Dang son, green is the right color.

Green is my color. Even wrapped my truck to match.

Yikes and yikes.

We had two guys go through 5 or so years ago, one made it, the other didn’t. One prepared and generally took his job seriously, the other was the fast and loose 20 something hot shot. You can guess who made it. I’ve heard that they wanted to make it harder so it wasn’t just something you went through and completed. I never heard that from anyone, so no idea why it needed to be harder.

We’ve been down a tech or 3 for weeks, my guy is out until “maybe august”. The goal of me backing off real work and building these guys just keeps getting pushed back. I’ll take the money and keep running as long as I need to, but we’re really on the back foot just trying to keep up.

Then CDK happened

It’s been rough, our layout is tough on a good day and we really don’t have the right people in the right places. Familiarity is all that’s holding things together, so fixing the wrong people situation is on hold. I took off for Vegas for a long weekend, maybe it’ll be back on Monday.

Someone quoted a whole entire transmission replacement on a 2018 GLS550 with like 65k miles.  I dissented after reviewing the evidence.  

Attached File

An itty bitty hole in the tape, hidden as this part of the harness goes behind the top of the high pressure fuel pump and is not easy to get out.

Attached File

Zoom in on the hole, then take a 90 degree pick and open it up a bit more


Attached File

There is your boy.  Transmission CAN high line shorting to ground on the fuel pump crash plate.

Its becoming apparent that some engineer at mercedes designed things in such a way that they are easily modified.  The diesel engine in my car has a muffler on the output side of the turbo.  You can just remove four screws and one bolt, and the cap comes off without having to remove the part from the car or anything.  The insert for this muffler then falls out, you put it back together and you have free horsepower.  

Between the downpipe, the tune and this, the car is a freaking monster, and I have more stuff on the way to turn it up even more.  A euro manifold and intake pipe with specific holes welded over to smooth airflow and remove restriction.

I had a TDI that would stall out at random, faults were injector imbalance. you'd accelerate just right and it was lights out. then it would re-start right away.

harness had rubbed through on the fuel injector wire just a pin size where the harness was tucked behind the oil filter canister.

I didn't find it till after I replaced the injector, then got mad when it obviously didn't work, took out the whole harness and inspected it inch by inch.

You’d think they would figure out wires against sharp brackets don’t work.

Sprinter 642s wear through under the turbo and set boost regulator faults, unwrapped wire pressed against the coarse intake manifold. 654 all the wires run against the CDI bracket and chafe. 907 chassis both door harnesses run right against a rough cut out in the A pillar and take down CAN. All the problems on 274/276/278 rubbing on the back of the engine. Etc etc etc

Job security

The sheer incompetence of people is so disturbing.  I don't think I'm asking much to expect the same level of service I give others.  Its like the bare minimum.  Yet I am regularly disappointed and today really took the cake.  I'm not just disappointed but completely and totally unable to understand just how people can not care so much, as they have in my opinion destroyed my brand new boat that has 2 hours on the motor.  

The delivery was not satisfactory.  Dealer prep non existent.  Problems took forever to address, boat was picked up and taken to the dealer 1.5 hours away, was there for almost a month, I was not given any updates, my concerns were not addressed fully and resolved, and when I went to pick it up they had left the drain plug installed and it filled up with rain water.  Like completely to the top.  The fuel tank, electronics, batteries, chargers, wiring, power pole pumps have been sitting submerged for who knows how long?  

Why is service so fucking bad EVERYWHERE?

Because no one gives a fuck and the people who do are over worked.

@m35ben
@Stutzmech

been trying to dick with my 1978 Lincolns 460 AC, just trying to see if it holds vacuum for now

trying to find adapters for R12 to 134

the large line fitting is fine yet the small tube is tiny and i cannot find any adaptors for it, it only holds a standard Schrader valve, the whole fitting is barely 3/8 in diameter, where do a find a adapter for something this tiny

also the Schrader valve is stuck in the POA pipe so i have to deal with that later

Could you pull the 2 lines w/ the service ports and have an a/c shop make them but with 134 ports?

Probably, also forgot to mention that the high side has no external threads threads on the fitting itself

Got a letter saying benz is taking me to lunch. Thats exciting. The higher ups at the new company that owns us is asking questions about this technician competition and I hope do well enough in the next round to move forward.

