Death By Drowning...

WATER TORTURE…

The Repair Order started off with:

            Drivability

                        Customer Concern: Vehicle will crank, but will not start…

Note: Customer installed a new battery because the vehicle would not start, would not crank. Also, customer informed us the electric cooling fan runs after the vehicle is shut down and the key removed and that he has to disconnect the battery in order to power down the fan…

Another day in paradise filled with anomalies, paradox and mysteries starting with what appeared to be a pristine, yet inanimate, 2006 Audi A4 sadly waiting for attention. Bob drew the short straw – Bob always seems to draw the short straw when it comes to anything that might even remotely be considered an anomaly, paradox or mystery – and headed out to the Audi, scan tool in hand.

He connected the scanner and was able to retrieve multiple Diagnostic Trouble Codes for a number of systems other than Engine Management, but was unable to communicate with the vehicle’s Engine Control Module. Bob’s roots go deep into the deep, rich soil of a South Dakota farm just off the Interstate about a hundred miles west of East Elbow, Nowhere. It was far enough away from anything to ensure that everyone who lived there had better know how to fix just about anything. Survival, especially survival during the long, cold winters, demanded nothing less.

Those survival skills coupled with his ‘farmer’s’ intuition and common sense have earned him the nickname of MacGiver.

Something told Bob to go to the ECM first, even before checking for missing or blown fuses. I’m not sure about anyone else here, but one thing I’ve learned over the more than twenty years Bob and I have been “hanging out” is that attempting to distract him from his chosen path is futile. You have about as much chance of getting Bob to do or stopping doing what he feels he must do in order to figure out what is wrong with a vehicle as you would have of changing the weather or influencing the rotation of the Earth.

The only problem was inspecting the ECM would mean removing the rubber strip that seals the plenum cover, the cover itself, removing the windshield wiper arms and then removing the screws that retain the ECM housing cover and then the cover itself. The first thing Bob noticed after he accessed the ECM cover was that the most inaccessible portion of the housing: the part that lives in the deepest recesses under the cowl was damaged, broken away and missing both the boss and bolt that goes through the top of the cover and the boss and retaining nut that fastens the top of the cover to the bottom.

You could almost close your eyes and ‘see’ someone trying to remove the cover without removing the cowl and wiper arms by unscrewing the retaining screws you could see and then trying to either snake or muscle the cover off, not knowing there was another hidden screw. You could almost feel the plastic stretch and bend and then almost hear that sickening ‘snap’ as it finally gave up and gave out. There was only one problem with that cover being broken and that was the loss of integrity that occurred as its result: the housing was no longer watertight. In fact, the housing made a pretty good reservoir!

A place to store water can be a good thing, especially if you’re traveling through the desert. However, it isn’t such a good thing if the receptacle is designed to house an electronic component such as the Electronic Control Module and its accompanying relays. As you can see for yourself, the result can be ugly!

Bob cleaned out the housing, removed one of the relays – the one pictured here – and substituted a ‘known good’ relay in its place.

After recharging the battery and installing that ‘known good’ relay, the electric cooling fan no longer ran after the vehicle was powered down, but the vehicle still refused to start.

Bob checked the fuses to find all the fuses good with the exception of the fuse for the cigarette lighter and replaced the two, twenty-amp fuses. Then he started looking for empty spaces: someplace that had the electrical contacts for a fuse, but no fuse in place. He found a slot for a fuse at the number forty-three position and I’ll bet you’ll never guess what that number forty-three fuse is for – Actually, I’m willing to bet that you have already guessed what it’s for: Engine Management!  He installed the correct fuse and the vehicle started immediately: first try and every time thereafter.

Bob reinstalled all the parts that had to be removed to access the ECM, cleared the Codes, rechecked the vehicle two or three more times and then took a deep sigh of relief…

Done! Another vehicle saved from an otherwise ignominious, albeit watery death.

I wonder if that makes Bob a Lifeguard as well as a farmer, Master Tech, L1 and Mac Gyver?

