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The Mount Rushmore of Automotive Trainers: Legends, Pioneers, and Rising Stars [E231]

The Mount Rushmore of Automotive Trainers: Legends, Pioneers, and Rising Stars [E231]

Diagnosing the Aftermarket A to Z Apr 08, 2026 32 min
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About this episode

The hosts tackle a reader-driven “Mount Rushmore of automotive trainers” debate, wrestling with whether to crown the “best of the best” or the foundational educators who inspired the next generation. The discussion spotlights influential names in ignition analysis, emissions, and practical diagnostics—especially road-dog instructors known for strategy, storytelling, and teaching tools-free when needed. Core picks include John Thornton, Scott Manna, Dave Scaler, and a tag-team of Randy Byrne-Claw and Jim Kemper, with Bob Halfman as a standout. Honorable mentions expand the lineup of rising and legacy educators.

Topics: automotive trainer legacy ignition analysis educators emissions and gas analysis training diagnostics teaching strategy meter vs scope instruction road-dog conference instructors electric vehicle training relevance pico and autel training influence honoring foundational educators
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This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
Welcome everyone to yet another episode of diagnosing the aftermarket A-to-Z.
I'm Matvon Zaland.
We're going to Czechoslovakia.
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And we're going to do it in a recreational vehicle.
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Like I had mentioned before, I guess, some emails and messages with ideas for Mount Rushmore's.
And I had threatened to do one, so I decided to make it more of a promise than a threat.
Usually, you try to do a few of them in one episode.
This one might take the whole episode.
I have some reservations about it.
Part of me wants to just do the complete cop-out, rattle off the names, and be out.
But also just kind of wrestling with the whole notion of a Mount Rushmore, right?
Just like the last episode with them.
And I think I even somewhat contradict myself with the choices that was a Mount Rushmore
really the best of the best, or they like the forefathers, the foundation,
or laid the foundation, stuff like that.
And wrestling with that, I think generally most people go with
the Mount Rushmore just being the best of the best.
So I don't know, I'll just make it up as I go, like usual.
But if you haven't figured out what the question is, or I shouldn't even say the question,
I guess, but it is.
And it's from multiple people, multiple emails about this.
What are my Mount Rushmore of trainers, educators?
Yeah, that's rough, but I'm going to go for it anyways.
And I guess what I want to do a little bit is kind of wrestle with it live,
or at least as I go here, simply because when you start considering like,
I could just rattle off the four names and be done, I guess it bothers me in that
there are people who may not be on the Rushmore, or at least mine.
Not that mine is so important, but they maybe don't make mine, they probably make others.
And yet they are important in that at one time, and in some cases still,
they're very well looked on, like they were the ones that inspired the next generation that
went on to inspire the next generation, right?
That's just how it works.
Pick the Rushmore, right?
We could do whatever professional athletes and scientists and whatever.
So here I sit, if the Mount Rushmore is made up of those that laid foundations,
then, you know, I don't know how far back it goes.
You know, who were the first instructors out there in the manner that we think of as
instructors, the traveling instructors, the ones who go to a training conference for
stuff like that.
And a couple names come to my, actually, really three off the coffin, I might think of more.
They aren't on my Mount Rushmore, but it would bother me to not bring up their names.
And one of them is Bill Fulton.
If I recall, I think he even was an award-winning presenter, or award-winning
instructor, educator, and he did travel, wrote articles for trade magazines.
I think he still might.
He was one of those that I think inspired a lot of the next generation instructors,
as well as, I mean, educating professional, mechanical and technical specialists.
So he was a road dog, right?
If I remember again, going back a ways, but I think he traveled around,
it was him and his wife would go around the country presenting.
I think he really, he should be mentioned.
I just thought of another one now.
There's going to be more.
He was known, I believe, I feel, I don't think I believe it.
I know he was known for ignition analysis.
And so is one of the next ones I'm going to rattle off, maybe even more so than
Mr. Fulton.
