into this routine of doing it incorrectly. And they're moldable. We can change those. That's not a big deal.
Yeah.
There's a lot of guys in the middle that are going to, you know, luckily the dealer's paying a lot right now because those guys are probably, if they're living like most people do, which is paycheck to paycheck and they need that paycheck. They probably can't leave the dealer with that skill set and make more money. They're stuck at the dealer.
And it's tough, right. Because going back to it like what going back to our Nissan at the very beginning of this, I have watched other techs do that exact same thing and put it out. Right. But the difference was like, and we always say this, we forget the car came back, it was like a boomerang. And then the tech had to go and find their mistake and, and, or if they weren't working that day, somebody else.
Our shop is like the Bermuda Triangle. We always, we always talk about that. We're always like, when we get one that's really whooping our ass, we're like, can somebody just take this thing and not bring it back? Like all the other people do the other shops, like, like, why does this happen here? What's going on, you know, what are.
You doing, Brian, with that can of gasoline?
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I mean, we've had them. We've, you know, we're not perfect. We've bought, you know, we have a Volkswagen T1 we bought. I. I think I know what's wrong with it. I don't know how to prove that.
I do know how to prove it. To prove it is removing the engine and checking. Checking some timing on the back of it, which isn't going to happen.
Yeah.
That car's bought. That car's bought. You know, it is what it is that that happens. I'm not going to sit here and act like that doesn't happen. I'm not gonna sit here and act like I fixed every car I've ever run into. I've got a 1996 Jeep out there I didn't fix. If it wasn't crushed in a scrap yard, I'd go buy it and fix it. Because I think I know what's wrong now.
But anyhow, and this is the thing, right? Like, sometimes the. In this cruel world that we live in, the answer comes to you later. Like, I can remember several cars that, like, it wasn't until I took some training years later or saw something published somewhere and I was like, mother effort. That was what was wrong. That left it. And, you know, it was under warranty at the time and we couldn't get to it. And I know now. I'm Brian.
You remember when the AC ripple on the. On the Cummins and the TR and the Dodge trucks.
Yes.
The TPS to do wonky stuff.
Yeah.
I remember in like 2001, watching the smartest guys in the dealer try and tackle a TPS problem or, you know, they had another truck parked next to it. They had a fuel line run from that truck to that truck and everything.
Yeah. Yeah.
Because nobody. It wasn't published anywhere yet.
Yeah. I just talked to a guy today and he was working on a Honda Element that does some random stuff and he's telling me about it. I go, dude. I go, do me a favor. Said check the AC ripple before you go any further. He's like, really? I'm like, dude, I've been down this road.
Yeah.
Every time the car is doing something, the. The more inconsistent and strange the problem, the simpler the answer typically is.
Right?
Yeah.
I can remember. I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he was a trainer for Snap on and he talked about this BMW every time he would come to Kingston and would teach his course he would talk about a BMW bought from the dealership because they couldn't fix. And it had a. Same thing. It was an ac. It was like he bought this BMW.
For like a pennies on the dollar.
Yeah, yeah, pennies, pennies. And he bought it, drove it off the lot, put an alternator in it, because then AC ripple through the car and fixed it.
Oh, yeah.
He still, to this day is so proud of that.
I know what you're talking about, though.
Yeah.
You know, so it's these. These fundamental things that I don't know how to like, because you and I talk about sometimes. Like, it's the. It's the way we think. Right. Not necessarily what we know, but it's the way we think, how we look at the problem. And can that be taught or not? And I'm not sure it can, but you.
Some of it. Some of it can't be right. There's people that can take something apart. They can look at it and they can understand how it works. There's other people that can take the thing apart and they can look at it and they just see a pile of parts.
Yeah.
I don't know if you can teach the. The visualization of. Oh, that's why that does.
Oh.
When this plate tilts, it increases the displacement, and that's why the pressure goes up. I get it now.
Right.
I don't know if you can teach that.
You're working on a program, though, or a course to kind of. We talked about this like a month or so ago. You're kind of working on something like that to see if you can teach it. Right?
