lI agree with VDC. When my wife broke her leg, we knew the doc on duty at the emergency room and we had a choice of a couple surgeons for the next day. While she didn’t say specifically which one was better, she did agree that the one we chose was a good choice. We were very happy with him except when I had to go to the hardware store for more screws-just kidding.
As I commented earlier, I think more emphasis on problem solving skills and critical thinking skills is needed in education starting in the elementary school. These skills are invaluable in diagnosing medical problems and machinery problems. I don’t mind paying for “thinking” time. Back in 1971, my parents bought their first color television. It worked for about a month and then the picture became distorted. It went back to the dealer who put a new chip in the AGC circuit. The television worked for about a month and the same thing happened. The next time, it was sent back to the distributor and the engineers worked on it. Again, it only lasted a month before the picture became distorted. The original dealer kept doing the monthly repair until the warranty expired. I then took the television to a repairman that I knew. When I picked it up, he told me that he had replaced a chip in the AGC circuit. I told him that the same chip had been replaced ten times and each time it was blamed on a defect in the part. The repairman scratched his head and said “I would like to look into this. Would you leave the set?”. I left the set and he called back several days later and said the set was fixed. When I picked it up, there was an additional $27 charge. He finally traced the problem to a defective 10¢ resistor. He apologized for the $27 charge, but he had spent the afternoon tracing down the problem. The resistor was allowing too much voltage to the chip. I told him not to apologize because it was worth it to me not to have to lift the heavy television in and out of the car. Diagnostic time is money well spent IMHO.
@Exfordtech, in my experience, dealers do indeed throw parts at a car, and do it as a matter of business practice. I had a Ford Windstar that had EGR return ports clogged with carbon. The dealer cleaned them and returned the car. The ports were clogged agin quickly. At my third visit for the same problem, they suggested a new intake manifold. I asked how that would solve the problem. If the reason behind the carbon particle generation isn’t solved, how will a new manifold help? They had no answer. I quickly sold the van and moved on. That was 13 years ago, and I can’t imagine that throwing parts at a problem has gone away. I realize not all dealers or all repair shops do this, but it is a big enough issue that it was mentioned by an experienced tech on television. We hear about auto mechanics that seem to ignore diagnostics on this board frequently. They learned that bad habit somewhere.
I agree. Most dealers love “shotgun maintenance” because it increases the bottom line.
Contrary to popular belief, dealer’s mechanics are not all that skilled in diagnosing problems. They don’t get enough higher mileage cars to really hone their skills. Sort of like a sports doctor seeing only fit young athletes; they don’t see older folks.
My last experience with dealer mechanics was a leaking heater core in a rear drive Chevy V8. I told them the symptoms and even what it would cost since a colleague had experienced the exact same problem. They seemed flustered and said they needed to do a complete “cooling system evaluation” first. At my expense of course.
The oil pan on my Corolla sweats a little and no oil is on the garage floor and I’ve never been able to top up the oil. Nevertheless the dealer wants to take the pan off, reseal it, all for a measly $450! I keep saying no thanks.
Dealer are not “parts hangers” but they always want to restore the car to like new condition. And that usually gets into serious money.
The truth is the system does not reward a good diagnostician. Be it a doctor or a mechanic and I am both!
We have doctors that would order all the tests under the sun without even knowing what they are looking for, same with mechanics that keep changing parts. Thing is they get paid better because the costumer has to go back for more. If you came to my office, I spend the same amount of time ONCE and ask a lot of questions-some patients get offended feeling that they are being interrogated. Then I might order one test or maybe not. Now I only would get paid for one visit. You can think of it as the flat one hour fee. Guess why I left private practice. My patients loved me, but the insurance companies were the ones actually making the money.
The difference is that if mechanics get sued it is generally in small claims court. When doctors get sued it is for millions. Many of the tests your doctor orders are not for your benefit, they are just because he doesn’t want a lawyer asking him why he didn’t order them.
Having said that, I had a friend who was a crew supervisor and cost estimator for a construction company. he said they could never get doctors to pay after a job because they were never happy with the outcome of decisions the doctors themselves insisted on making during construction.