But Bill Fulton was known for his articles and his classes on analyzing secondary ignition.
I'm sure in some cases primary ignition, but secondary ignition
to make fairly accurate diagnostic decisions.
Yeah, I'm sure if you fire up your web browser and punch in his name and articles,
you should see some.
I think he wrote for probably everybody, you know,
submitted articles.
I don't know if I remember him being like a regular monthly columnist.
He could have been, but honestly, he has quite a catalog of articles.
So I said ignition and immediately trips a memory of another one
who is no longer with us.
A Mac Vandenbrink.
I have two sides of my memories of Mac, right?
So I was lucky enough to meet him at Linder Technical Services and got to spend a week with him.
He wasn't an instructor.
He was there with a friend of his and they took the Pico Guru and he was there as an attendee.
And that was an absolute blast to be around him.
Mac was Danish, but he had that accent that many assumed he was a German,
which used to really offend him.
For obvious reasons, because when he was young, he lived in Nazi occupied.
So he had stories.
That was one of his, we call it a side gig storytelling.
He's got a story about kind of raiding one of the Nazi warehouses.
And he might not be alive if it wasn't raining.
And the way the coats, the Nazis wore in their helmets, they wouldn't really look up.
They had to keep their heads down and their shoulders up or else the water would just pour
into their, I think into their backs.
So they were sneaking above them.
And they're stealing, you know, I think it was hopefully food or something valuable.
And I think if I recall, they ended up stealing a bunch of toothpicks.
So I believe for a while, his nickname amongst his friends was toothpick or something to that
nature. I'm sure the, his native tongues version of that.
He worked originally, I believe he was part of coming up with the Alan Scope, if I remember
right, SCA, I think he was a part of that and extremely well known for ignition and
ignition analysis. He was also kind of a developer or inventor, really an inventor,
like a side note. I was lucky enough to know this guy and his wife socially that years and years ago,
Albin Moore would host a camp out around the fourth of July and Mac and his wife had
one of the bedrooms that was their bedroom. And in that bedroom, they had to keep kind of a little
nightlight with a tablet and a pen or pencil ready to go because Mac would wake up in the middle
of the night with an idea and he needed to go write it down. And his brain was always going,
always had these ideas, always had test tool ideas. I'll never remember the name of it,
but he had a really, really slick tool for connecting to DIs, way spark ignition systems to
let you scope them because the issue with scoping them sometimes was that they kind of had a floating
ground, if you will. So they weren't referenced to battery negative or ultimately battery negative,
right? So you get some pretty unstable waveforms and Mac had a solution for that.
Probably should have researched that to give you the name of it, but it's not all that important.
Finding one would be insane. I think one of the people I'm going to put on my Mount Rushmore has
one. I think he does. I don't know what it would be worth. The cool factor, the value of it
shoots up if you knew Mac. And by the way, his wife's name was Louise. I think she is
gone now to just lovely people. He had another tool. I think it was called like the cop three.
And you could use that to briefly disable like an injector or a coil. His mind was always going.
And again, a wonderful human being, a wonderful storyteller. He had stories.
He had been in it. He had gone through a heck of a life. Another one that comes to mind is
Norm Docknell. I think he was an inspiration for a lot. He is a personality. Let me tell you,
he's got a powerful personality. And I mean that in the best way possible. Energetic even now at,
I would never pretend to guess what age he's at. He was one of those I think was very well
known. And I think he had started a training company. And again, maybe you should do some
research on this, but I'm torn. It's either a spy or a target. One or the two or maybe both,
for all I know. But he was big into training, traveling. Again, one of those road dogs
inspired. I know he inspired some of the maybe the generation before mine, if you will,
instructors. And for good reason, right? He was genuine, I guess, for who he was.