Yeah, A process. A process course. And it's not. So there's a lot of things out there. There's a lot of diagnostic classes out there which are just. This is just how I. The person who writes the class does diagnostics.
And we're.
Jim Kokonis and I are working on something that's. This is why you should do this this way. And these are the reasons to back it up.
Right.
This is why, when we have a no air conditioning complaint, this is why we hook up the scan tool instead of the AC machine.
Right.
Like this, like just, Just a course as to. This is. And a lot of it isn't even so specific as to. As to a diagnostic on an individual car, but like a process of thinking of pdca.
Right.
Like, that's the famous Toyota thing. Plan, plan, do plan. Something say, if I do this, this should happen. Do it. Check and see what happens, and then act based on the result.
Right.
Pdca. And that's what we're, we're look, we're, we're gonna do something. We're in the middle of writing something that's based on plan, do, check, act. And a lot of that is, you know, that whole ideology is requiring you to go look at description and operation.
Yeah.
Because if you know how it works, you don't need the manufacturer's trouble tree to fix it.
Yep.
You need like for something electrical, you need a wiring diagram, a scan tool and how it works. I don't need their trouble tree.
Yeah.
If this light comes on when this happens. Okay. Let me, I'll go figure that out.
Right.
So it'll be, it'll be fun. It's going to be fun.
When you made an interest when you, we talk about the, the scan tool for an AC complaint. You know, a lot of the older techs probably know, but how many Fords did you see that when it's got a hard enough misfire, the AC is disabled.
Sure.
Right.
He's disabled. Or, or most recently I had a Chrysler Pacifica with no air. A complaint was no air conditioning.
Right.
Now. Now my argument for hooking up the, the scan tool is that pretty much every modern vehicle has a high side pressure sensor in it. I don't need to get pressures out of the machine anymore.
Yeah.
I, in most cases I need to determine a couple different things before I decide the problem is a refrigerant issue. Right. I need to determine a couple things.
Yeah.
So most Recently I had a 22. It was 22 Chrysler Pacifica. The clutch was being commanded on, all the permissions were on and there was power at the clutch and the clutch didn't work. And then the other, the other thing that was going on was the start stop didn't work and there's no codes for the start stop. But understanding how the system works, one would think that if the AC is commanded on the evaporator core temperature sensors 117 degrees and the commanded temperatures 41, it's probably not going to quit the engine spinning at the stoplight.
Right.
It's probably going to try to keep the AC compressor spinning. Stuff like that, stuff you don't think about now, somebody could spend way too long. I didn't even think twice about that.
Yep.
But I'm a nerd and I've read how the stuff works.
Right.
You know, I've got a little bit of a problem. So I, we're, we're going to really start tackling how to improve the Efficiency of what you do by understanding how things actually work.
Yeah, because like, when we go about the conversation, you know, and you said it, some people shouldn't be charging for the diag that they do because they're not really even diagnosing anything. And you're right, you know, it's. Sometimes we have to give value. Right. That's still what we're always talking about. We have to give value is you don't necessarily. Value doesn't mean that I gave you an answer, but value means I, I perform four tests that have eliminated four things. I still don't even know what's wrong yet.
But I can tell you what it isn't. These four.
Sure.
You know, it has fuel, has fuel pressure, it has spark, it has, you know, we can go on. So, you know, the, the, the idea that somebody is charging for a scan and a cam sensor fault and they throw a cam sensor and they threw it in the wrong side of the engine, that customer shouldn't have got charged for any of that. None.
No.
Right. So when we talk about charging for diag and everybody should be within reason, you know, it works in some places and it doesn't work in the other. I want to go down that, that argument. We have to be actually giving them dye. That's the key thing. Yeah, we actually have to be. Because you can write it in the story that. Yeah.
You know, confirmed. Bank one is driver side, remove sensor, you know, install new sensor, long crank gone. You can write that down. That's. That's diag. Right. You don't have to. The customer doesn't need to necessarily read that.