More Time...

Everyone is always asking for more time...

"If I only had more time..." "Gee, I wish I had more time..." "There aren't enough hours in the day..."

What in the world is that all about?

I don't want more time... I want more discipline! I want the courage to say No! more often! I want to be able to power on my computer and just start writing without feeling the irresistable pull of facebook or gmail tugging at my sleeve!

No! I don't want more time... Not until I'm sure I'm making the best use of the time I've got now!

Sure, I'd love to be more productive... Who wouldn't? Wouldn't you?

OK, so there are a few individuals we all know who laugh at the rest of us as we scurry around with that permanent look of constipated intensity etched into our collective portrait, people who don't give a damn about productivity: yours or their own. And, while they are laughing at us we're probably racing around feeling sorry for them, bathing in a false sense of moral superiority.

The question is: Who is right and who is wrong...

I don't want more time... I want to be happy with the time I've got! No... That isn't entirely correct. It's not happy with the time I've got that I want: it's "satisfied!" I want to be satisfied that I used the time I've got wisely, and wisely means for something other than work: something more than work!

I want the willpower to ignore Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Yahoo and the four thousand, eight hundred and thirty two other browsers that are clawing for my attention every second of every minute of every day. I want to silence the constant noise!

I don't want to connect with someone half-way around the world on the Internet: not, when I can connect with another human being in the same room!

I don't want to watch someone else exercise either! I want to get up from my desk and move around a little myself!

I don't want to watch someone on television. I don't want to watch the story unfold on the the screen. I don't want someone to tell it for me or to me. I want to experience it for myself. I want to experience it myself!

I don't want more time until I know I can and will make the best use of the time I have and quite frankly, I'm pretty sure I'm not there yet! 

Do you know how I know that? If you don't I'll tell you. I know I'm not there yet because every time I make a list of the "To Do's" I need to get done there is always one thing conspicuously absent from the list and that is the "To Do's" I need to do for me.

I'm not whining... I'm not crying the blues... I'm not bemoaning the fact I've dealt myself out of this equation. And, no, I'm not afraid of being considered selfish. I'd just like to get better at the art of living: living a full and satisfying life that recognizes that it's alright to find yourself penciled in on your own "To Do" list. That being selfish doesn't have anything to do with being on that list: Being selfish has everything to do with being the only thing thing on the list!

No... More time isn't the answer. Everyone's got the same amount of time: the same number of seconds, hours and days they are allotted. More living and more life in the time we all have is the answer!

So, until we have the wisdom to ask better questions and make more intelligent decisions, I think I'll just have to satisfy myself with the time I have... the time we all have. I'll just have to muddle through and make the best of it. 

And, if someone stops me to ask if I have the time, I'll smile and rejoice in the hidden knowledge that there is a lot more to that question than a wristwatch, cell phone or a clock will ever tell you.

Dawn of Yet Another New Day?

I'm sitting outside the Starbucks at the Simi Valley Town Center freezing my "gotchkas" off... Well, not exactly.

It's 'brisk,' not exactly freezing...

 I'm working on a Grande Verona getting ready for a BNI: Business Network International, meeting to start. Like most things in my life, I'm early... Really, early!

In all honesty, I spent the first five minutes in the parking lot watching the sun come up thinking about the beginning of yet another new day.
It is inspiring... Not necessarily the beginning of "yet another new day:" more, the sun rising in the East on another beautiful Southern California morning.

That's what's inspiring. That, and the Grande Verona!

I don't know what the people who awaken long after the sun comes up do to get their day started. For me, being a "morning person" has never been much of an option. Going to work when it's dark and coming home in the dark are pretty much just a given and to be really honest, I'm not going to tell you I've always stopped to marvel at the magnificence of each new sunrise. I haven't... Not, always, anyway. This is a fairly new phenomenon, but one that I plan to indulge while I still can.