The guy up front presenting was the same guy you were talking to in the hallway. Got a chance to
meet him a few times. That's very cool. And set through a couple of his classes. And then another
one is Jim Morton, who we probably know better because of social media, right? He's active
in social media. He's still going to training conferences. And, you know, Stoeckler helps
spread the word about Mr. Morton and all that. Another one of those, right? He was the guy years
ago. And I'm not saying he's not the guy anymore. It's not some dig. But when you're out there years
ago, you're the one inspiring the next generation. Clearly he inspired Stoeckler, right? So
that's how that works. It's important to me to bring up these people because it bugs me,
I guess, when people don't know about, I guess, those that laid the groundwork or some groundwork.
You find the same thing. I think I've brought this up before where it bothers me when people don't
know old comedians or old entertainers, boxers, fighters, athletes, authors, when people don't
know who Laurel and Hardy are, which is probably a bad example because they have those movies.
But it's kind of sad because a lot of what they did holds water. Abba and Castello might be a better
reference because I don't think there's been a modern movie about them. Anyway,
could go on a tangent with that. But that would be an example. It's important, I think,
to know, I don't know, like a lineage almost or how the trees roots, stuff like that.
Now to kind of focus more on the actual Mount Rushmore. I think the easy one for me is John
Thornton. Yeah, he's a friend of mine. He's been on the podcast for two episodes. If you
haven't listened to them or watched them, I don't listen to it to listen to me. Do it to
listen to John because I'm telling you, I don't know that we've ever had somebody like that.
I don't know if we're going to ever have somebody like that where, yeah, he's smart.
Like he's really smart. He also had the education leading into this, not strictly automotive,
like kind of an engineering background. And then getting into cars at a very interesting
time, right? It was still carbureted, but he was there for the evolution into electronics.
So you have that, you have the brains, you have the experience, and I don't mean experience,
like just years and years of experience. I mean the experience of when, when he got into it,
and the evolution through which he lived through. I don't mean he's just got all this decades
and decades of experience, which he does, but that's not what I mean by that. Just a fierce
determination to become better, not just as a diagnostician, but also an educator.
Like he put forth a ton of effort to become a better presenter. There's a strategy in what he
does. There's a strategy in his handouts. There's a strategy in his presentations and
the effort and the passion. And it just, I don't think we've not seen anything like that.
I don't know that we ever will. That's not to really blow smoke up John's tail. I think it's
almost lamenting because I don't think I'm nearly smart enough to do it. I don't think I have that
sort of focus that drive, like I like to learn. I like to figure stuff out, but then to be
very rigorous in preparation and all that, like some people that know me just heard me
use the word preparation and probably spit whatever they're drinking all over the keyboard or screen.
Tracy right now is probably choking, so somebody better call and get some help.
Otherwise, Tracy, you can actually stand behind a chair and kind of launch yourself
over it and get a good almost Heimlich maneuverish with the back of the chair that could save you.
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Yeah, and then after John, it's really Mr. Manna, Scott Manna, for many of the same reasons,
and you kind of have a really neat situation where they live and work and rather close
proximity. So they both benefited from each other, if that makes sense, like they both became
better because of it. And Scott, again, super, super smart. You know, he's got his own mull
dungeon, if you will, in the basement where he assembles these classes and works so very hard
at it. And he's got method to his madness, and why when he's up there in front of the
class, there is a reason he's doing it. There's no madness involved. It's just the effort and the
strategy to put forth a good class and educate you. It's deserving of being on Mount Rushmore of
Trainers, as you well know. Tool truck dealers, ducks, Scott Manna every week because they owe
him money. Amazing human being. Now it gets rough. I have a lot of personal bias
from, I guess, you see the classes that you see, and that they resonate with you or the instructor
resonates with you. One of those is Dave Scaler. I'm sure if you listen to this podcast, you've
heard me say his name before. He's certainly not training full time. But at one time,
he was a director of a company in kind of the New Jersey area called MEA, which I think
stood for Mechanics Education Association. They had a phone in like telephone tech support,