I'm pretty sore today.  I don't do heavy work on cars and haven't for a few years.  Went in to do a little work on my POV, and it ended up taking a lot longer than I thought.  

Swapped to a euro intake manifold without swirl flaps, deleted EGR mixing chamber and deleted muffler on charge pipe.  Also tossed the no longer needed EGR cooler.  

Went in to this expecting massive carbon build up like we see on the V6 diesels.  At 170k miles when it started triggering EGR faults I had the ECU tuned to delete that stuff.  The EGR or any emissions components are not available anymore.  After getting the manifold off (they start with an intake manifold and build an engine around it), I found like ZERO carbon.  Okay, we've gotten this far and the swirl flap delete and egr tube deletes will help airflow....

Mixing chamber bolt holes in the manifold stripped.  They are short so I put in longer ones and it fixes that.  Have to reuse a metal gasket because they are no longer available either.  

I find crunchy fuel lines.  Replace those (lol some of it from an SLR McLaren) and then I snap a coolant hose and have to replace the hose and reservoir which are also crunchy.  

Reseal oil cooler because I'm there.

Install everything.  Have an oh fuck moment when the charge pipe bolt hole doesn't align.  Prybar and a careful twist gets it resolved.  

I'm exhausted.  I should stop.  But I get it running, clear the fuel system low pressure codes and correct trans fluid level, replace air and fuel filters, oil change, everything because its already in the shop.  

Now its time to install a larger front mount intercooler.  Its aftermarket, and the front crash bar blocks a bit of the top.  Its not as long as OEM but much taller.  Using 3" to 2.5" 90 degree elbows I can connect directly to the factory boost hoses.  I've got way more volume now but I'm not certain how much of a difference it will make.  It will probably make more difference than the intake stuff though.  

Stuff it in there, and I'm not too thrilled about the job I did but I'm absolutely exhausted and 9 hours in to this project.  I get it kinda mounted and kinda insulated against the power steering cooler with some felt, and I'm like fuck it lets put it together.  I rip out all the surrounding rubber weatherstripping on the radiator, core support, charge air cooler.  Now its a straight shot to the air box and maybe a proper reflection of the shitty job I did with the charge air cooler.  

Start her up, drive it out and get on the street.  BOOOOOST POWWWWWWW!  Pull back in shop, boost hose out of intercooler blew off the factory boost hose.  Readjust.  

Drive again.  BOOOOOOOST.  Success!  Then POWWWWWWWW!  Lost again.    Reinstall, readjust.  12 hours in to this project.  I'm beat.  I'm dragging ass.  I'm fucking done.  

Drive again.  BOOOOOOOOST.  POWWWWW!  Gosh.  Effing.  Darn it.  

Reinstall but instead of the shitty clamps the 90 elbows came with I put together multiple screw type hose clamps and make bigger ones.  Put two each on that part that keeps blowing off.  Tighten them until they are about to strip.  

Roll on out the door.  Its beginning to thunderstorm badly.  PLEASE GOD GET ME HOME.  I can't do this anymore.  I drive it "gently" and a few small pulls at speed reveals that she is a different animal all together.  

I get it close to home, raining so bad I can hardly see, and make one full throttle pull.  She stayed together.  and makes cool stuttgart spicy snail noises.  

I'm bad off today.  Very sore and tired but hopefully it will be a little more efficient and a lot more powerful.

If the porter calls me daddy one more time I'm gonna lose it.

What should he be calling you?

Any of you guys in the Springfield mo area, or know anyone in SWMO, my employer is looking to fill one or two heavy equipment technician positions. All tools provided, and the bennies are baller. Tops out at just under $32/hr, though. Oh, and I’d be your parts guy.

https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/springfieldmo?

By my fucking name would be nice.

That's all well and good, but why not have fun with it?  Have them call you Yachtmaster or Admiral or something.

While I'd love to move to MO, especially the southern part, ain't no way I'm working for a landfill for a pay cut.

At least it ain't Papi.

The city has been lagging behind on cola increases, while getting record sales tax revenues (doesn’t fund us) and the landfill is averaging 1600 ton a day @ 38.50/ton.

I've always wondered if you post about car stuff here on arf and glad to see you do!  