You see I'm starting to believe that each new day brings with it the opportunity for just about anything and everything we would like it to be: anything any one of us could imagine, anything any of is disciplined and determined enough to create.

The sun does it's part... The rest is up to us.

The hard part is resisting the urge to let yesterday interfere with today... Because what we do right now will determine both what the future and the past is going to look like. I don't know about you, but that's what I'm going to be thinking about when I stare into the sky tomorrow morning...Mitch

Far Enough

There are few things that are likely to occur in your world – or, mine – that could be easily classified as “simple.” It just doesn’t seem to work out that way anymore. Even the “simple” question of how far you go with regard to inspection and testing in my world, the incredible world of broken cars… Or, more appropriately, when you should stop when the process is complicated by the increasingly sophisticated electronic content of the vehicle.

It’s hard enough when dealing with issues involving highly evolved systems, but even purely mechanical problems have become increasingly difficult to isolate because of the way vehicles are designed and built today.

You can call it “going for the low hanging fruit:” the easiest sale, the most obvious cause or the most simplistic fix, but in all fairness, there is no “This is it!” popup that appears when you’ve finally isolated the problem. When was the last time you kept looking for your keys or that elusive scrap of paper with the phone number you so desperately needed on it after you had it in your hand?

Is the failure you’ve found the cause of the problem you are trying to solve or is it the result of something inherently larger? Did something occur to facilitate the problem you’ve uncovered or is the problem you’ve found really ‘the problem?’

When it comes to inspection, testing, analysis and evaluation, you will never know if you went far enough unless you take that extra step. 

This became increasingly clear last week when we were tasked with isolating an NVH (Noise, Vibration, Harshness) problem on a vehicle that suddenly started “vibrating” in gear.

If described carefully enough by the motorist, interpreted properly by the service advisor and recognized by the technician, you’ve got a ‘shot’ at hitting your target. But, ‘harshness’ is a subjective evaluation that requires time, discipline and a high level of cooperation between the person who wants the problem solved and the professional tasked with solving it. Unfortunately, that kind of clarity rarely transcends the physical realities of thousands of miles of wear and the emotion of an unscheduled, unbudgeted visit to the repair shop.

In this particular case, a fairly important piece of the puzzle:  an illuminated Malfunction Indicator Lamp (Check Engine Lamp); never made it to the service counter. The Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC) driving the lamp was triggered by a Knock Sensor failure: the sensor’s wiring harness had served as a late night snack for some out-of-town guests – a family of field mice who had taken up residency under the engine’s intake manifold.

The vehicle had over a 100,000 miles on it, hadn’t had it’s 90,000 mile service and the intake manifold gaskets were leaking coolant at the corners. Any one of these conditions could have caused the kind of ‘vibration’ or ‘harshness’ the customer was trying so hard to describe. 

And, yet, after the Intake Manifold had been removed, the Knock Sensor and its harness had been switched and the Intake Manifold Gaskets replaced, our technician wasn’t satisfied he had isolated the root cause of the customer’s concern.

We could have made a strong case for cleaning the Throttle Body and performing an Intake De-carbonization Service: both were layered with coke and carbon and long overdue for service.

We could have suggested replacing the Spark Plugs. They should have been done long ago. But, instead, our tech drove the vehicle again and again to duplicate the sensation our client was concerned about.

He wasn’t satisfied with the ‘easy’ answer and as a result saved our client a certain breakdown and a very costly repair. The Harmonic Balancer – the Crankshaft hub – located at the front of the crankshaft and the bottom of the engine: impossible to see even if you know what you’re looking for or what you’re looking at – was literally coming apart.

Continuing to critically look at the customer’s concern for a solution beyond the ‘low hanging fruit’ of some not-so-obvious problems takes discipline, determination and more than a little curiosity – elements that separate great technicians from good technicians and ultimately assures the motorist of a complete solution, a quality repair, an uneventful journey and a safe return home.

It’s what happens when you go far enough and far enough gets you to where you both want and need to be.