You, you know, 12 volts on one, 5 volts on the other, and a good signal.
You know, I mean, I, I like to do that personally for down the road. If something happens, then you have your documentation of exactly what you saw last time. That's. Those notes aren't even for the customer.
Yes.
Those notes are for us.
Right.
Those notes are for, oh, I need to do X or whatever.
Right.
I need to do. You name it. Because this is what it was last time.
Yeah.
Right.
And if this is what it was last time and the car is coming back or they have a different concern then.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's, you know, we have to, you know, and, and that's the whole thing. If we're not giving the customer, if we're not doing the diag, don't charge the customer to misdiagnose the car. That's the worst. You know, I'm not even necessarily against people charging something and saying I don't know and I give it. I've done some testing and I think I can't program it. I've had cars like that where Nissan is a good example. Nissan 101 math. Math codes.
Right. If you're not in the ability to program for that bulletin on Nissan and you scan it, I don't have a problem with you charging the customer to do the scan print off the bulletin and say I can't print this or excuse me, I can't, I can't program this car. But this would be the first step that needs to be done before I put a 500oe Hitachi sensor.
And maybe, and maybe you do that at not the full hour diagram or something.
Right.
We do stuff like that. I do it all the time. Like we have a GM with a damaged tone ring.
Yeah.
I'm not, I'm not hitting somebody the whole hour to tell them that the tone rings beat up.
Exactly.
Right.
You've not doing it.
It's on the hoist doing an oil change and you look in there and you can see the piece of the ABS reluctor is missing. Your diet's done.
Yeah, I'm not hitting them a full hour.
But you know what we don't do and I've said it before, it's my why I laugh at the guys that are so against Identifix is because the only people that make fun of identifix, I swear to God, some of them are the ones that really like don't realize what the powerful tool it can mean. I don't want to. This isn't a pitch for Identifix. But like an example of that, if you didn't know that that TSB was there about the Nissan thing and you go put a 200, you know, parts store sold mass airflow like I've seen happen countless times. The car comes back, you're now down a rabbit hole of you don't know what to do because you didn't bother to. So did you diag the car? Not really. But if you didn't make yourself didn't research your problem. That's another part of facet of diag is researching problem.
Now you've put a white box mass airflow in it. So now maybe the second time it comes in, you actually do your homework.
Yeah.
You don't use the code as a part number. You go, oh, this thing needs a flash.
Yeah.
So then you either figure out how to flash Nissan, which is unlikely if you didn't look up the TSB or you call a mobile programmer out. Yes, you pay a mobile programmer, let's say 250 to flash this Nissan, right? He comes out and flash it. Now you're another 250. Knew it well, it's still broke. Had it had the original mass airflow sensor in it, it would be fixed. But now you got this reman pile of junk in there that's broke. So now you're a mass airflow sensor and a flash into this Nissan, right? And it's still. So now you're on Google at night and you're like, oh, oh.
If it's got this colored PCV valve and not that colored PCV valve, that causes. So now you look. But it's not even the right service bulletin for the right car. So now you're changing the PCV valve and it still doesn't fix the thing. It's. I just. Yeah, it doesn't pay to not read, man. It does not pay slow down to go faster.
That's exactly. I was just gonna say that. You know, that's the frustrating thing because think about that customer standpoint. You're on the right track in the sense that you say, okay, I got the software done. But then like they. Their brother put the parts store mass airflow sensor in it and threw the OE one in the trash. And there was nothing wrong with it. But you know, they had a.
They never have. It's really hard to get their confidence in you when you've had to go back now and do three things to bring the car back to the first way it should have been approached.
Every GM drivability problem that ever comes in the shop. Okay, Mr. Customer, do you have the original mass airflow sensor?
Yes. Yeah, I had a gun.
When you took out.
We sold us. We sold a Nissan to a gun.
That sucker back in.