What car of yours is this?  Sounds fun

Have anything like this for the high side? Attached File

Yes but it is not small enough, its a tiny fitting, like a normal sized valvestem

@thewrencher

Does anyone know who the graveyard cars of restoring old Fords is?

Hopefully by the time I retire I will have enough money.

Can you post pics?

You guys thought Northstar starters were bad, Porsche says hold my Dinkelacker.

Modern bentley with and walks in"

Worst starter i have done was a M113. By the book you pull the pack, engine and trans assembly. It can be done by man handleing it with 2 people, 1 inside and 1 through the front.

pic of me doing exactly this.

Well, look at that they do have threads. They were just so grimy at first I couldn't see them, none of my adapters fit is still.



@thewrencher

This! I do about 80% of the work on my vehicles. You guys are Expensive as hell, with the price of everything going up people are only going to come to you when they can't do it or its critical to the function of the vehicle.

I don’t find that to be true at all. The vast majority of our work is things people could do at home. They want a warranty and trust that the work will be done correctly.

We also fix a lot of stuff people did try to do at home

The one thing I like about my job is that most owners can't do repairs since quite a few things require lifting and blocking, or specialized pulling devices that they're just not going to have at their shop. And I rarely see cases where they tried to fix their own wiring too, so that's nice.

At least with vag starters we have only two kinds.

Really good starters that rarely needed replacement or really easy starters that failed all the damn time

If I remember correctly that required an adapter even back in the r12 days to service. I'll check my box-o-stuff next week.

Benz starters have gotten worse over the years, 651 and 654 aren’t great. 642 is gravy, we were doing them all the time years ago.

These days it’s 50/50 a “bad starter” is actually a seized engine

@Littlepony

Possible to check thread size and pitch? Tap and die set?

The pressure of this career is sometimes overwhelming.  

I have a pretty awesome position, and declined to leave it for something involving more customer facing, technician managing and less technical.  I live and breathe technical.  

The bad parts of it sometimes build up, and it takes a toll on my mental health.  

We are the dealer.  We HAVE to fix it.

When nobody else can fix it, it ends up in my bay.  I HAVE to fix it.  

Stuff is complex, and those out of the ordinary circumstances happen fairly often.  

Typically I pick and choose my own work.  I get extremely bored with mundane problems and I can tell with 90% accuracy what is wrong with something just based on the complaint.  Its the same shit over and over, and even new cars have the same problems old cars have.

Sometimes I'm asked to look at something because its a problem car or problem customer.  Sometimes its something they know needs my attention.  Sometimes its a management decision.  Those are the cars that you have to get done right the first time, no excuses.  

Working with inadequate equipment,  lacking testing equipment or supplies or whatever.  Just make it happen with what you have....  Its frustrating knowing that something could be easier.  

Our wiring diagrams are challenging to say the least.  Sometimes I have to take notes on how a circuit begins at the battery and eventually after four fuse boxes makes its way to a component.  Its not all laid out on one diagram.  Its piecing together several to get it to make sense.  

Diagnosing problems can be pretty simple a lot of the time if you have access to the vehicle history and a full and complete story.  Most of the time strange problems are injected by a technician who didn't do prior work properly.  Always look at what was done when the car started having problems.  Its almost always something caused by faulty repairs.

I'm finding myself analyzing secondary ignition patterns again, first time since tech school.  Things have changed.  You might learn something from secondary firing line voltage. But the burn time seems rather unaffected by a lot of things because of the stupidly powerful coils they use.  Primary ignition patterns are important too, especially learning to monitor primary current flow.  We have learned that you don't need secondary ignition adapters anymore.  Just clip on the coil with a alligator clip.  It'll read.  

Mechanical stuff I'm using a scope with a pressure transducer for.  Running compression on a gasoline engine will tell you an awful lot, IF you are consistent and do things properly.  You cannot compare readings unless the throttle opening is the same.

Checking engine timing with a scope is also something we have to do.  But you learn to disconnect the cam adjustment solenoids, because the control unit will change the timing.  If it is unplugged, only then do you get a real value.  

Being wrong is part of the job.  I don't always get it right the first time, and I don't let it leave until I do figure out the problem.  Random, intermittent issues can be challenging.  Sometimes the information gained is that we know that didn't fix it, so it must be something else.  

