One of the most satisfying elements of being a trusted wrench person is the fact that we know what to do when most other folks run out of ideas. That’s why we get paid as well as we do. But no level of success we might enjoy on the shop floor gives us license to be a jerk, and we shouldn’t expect to get paid for every job, particularly when we stop to help somebody.
One day I pulled into the Winn Dixie parking lot to pick up some bananas, and I saw a store employee and a kind gentleman trying to get an elderly lady’s car going with a pair of jumper cables. They all were sweating profusely, and things weren’t going well for them. As I walked by the car, I could hear the starter grunting its best with whatever those cables were feeding it for volts and amps, but there just wasn’t enough wattage flowing to light up that old Buick.
When I made my exit from the store things hadn’t changed, so I moseyed over to look the situation over. The jumper cables they were using looked substantial enough, and it was possible the starter’s life was all but gone. But I asked this frustrated group of three to let me fetch my own jumper cables, promising not to charge them anything for the effort. The eyes of the guy who owned the cables drifted to my ASE shoulder patch, and he shrugged.
Shoulders to the Wheel
My gaggle of folks plowed into the summer recently with two engine rebuilds (both on donated trainer cars with smoking, unhealthy engines); a hard-starting, weak-running 2006 Rendezvous; a drooping Town Car with flat rear airbag suspension; and our title vehicle, a 2000 Maxima that didn’t idle worth a toot and was all about overheating. Oh, and there was the 2003 Lexus that had a tire vibration and a noisy left front hub bearing, two Crown Vics, one with that washboard-feeling torque convertor chatter and the other with worn out rear brakes, and, well, the list could go on for a while, not to mention vehicle inspections and oil changes galore. The folks in my shop don’t have time to stand around and talk – in addition to their live work they have NATEF tasks to complete.
wire harness repair, but the other fan in that shroud was dead in the water. We couldn’t even power it up separately and make it run, so a new fan was in order. It took a couple of days to get the replacement air inlet tube from Nissan, and the new fans cooled it down.
Low-Riding Town Car
Shawn is another student of mine, a tough 26-year-old ex-Army guy who was driving a Bradley fighting vehicle on the other side of the world a couple of years ago. He plunged with me into troubleshooting the Town Car’s suspension problem. The librarian who owned the 1998 Town Car said she could fiddle with the switch in the trunk when the problem first started and make the airbag system work sometimes. But of late those efforts had failed, and she was riding around on flat springs, which is a bone-jarring proposition.
With the EASE Wireless Vehicle Interface connected, we accessed the air suspension system’s DataStream (it only has a few PIDs) and saw the problem right away. According to the display, the Lincoln’s DLC was sporting battery voltage (11.51 with Key On Engine Off), but the module was seeing only 8.6 volts at the same time. The module also had stored a code to this effect.
The Rendezvous This one was a 70,000-mile vehicle with a hard starting power loss issue. Someone in the owner’s local area had charged them $130 to replace the spark plugs, which turned out to be a waste of money. He was paid well, but the owner drove away from that shop with an unfixed Buick Rendezvous.
The P0171 always returned after it was cleared, and the long-term fuel trim (LTFT) numbers were high. A exhaustive check for vacuum leaks (we even used smoke) revealed nothing in the way of unmetered air ingress. The fuel pressure was our logical next target, and the gauge showed anemic fuel pressure halfway between 30 and 40 pounds. Snapping the accelerator would drive the pressure even lower.
The specs for this vehicle indicate that 50 to 60 psi is to be expected, but we didn’t have that. The fuel pump for this one is pricey, and the woman of the house had sticker shock when I sprung it on her. She said she needed to discuss it at home, and wanted me to promise her that this Rendezvous wouldn’t nickel and dime them to death before they paid it off. I was rather quick to point out that I had no way of predicting anything other than the fact that right here, right now, they needed a fuel pump. And so they collectively took a deep breath and waved me ahead.
The Parts Come In The air inlet hose arrived for the Maxima, and Stokes installed it in short order, only to find the idle even rougher than before, with theThis was a total departure from what we had seen with the old sensor (which had since gone back as a core), and the engine ran smooth with the MAF disconnected. We had the parts store bring us a different sensor and replaced it a second time with better results.
Conclusion I don’t know how many times somebody has tried to impress me with the statement that they have a relative who is able to “take a carapart and put it back together from one end to the other.” Knowing how to disassemble and reassemble is an important aspect of what we do, but what’s even more important is the ability to discern what needs doing so as to repair a car surgically rather than throwing parts at it with reckless abandon.
A good electrical guy knows how to determine if a relay is good or bad, and he can repair a circuit with the right size wire well enough so that the repair looks like factory. A good drivability tech can find a problem even if the scan tool won’t talk to the silver box, and he also understands that you don’t throw an oxygen sensor at a car as soon as you get a P0171. He or she recognizes the fact that recklessly yanking on wire harnesses isn’t a good strategy when fighting an intermittent concern. He understands that replacing the EGR valve isn’t the best first step when troubleshooting a P0401, and he won’t change the wrong catalytic converter when he yanks a P0420.
Jobs like these that fly thick and fast in a shop like mine tend to accelerate learning beyond anything I could cook up on my own. Just about any seasoned guy who has trained a few youngsters to ferret out faults can appreciate that.