I Hate When That Happens

They say that knowledge is power. This is certainly true in the car repair business. We have and use various sources of technical information each day. I remember a customer brought in an old rusty Subaru one day a few years ago. Their complaint was each time they stepped on the brake pedal, the car stalled. We drove the car and verified the condition, did some basic checking and ended up going to one of our online resource. We found a bulletin describing the symptoms we were encountering. The article said to raise the vehicle in the air and inspect for damaged wiring back by the gas tank. We did what was recommended and low and behold there it was. The wires for the rear brake lights had short to the wires that feed the electric fuel pump in the fuel tank, so every time you stepped on the brake pedal it shorted out the fuel pump, shutting it down and causing the vehicle to stall. This was invaluable and really very technical.

There is another kind of information that is also invaluable to an automotive service tech. This is the information that you the driver can relay to the shop that is working on your vehicle. Often a vehicle is brought in and a is symptom given. The tech now drives the vehicle, but does not experience the problem. So now what? Usually a call has to be made and further probing of the driver needs to be done. This does waste a lot of time, especially if the driver is unavailable or does not call back. So the tip is: before you bring in your vehicle for repair, stop and think about it a while and write down exactly what the problems are. When does it happen, is the vehicle warm or cold, does it act up turning or going over a bump. What is the recent repair history? Is there anything else unusual going on, even if you think it is unrelated. The more info the better.

A case in point. We recently had a car dropped off that had a problem with the battery going dead over night. The customer really could not tell us anything else. We entered in to our procedure for locating a drain on the system. It brought us to a circuit with 3 computer modules on it, and the dash needed to be removed to access these modules. The customer was called to update them on our progress and we were told to keep going, “it needed to be fixed”. Anyway, we happened to notice that a light would stay on by the drivers feet even with the door closed. And we found that the light would go out when we unplugged a certain modules. We again called the customer to update them, this time they mention that the center top dome light was staying on all the time, so they took the bulb out. Now it was all clear. We hooked up a special tester to monitor the door switches and found the drivers door ajar switch in the open position. We cleaned and lubed this switch and now everything worked fine. The point is, if we would have known from the beginning about the dome light being on and the bulb being removed it would have saved us considerable time and the customer money. So in this case, knowledge is power and also lack of information can be costly. So next time your in for service, please be ready with all the info you can think of. It may save you some cash! I Hate When That Happens!