And. And every time he had his Nissan a month and the cluster started telling them, check gas cap. So he went to the parts store and bought a gas cap and he threw his OE one away. And you know, so he. I bring it in and I perform the diag and it's like, guess what? Your part store gas cap, it's leaking now, right? Then the code's not there. We know it needs a vent valve. That's what's gonna fix it. But I'm like, guess what, scooter, Before I even go, you know, anywhere on this car.
Yeah, you've got a threaded and this thing takes a quarter turn or vice versa or whatever, you need to go.
Spend 50 bucks on a new gas gap to start over with this because your vent valve right now is ceiling and then if it comes back. So again we, we laugh at the customers that you know at that just the exact same scenario but text do it every day, you know.
Sure do.
As a gas cap message in the cluster. I changed the gas cap and I charge them 50 bucks. Diag you didn't do for the customer.
No. Right.
And you just added a wrinkle. Now that, that we have to somebody like Brian or you know, another super smart guy tech out there somewhere has to start at the beginning, get a retainer. That's a whole other conversation, right?
A whole other conversation. Yeah.
That is unfortunately, you know, the customer's like well I don't know what to do now. Well, leave it to the hands of the professionals. Right. So yeah.
Very rarely do I see anybody help themselves trying to fix. Unfortunately, modern cars are difficult to fix. We wouldn't shut the shop down for three days and take guys to training and spend all that money and spend monthly subscription fees on web based training and pay guys to attend training after work, during work, whenever weekends. You know, we wouldn't be paying all this money if it was able to be done without being trained. Yeah, we wouldn't do it.
Right.
And it's frustrating people, I get it. You know, it really sucks. The people are listening and you're not in the say you're not in the technician realm and you just think this is a lot of money. It is a lot of money and I understand it's frustrating and times are tight for everyone. But I mean like I've said it before, you can either live with the car broken or unfortunately we just have to make it a priority now to fix it. And it's the people that are trying to charge diag to fix your car, not trying to rip you off. Now the people that charge you diag and don't successfully rip fix the car, they ripped you off.
There's no ripped you off.
But you know when, when somebody says I need to charge you 200 to perform a smoke test and and you know, flesh out your evap system, they're not ripping you off because like you already want an ESIM put in because you know Google told you it's going to need an eason.
I just had one the other day. You know there's a Buick, it was a Buick and the guy wanted a cam sensor and William at the counter goes yeah, no, we're gonna do the testing on that. You Know, and it wasn't a cam sensor. It was a. It was a camshaft. Solenoid.
Yeah.
You know, so timing solenoid.
Yeah.
Yep. Timing solenoid.
Right.
But he had a cam code, and that part number. He saw the word camshaft and he wanted a cam sensor. And it was so funny. William. William goes. Yeah. I was going to tell him the big guy in the back will yell at me if I just let him say, we're going to put a part in. It's like, you know, he's like.
I almost said that. He's like, do you understand how angry that guy will get if I throw a work order on the counter that says install cam sensor? Because customer said so. And they don't understand. It's not. It's not a. I got to collect my money. It's his cam sensor. Wouldn't have fixed the car.
That's right.
Yeah.
That. Unfortunately, that's just how it is.
Right.
And the big burly guy in the back, he wants to legit fix your car.
Yeah, I'm lazy. I don't want to work on this thing twice. I got too much crap to do. There's 100 cars in the lot. I'm not working on it twice. We're not doing that. So, yeah.
I'm excited to go to asta. I'm excited.
Me too. Me too.
You know, it's. It's. I always like tools a lot of fun, but North Carolina is a lot more fun. The go karts are fun. The weather, I just not. The Pennsylvania was bad, but, you know.
How about that smorgasbord? Oh, my gosh.
Was that not something, Eh?
Oh, my gosh. The freaking buffet line was like a quarter mile from end to end, wasn't it? Do they have a measurement on how long that thing is?
It's over 200ft. Because I know that was it. I was sending video. Yeah, yeah, 200ft. What we're talking about, guys, is we were talking about Shady Maple smorgasbord in Pennsylvania. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We're at Tools. So before we all got there, I course, me being chubby and my.