His company finally refused to bib on projects for doctors.
@“oldtimer 11” We call ordering a lot of tests “defensive medicine”. They did a few studies trying to show this practice just cost a lot of money and also causes a lot of misery for the patient without protecting against lawsuits. The results of these studies showed that “defensive medicine” does actually protect against lawsuits. So now, nobody is willing to cut back.
A few months ago I myself was on the receiving end of medical care because I was very sick. I am VERY familiar with the system and normally able to order everything myself but didn’t want to do this since I was sick. Even though I chose my own doctors, I was still being offered tests and treatments that I felt were not justified at the point, so I had to nicely turn them down. Thank god I got better, but I feel for anybody who has to navigate this system.
To bring it back to cars, there were quite a few times that I offered to pay more than the one hour fee for the diagnosis of my problem, provided they spend enough time and effort to actually find the problem. Usually I would get a blank stare. As a DIY, I do sometimes throw parts at the car. If half of Camry owners have their starters go out earlier than usual, when mine starts sounding like a bad starter, I don’t mess with “diagnosis” I just change it and see what happens.
Had a friend die of mrsa, tried everything and I suggested the Civil War remedy of sugar on the wound. The wound started showing healing and the doctors told her to stop it immediately, and stay on prescribed medications. Not sure if it would have changed much, but the old fashioned remedy was working it seemed.
Sometimes you throw anything you can at a fix when proper diagnosis and treatment for getting a car running fails.
I think diagnosing a problem involves"sleeping on it". In the advanced mathematics classes I took in college, i would go to work on the assignments as soon as possible after class and work out the solutions for the problems I could do immediately. Those problems where I couldn’t solve immediately would float around in my head while I did other things. Lated, I would sit down and try solving the problem again. Often, I would go to sleep thinking about the problem and wake up with the solution, sometimes in the middle of the night. It seems to me that a mechanic encountering a problem car should be allowed to push the car aside and work on another car with an easy repair while his mind goes over the first car. This might be more productive than having to stick with the first car and throwing parts at the car hoping to solve the problem. One of my bad cases of throwing a part at a problem happened when I moved into an old house I purchased as a single dad that had washer and dryer in the basement. The washer worked fine except that the timer would stick in the middle of the permapress cycle. I threw a part at the problem. I bought a new timer for $35 and spent an hour installing the new timer. The machine still would not advance in the cool down phase of the permapress cycle. I didn’t believe that both timers would have the same defect. I thought on the problem on and off for about a week and woke up in the middle of the night having dreamed about a siphon. I then knew the solution to the problem. In the cool down phase of the permapress cycle, cold water comes in to replace the warm rinse water. When the water reaches a certain level, a signal goes to the timer allowing it to advance. However, the standpipe into which the drain hose attached wasn’t high enough, so the water was being siphoned out of the machine and never got up to the level to signal the timer to advance. After the dream, I got up in the middle of the night and tested my theory. I started a load of clothes and when the timer didn’t advance, I raised the drain hose. The tub immediately filled up and the timer advanced. The next day I put an extension on the standpipe. The point is that sometimes one needs to sleep on a problem.
Pity the poor mechanic that has to go to sleep thinking about the problem cars still needing to be diagnosed.
In writing a paper I will never turn it in until I read it again at least 24 hours later. Yes I have the same wake up in the middle of the night with the oula solution to a problem. Still waiting for the oula solution for my bumper, caught a limb maneuvering the boat, it has a round tab the bumper slides into. like a screw hole for a smoke sensor, cannot get that sucker to go, wifee was embarrassed as I had her nudge into a power pole to get the plastic bumper cover to go back enough so I could hook it, and I started kicking at it to get it to catch. Still on bungie cord solution.
@Bing I have personally known a couple of mechanics that relished in taking on cars with problems that no other mechanic could diagnose. These men ran their own service stations and probably didn’t make a lot of money. I often thought a dealership should put a mechanic like this on straight salary to handle the tough cases.