@ok4450, Ahh, it was a forgiveable mistake. He hadn’t ever had a carb opened up much less repaired one, and didn’t see the parts sitting on the bench. Guess they don’t teach carbs at WyoTech anymore.
I actually had to buy a dwell meter after throwing mine away several years ago. Bought a Snap-On Vantage (and a few years later a Vantage Pro) and threw out all the analog junk I didn’t need anymore. Turns out a Vantage and V-Pro won’t measure point dwell. Too “dirty” of a signal.
I remember using the dwell meter to adjust carbs, like the feedback Q-jet. But then I just started using the scan tool to get the whole picture.
I don’t remember using dwell for CIS. I think I just adjusted watching 02 switching on a graph and reading lambda on the 4-gas.
I’d be concerned about a shop that was willing to take on work outside of their core competencies, especially something on a dead branch. Either not busy enough to say no or wanting to learn on someone else’s dime. As a potential customer, those would be red flags for me…
Perhaps your neighbor can attend a classic car show and ask the owners where they get their cars fixed. Many owners of these cars are old-fashioned mechanics themselves.
Buddy had a V6 Capri from same era. He thought it was pretty cool. Brother had pinto after a bit and timing belt broke at mall. I changed belt at mall with 2 wrenches and a screwdriver. Think it took 20 minutes.
What’s worse.
A. Delving into the old stuff which should take a mechanically minded person no more than 15 minutes to understand and figure out. Money is money no matter what turns the wheels.
B. Throwing parts right and left at late models while making an educated or wild guess at what the problem is. (And that’s not meant as a slam against a mechanic working on say a 2006 model car)
The latter is illustrated on a daily basis on this forum alone. How often does a complaint appear where someone says their car has been in the shop eleventeen times in the last 6 months and 3 grand later they’re still at the starting line.
Or someone has spent X dollars on that new timing belt set which replaced a broken belt on an interference fit engine and NOW they’re told the cylinder head or entire engine is wiped?
“The latter is illustrated on a daily basis on this forum alone. How often does a complaint appear where someone says their car has been in the shop eleventeen times in the last 6 months and 3 grand later they’re still at the starting line.”
I know. I spent more time here than usual last week and frankly some of the stuff I read makes me ashamed to be in this business along with the hacks who call themselves mechanics. Somewhere here there’s a woman with a Silverado with a misfire no one can figure out. It’s a pushrod Chevy with a misfire, how hard can that be? Another was an Explorer with white smoke coming out of the tailpipe and someone replaced a fuel pump? Really? A Taurus that throws serp belts and 3 shops haven’t been able to figure it out? We’re not working on the Space Shuttle here, they’re just cars. Half of the “mechanics” out there can’t fix a cup of coffee much less a car. And the same hacks that complain of being “locked out” of service info and tooling are the ones offering lowball prices and taking advantage of the average driver. No wonder people are gunshy about having their cars fixed.
OK, rant over.
@ok4450, sure, a decent mechanic should be able to figure it out, but I can’t fault a guy for punting a carb job to the guy that knows about them when he’s never touched one. I don’t blame a young guy for not wanting to learn about them on company time.
Although it may not sound like it @asemaster, I do agree with your points.
To be honest, some of the stuff I’ve read on here about repairs or a diagnosis is downright embarassing to the profession. The majority of mechanics are honest, competent, and performing a highly stressful and pretty much thankless job. Unfortunately, they’re tarnished by the circus clowns.
I don’t remember if you were around this forum a few years ago or remember the Cadillac CTS tale. Some guy was on the road and suffered wheel bearing problems while in Florida.
The ASE shop asked him if the cooling system had been serviced and he said no.
The Cadillac owner was then told that old anti-freeze was the cause of the wheel bearing failure as it created electrolysis which then caused microscopic sparks to jump inside the wheel bearings with the end result being the bearings were taken out by electricity…
Reading things like this makes a guy wish there was a dark closet to hide out in…
Sure, you do, but for a young guy starting out how high on the list of tools would a distributor wrench or dwell meter be? And how on earth would you know what to do with them. Auto service is a whole different game now than it was 20 years ago, for a small indy shop.
Less then 10 years ago I was helping my sons friend fix his car. It needed a new float for the carburetor. It was Sunday, so we went to Pep-Boys. The 20 somethings at the parts counter had no idea what a float was.
I too have a dwell meter and timing light that is just sitting in my cellar collecting dust. Paid good money for them too.
What’s worse.
A. Delving into the old stuff which should take a mechanically minded person no more than 15 minutes to understand and figure out. Money is money no matter what turns the wheels.