The algorithm that, you know, AI is so smart, shows me. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, shows me restaurants, and Shady Maples is the world's or North America's.
Largest, which I always confuse with Shady Acres, which is the trailer park from Trailer Park Boys. But anyways.
So it was. It was incredible. And yeah, there was a lot of people eating a lot of food that night. It was a good time. But North Carolina is amazing. And I'm. I excited to see Brian. We have some really cool people from the online side that are coming this year.
Yeah.
You know, like, a lot of the guys from Tik Tok that you're not as familiar with, but I'm familiar with are making the trip and I think that's really cool. There's. I think there's like 10 people from Tik Tok that have never been like this before. They're now showing up to asa. It's been pretty. It's getting a lot of traction over there. People that are going to be like. Because again, Chuck, you know, Chuck is like, he's a big proponent now of.
Of Aston, you know, after being there last year and, you know, now. Have you seen there just the AI impersonators of some of these good people online now already?
No, the. I recently got on TikTok only because Justin Morgan told me I had to follow this thing called the Salty H Vac Tech. Oh, okay. Oh, I was following this guy. Oh, my gosh. I pulled. I had to pull over. I was crying.
I was laughing at the heart of my truck. I had to pull over. I'm just. Because I had bumped my phone and it gets going and it's like stuck on this channel.
Right.
And I'm like trying to look down and trying to get it off and trying to drive. And he said something and I just started. It was so funny. I just started crying. Yeah, the Salty H Vac Tech. I was watching. Oh, my gosh.
I love the. You know, there's so much that. That I've learned from social media that I would have never had the opportunity to get training. You know what I mean? And that's been the beauty of it for me. So, like, people that don't. Well, you and I would never have met if we hadn't, you know, been on Facebook. So it's.
Yeah.
I don't know that I would have known as to existed.
No.
I don't know how I would have found out up here.
No, no.
Never would have found out.
It's the same as ar. Aaro Aftermarket Automotive Retailers of Ontario is having a convention the week before in Toronto.
Okay.
Here. And it. You would blow your mind how many people I talked to in Ontario that have never even heard of AARO really know this event. And it's happening right. In Toronto.
Very few people in this area knew about tools and, you know, so I'm. I'm pretty far north. Right. So everybody. Pretty much everybody that we talk to as far as shop owners and Stuff are closer to it than I was.
Right.
Because you know, the lake's there. You can't keep going north from my house. And it, you know, a couple people knew about it and I wasn't surprised because what do you know, that's the same two shop owners that shut their shops down and one, one shuts down to go to vision, one's shut down to go to tools and as to the same year, you know, so I'm not surprised they knew about it. I just. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. How would we know? We wouldn't know.
And we're not. Listen, Brian and I are not saying that that's what everybody needs to do is you have to be at a designation event in order to actually say that you're training people. We're not trying to say that there's so many avenues out there for training now that your, your people can get, you know, a lot of it's going to be online, a lot of it is going to be, you know, you might have to bring a Justin Morgan in for a week or a weekend at your shop.
That's another option for shops or Brandon. With destination events being pricey.
Yeah.
You know, if you're like, hey man, I like this destination training, this is a great idea. I've got 18 guys, 18 times 3,000 a piece, right? You do the math. We're at about, we're at about 50 grand worth of hard cost to get to this destination event back, right. You can, for a less than about 10% of that, you can bring someone to your shop and do a private training event. You can call, you can call Andrew Fisher with facts that's gonna mention that name and he will tell you, you know, this is how much I charge. This is, you know, the travel for this, that and the other thing. And I think that if you have a fair amount of people at your shop, I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised what that costs. I think that you'll be not, you'll be like, well, this is way more affordable.
And I'm not, you know, I love Assa and I think everybody should go for the networking. But man, if you just don't have the budget, if you've got a bigger operation, you're like, I just, I just can't blow 50 grand to go do this. Yep, you can call. There's a ton of options out there to get top level training into your shop to explain to you to get.
You know.
Any of them guys.