Being willing to make a decision, even if it is the wrong one, is what often sets people apart.  A lot of the time you find techs just paralyzed by refusing to decide a course of action.  They want someone else to be responsible.  I just use logic and facts and attempt to make a good decision.  I'm not always right, and I admit that.  I find that even when I'm wrong, I'm still respected and looked to for answers.  Sometimes its how you package those results to give bad news.  

I'm called up front to take phone calls pretty often.  Its become a sport.  The advisors will stop what they are doing and listen to me handle a situation.  Frequently, its a man who will not accept what a female is telling him. I call it out when they waste my time.  Karen literally just told you exactly what I told her to tell you.  Why did you need me to stop working to tell you the same thing?  Or they think they know more.... throw technobabble at them and make them shut up and go away.  We had a customer lying to us and they had a used part installed somewhere else.  I knew this, and they had an estimate to install a new part (used won't work for theft relevant parts).  He didn't like the answer, kept lying and creating a whole backup  on this job when I knew exactly what it needed.  His first words are "Hang on a second let me get my mechanic on the phone", my first words after that are "I don't need to talk to your mechanic, he couldn't fix your car thats why it is here.  I have nothing to say to him, you have an estimate to fix your car properly, now what is the problem?"

The advisors are often amused at how quickly I can shut someone down that knows everything.  I'm rarely taking it to that level, but if you wanna play games I play to win.  

That said, the pressure of the position is sometimes tough to deal with.  You never want to let anyone down, but its inevitable.  

Sometimes you have so many problems that you just need a win.  No matter how small, just something to go right and build your confidence back up.  Because this job tears you down over and over.  You think you know something and you get humbled frequently.  Things are not always what they seem.  A rock solid diagnosis can absolutely crumble in an instant.  The cars are challenging, and the technology is always changing.  Just because you've seem something a hundred times before doesn't mean that you get to just guess.... You still have to diagnose it, provide supporting documentation, and prove that is why something failed.  A root cause analysis is also needed to avoid repeat repairs.  

Well that is enough rambling for now.  Thanks for listening.

time and time again i feel the weight you do.

we have people from routinely 2 hour away come to our place and the craziest stuff always goes to me or the lead flatrate that would rather do brakes than deal with time losing, impossible to beat warranty time bs.

the worst part about it too is that it is getting worse from when even i got in just 11 years ago now, pay is decreasing in my geography, labor rate is going up and the vehicles ... they just keep geting more complicated.

new owners just eliminated saturdays which is nice but only gave us 1 more dollar per hour and have a bonus program that can be fiddled with or disappear at any time since it is not attached directly to our pay check.

and we are all underpaid, even the lead flat tech who made 120k last year is underpaid, being a hourly company ass saver i barely touched 61k and no one in a 4 hour diameter can meet my demanded pay no how much they beg me to come to them.

i dont know what the fuck this industry is going to do the next 10 or 20 years but it is going to be horrible on all fronts

at least we can see by the end of it who is to blame, always managment and mother fucking shareholders.

Head west. We pay hourly lube techs $60k a year. No hourly techs above that, but no one is hurting for money or work.

I can complain about nearly every aspect of this job, but I can’t complain about the pay. I haven’t had a “raise” in years on paper, but the way my check works out I’m up 10-20% year over year. Keep raising that labor rate and mark up, I see 1% of both

For the Benz guys, see you in Vegas?

Go heavy equipment. Even with no OT in the past 2 years, I've pulled in right at 100k. Your pay is really only limited to what you can negotiate during contract renewal. We've got it so that our pay goes up every year. And our shop is the lowest paid of the entire company.

I hear that.

With seized compressor pretty high on the "it needs a starter" list.

Thats not counting the generator/starter issues. But those are different.

Gotta be honest, DPF shit is kicking my ass lately.

I can see the same string of faults on identical cars, and two different failures.

Heater cores causing regen faults, injector seal rings triggering adblue faults.  

Then half the fucking things pass every test only to come back 3 months later.

They're infuriating.

You won't see me in vegas.  Unless by some miracle I made the top 5 in the tech challenge.  I'm still waiting for the results from stage two.

Arnolds actually still makes AC lines, gonna have them make some with 134a fittings.

I have heard things about propane and I'm all about two birds with one stone.

o sure it makes a great refrigerant as is butane but uhhhhhhhhhh, yeah, no kaboom please.

1234yf give me squinty eyes enough as it is.