B. Throwing parts right and left at late models while making an educated or wild guess at what the problem is. (And that’s not meant as a slam against a mechanic working on say a 2006 model car)
I would say they are both terrible ways to run a business.
The problem with A is that is does nothing to advance your business. First off, it will take most younger mechanics longer than 15 minutes to just find a book on how to rebuild a carburetor let alone read it, comprehend it, buy the rebuild kit and do the work. Secondly, the statement that money is money is shortsighted in the business sense. If you’re struggling to keep the lights on, OK. But if you’re looking to build on your business and keep expanding, the solution is not to throw money at problems that do not further your goal. No one can successfully argue that there will be lines of people waiting for you to rebuild their carburetors in the future if you spend the time and effort now to learn that antique skill. Turning away business like this is actually good in the long run. The type of business I am in, we turn away business all the time that doesn’t fit the long term goals. Why waste resources on something that has no growth potential? Someone once said to me that a business is like a living organism, it must continue to change and grow or it will die. Makes a heck of a lot of sense to me.
The problem with B is obvious. You better hope there is a never ending stream of new customers who haven’t been subjected to the shop’s shotgun approach to troubleshooting. Repeat business will be thin…
From the shop owner’s standpoint, I agree with you. From the mechanic’s stsndpoint, if I were he, I’d take the job for the educational value, even in the event I had to work at a steep hoirly discount, for the future earnings benefits of expanding my skill set.
As a result of becoming medically disqualified as a pilot, I found myself with little marketable skills. Necessity led to scrapping/curb crawling. Learning small-engine repair led to increased revenues from resale vs. scrapping, which led to a lawn-maintenance business, which led to a solvent (if frugal) life. Currently, the accounting I’ve had to learn makes me want to apply to work as a tax preparer.
In school, or just in the “school of hard knocks,” I have seldom learned something that didn’t later have a payoff, either financially, or in quality of life.
Great story of perseverance!!
Never meant to diminish personal rewards for learning new things. The context was a shop turning down business that probably did not fit their business goals or would not be profitable enough to warrant the distraction.
@TwinTurbo, my point about the old stuff is that it’s not that difficult to learn and one could develop a cottage industry servicing distributor equipped and/or carbureted vehicles.
Regarding the late model stuff; not being able to solve the problem does not equate to incompentency though. The assumption by many is that any problem automatically sets a code and that’s not always the case. Sometimes a shotgun is the only method and even car makers often recommend that approach.
Look at the TSB regarding Toyota and ignition coils where they recommend swapping coils around to see if the miss follows. How scientific is that?
Or Ford, VW, or Subaru advising the mechanic if all tests lead nowhere to swap parts.
An example might be my sister in law’s 2008 Trailblazer. She’s had an intermittent CEL for a while. There are no real performance issues and a scan always shows clean.
So in a shop setting what should be done; tell her to drive it until it quits or replace something on a somewhat educated guess and hope for the best?
“Well Ms. Trailblazer, next time your engine light comes on please pay close attention and see if you notice anything out of the ordinary as far as the way the car starts, runs, or drives. And bring the car in to us as soon as is convenient. We’ll scan for fault codes and monitor the data stream. If the light is on and a fault code is present we’ll find the cause. We will keep your car and use it as a shop vehicle, driving it to the bank, to pick up parts, get lunch, drive customers to work. Driving your car with our test equipment hooked up should give us the info we need to fix your car. This may take a week or so, but we will not exceed $XXX for all of our testing. We will be as patient as you are.”
If the MIL is on and there is the slightest driveability concern while we’re plugged into the car there’s a 90% chance we’ll fix it right the first time.
Of course we’re a small indy shop and no one here works flat rate, so I have the flexibility to do this.
OK4450, my point is there is no cottage industry for that technology. It’s dead and the number of vehicles left is steadily diminishing. That’s not how you build a business. Unless you plan to slowly fade off into the sunset along with it but it’s not sustainable.
The late model example you gave appeared to be purported as the normal way of doing business, not an exception. There will always be problems that defy even the best troubleshooting methods or are intermittant and hard to diagnose. This should be the exception not the rule.
"There are no real performance issues and a scan always shows clean.
So in a shop setting what should be done; tell her to drive it until it quits or replace something on a somewhat educated guess and hope for the best? "
Well, since there is no performance or safety implications why would you replace anything? You don’t have any data or information as to what the problem might be beyond the intermittent display of the CEL. Unless it’s Bill Gate’s private vehicle and he’s insistent you try something, why would you start throwing parts at it? You have no idea where to even start so keep driving until something happens.