mobile diagnostics. And then I believe it was like three or four nights a week,
they would have classes. And the classes I think were aimed at, you know, being an hour or
two, no handouts, so right up my alley. They very specific, like you would come in to learn
about this DTC for this car. Very specific. Essentially, if you will, trying to almost train
themselves out of jobs, which is hard to do. And Dave had a wicked memory and a wicked delivery,
and he's, I don't think it's the accent, honestly. He's just one of the funniest human
beings I know. But he can go toe to toe with about anybody. Really, when it comes down to
brass tacks, that guy could match wits with anybody. And a lot of the classes seemed dumbed down,
right? Like he did an engine mechanical class using all gauges. He put up a couple waveforms
with transducers. But really the idea of that was showing the level of detail how that can
become a distraction. And then going back to just the mechanical or the should say the test
with the gauges. And coming to the same diagnostic conclusion, very quickly, he also,
the goal was to know what's wrong with the car in five minutes. Like he'd say that over
and over. It's like I got five minutes. Was everything five minutes? Probably not. But
that was the goal. Let me gather as much information as I can. And let me do it with the tools
that most of them have. And there wasn't a lot of scope stuff. There was a lot of
meter stuff. And they would figure out how to diagnose something with a Tesla with a meter
with some jumper wires to just get down and be nitty gritty. You don't need the equipment. You
don't need to nitpick or whatever. I get it. And the thing is, is Dave could do
the tough stuff. Don't kid yourself when he's telling you you got to put your meter on
this circuit and you need to see this voltage, whatever it is, you need to see 3.2 volts
or whatever the range is, 2.3 volts to 3.8 volts, something like that. Don't kid yourself.
He's had a scope on it. He knows what the scope should do. He can interpret those results.
It was all a sham saying he didn't have time for that. He absolutely knows how. He absolutely
knew how to. But that wasn't his clientele. That was not the people he was teaching to.
So he had to bust out what they had and figure out how they could use what they had to get
to the result they needed. And sometimes the result was really what could they report to the
hotline. One of those people that was on that hotline was Ira Waldman. And he, a trainer
with Tim Easy, they had a bunch of other just heavy hitters on that tech line service. It was
insane. And then they had to take turns doing mobile calls. So they had to keep their hands dirty.
It was very, very neat entity, very, very neat company, if you will. And Dave would do classes
like diesel for gas guys. And like I said, that engine mechanical class, like it was really
down and dirty. Let's get this car figured out and fixed. If there was any way you could see him,
I would jump at that opportunity. And like I said, I don't think he's been on,
certainly not on the circuit for a while. And then the fourth to kind of wrap up this Mount
Rushmore. This feels like I'm like, skirting it a little bit. But the reason I'm going to say
this the way I'm going to say it is I can't disassociate the two. And I could probably throw
a third in there. So I'm going to say Jim Kemper, Randy Byrne-Claw. And then really,
so those two do a lot of classes together. And I think an honorable mention with those two
is Bob Halfman. And Randy Byrne-Claw used to own a repair shop in Colorado. I think it was
Fort Collins, to be honest, but I could be wrong. Super smart individual who now works for, I believe,
the Colorado State Department of Health. He was working with Jim Kemper, of course, was on the
podcast. If you haven't listened to that, another wickedly smart individual. And they would do these
classes together. And a lot of times Bob Halfman was heavily involved. And Bob Halfman was
an extraordinarily smart individual who sold CODA products. So the CODA
exhaust gas analyzer, I mean, at one time, and maybe arguably still, was the bench to half.
It was the best. What it maybe didn't do that more modern gas analyzers do is the volume. I
don't think it's quite as much. So the reaction time wasn't as fast as now. You know, our
transfer delays are much less, where I think my EMS bench right now takes about four to five seconds
to respond. The CODA bench would take more like, is probably pushing 15 seconds to respond. But
regardless, what it told you was extraordinarily accurate. And then they had a fuel system
analyzer that a MightyVac kind of know. I don't know if I want to say copied. But it was a pressure
gauge with a kind of a volume. So you'd connected in series. And then it would show you the volume
as well as the pressure and you could find problems so fast with it. But Bob was a salesman
and did support. And I think he serviced the benches and he put on classes and
super, super smart guy. Yeah, I wish you guys could meet some of these people.