There's so many good people that can come to your shop, so. Oh, Brian, I don't want to keep you any longer tonight. I know you got a ton of stuff still to do and it's.
But yeah, we're, we're loading the camper up. I've been working on that all day and that's a whole project, you know what I mean?
Airboard fixed, so that's good. I can.
There you go.
I didn't fish this weekend, which I. It was so freaking hot the last two days.
I know, it's. Who even wants to be outside?
You saw the guys, Brian, coming in on. I saw them on Lake Ontario yesterday because I was watching the tournament finish off and of course the guy that was expected to win one. Here's the cool part. Corey Johnson won the Thousand Islands Open in Kingston here with his dad, fishing with his dad, Lynn. Lynn's 70 something years old.
Oh, that's cool.
So while he's fishing the lake, Lake Ontario, Chris is fishing the St. Lawrence river out of Clayton, New York.
Oh really?
And Chris won that tournament.
You know, I like to stay up in Clayton a lot there. I, I stayed at a place in Clayton one time and the guy's kid, they didn't live there. The people that ran it didn't live there. They just were up for the summer. And he had his kid up there and it was bass season.
Yeah.
And we were not doing well. And we watched the kid go out every morning. And the kid was going out, we'd be sitting around the campfire asking what he caught. And the kid, he, he was catching. Oh my gosh, he was catching fish. He was showing us pictures, everything else. So my buddy Steve, I was with, he, he catches up with the kid's dad that owns this, this place, this place with these cottages. He goes, how much, how much for your kid to take us out tomorrow? And that's what we did.
We hired, we hired a 16 year old kid as a fishing guide in Clayton, New York. And we killed it. This kid, he knew all the good spots. We were getting skunked. He brought us right out there, put. He had us, he had us on the fish. The first time the boat stopped, we were on the fish. I was like, oh my gosh, we should done this three days ago.
And it was cheap. He was a 16 year old. So we were giving him like 200 bucks a day. He was, he was, he was living in his glory because you know his dad, he's probably working for his dad. He's probably not getting paid. It's probably like, oh, you're part of this family. You got to take the garbage out at the cot at the campground.
Right.
He's probably not getting paid by his dad, and he's using his dad's boat and gas, and we're giving him 200 bucks a day to go take us out. Oh, gosh.
It was just steered that young man's career in the fishing guide instead of.
Yeah, you know, we're like. We're like, how much? How much for your kit tickets? He's like, are you serious? Like, yeah, he's like, I don't know. I guess he can or whatever. So he told the kid to go, hey, we talked to your dad. How about 200 bucks? Take us out in the morning till noon. It's all about it.
It's an incredible, beautiful spot. It really is so amazing. It's. We're sitting on the most incredible fishery in the world, by bar none, right now.
I know. It's hard to believe that you live that close to it, isn't it? Every time I drive up to the corner store to get coffee and I look at the lake, I go, I can't believe I. Of all the places I could live, I live right next to the largest freshwater fishery on the face of the freaking planet.
I'm a block away. It's incredible. It's literally like I turn left every day at the stoplight to go to work, and the lake is right there. You can't drive through the stoplight because you're. You'd be driving into the lake.
Driving in the lake, right?
Yeah.
That's like the. The corner store I go to get coffee at. It's like, yeah. You know, somebody with a better arm than me could throw a baseball into the lake from the corner store, and I can't.
You know the ramp that's five minutes from the house? I count the trailers at it every morning. I count the trailers at home. Like, if I see the same trailer that was there when I left at 7, and I come back at 5, and that trailer's still there, I'm like, those guys are on them, you know? Oh, yeah, you're staying out there. Like, you're.
Yeah. If you're gonna stay out all day, you're not out there eating sandwiches. You're catching fish.
That's right.
For sure.
Well, brother, I'll let you go. As always. Always. So cool to talk to you, man. Thank you for being here tonight.
Yeah.
So, everybody, I hope to see you all at asta and, you know, just do a good diag this week, okay? Love you all. Talk to you. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
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