But Randy and Jim would do classes on emissions and they were just at the forefront
and knew so much. And sometimes that gets rough, right? With the sometimes like the more you
know, the more difficult it is to answer questions because you can't whip out that
broad paintbrush and just answer really generically. A former employee of Randy's Matt
Ragsdale was very active on IETN back in the day. And he was one of those that also just wicked,
smart, unbelievable memory. And because of that, because so many things, you could just see the
struggle to answer things generically because you almost can't. There's a lot of yeah, buts involved.
So yeah, that would be my Mount Rushmore. And then I don't think I can top them off the cuff.
Somebody will probably message me and then I'll feel horrible.
Some honorable mentions, I think. And these are ones that might end up on there someday.
Very well could. The first one that comes to mind is Pedro, a delatory. I get it, we're friends.
It sounds terribly biased. I think I can say and take a step back and remove that bias
that he is cut from a lot of the same thread as some of those guys.
Yeah, just skies the limit. Extremely knowledgeable. Hard puts so much effort into his presentations.
It's so admirable just to know about it and see it at work and stuff like that.
Another one I think is Keith Perkins. Again, puts together really, really good content.
Works very hard at it and studying it and just kind of dogged with it.
Broken record, right? I mean, they're all really smart. He's another one of those super smart guys.
Scott Shotten and is one of those that I think has inspired many and he's been around the world
doing training. So he's another one that needs to be mentioned in that.
Another one, Randy Dilman. If you ever got to see Randy Dilman do a class,
he's working with Pico right now. That guy super, super smart and when he took you through a process,
whatever that was, I got to witness him through just an intro to lab scope class
and then a Pico scope class. And I'm talking about back in Pico six days.
So this is going back just very regimented and how he is presenting it to what process he
wanted you to go through and just a great, great experience. And then another one,
I don't know how many classes he's doing now or how many we'll see him do, but when he was going,
Justin Morgan, man, what a riot and then what a ride. That guy could fire off
information and keep you just so engaged because of it, because of his wits and the way
he thought about things and worked through problems, but also just the quick quips here
and there just would keep you locked in and talk like my kids got to be locked in.
Justin kept you locked in. And if he's doing any more classes, he will keep you locked in.
I kid you not. Boy, oh boy, keep going here. We're going to be here a long time.
I'm going to call it after those. Otherwise, I think I'll just keep going.
But yeah, those are the honorable mentions. The Rushmore is, it's going to be John Thornton,
Scott Manna, Dave Scaler. And then it's like a tag team. Like you have to put them
up together, Randy Bernclaw, Jim Kemper. And then really, it would be hard for me not to
put in Bob Halfman. That's the Rushmore of Trainers or my Rushmore of Trainers. I'm sure I'm
missing some. I'm more worried about missing one of the kind of the ground layers, groundwork layers.
Rick Escalambre probably should have been mentioned with that.
Gosh. And then the honorable mentions. I know I'm missing somebody. It's terrible.
There's a lot of really good guys coming up. I would keep my eyes open or be aware
of Mike Blackenary. I think he could be, but he's already quite good. But I think he's another one
of those to keep your eye on. Yeah. And if I forgot to mention you, I really apologize.
But yeah, I think that's how I will leave you. If you disagree or you have people I forgot,
please let me know. Shoot me an email at mattfonzelpodcast.gmail.com or
instant messenger. Happy to hear that. Yeah. Or any other Trainers that you've been to that
have really resonated with you. I'd love to hear about it. As always, thank you so much
to our sponsors. Autel, Pico, technology and independent wrench jobs. Thank you to the Automotive
Repair Podcast Network. And until next time, take care. You've been listening to diagnosing the
aftermarket A to Z with Matt Bonslow on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
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