Gary Goms, Author at Import Car - Page 2 of 27
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Diagnostic Solutions: Using The ‘Systems’ Approach To Starting Problems

Good examples of systems logic occur each September when I serve as a technical advisor for a church-sponsored single mom’s car care clinic. We sometimes, for example, accidentally bump hidden cranking “disable” switches installed by suspicious ex-husbands or encounter engines with bad fuel pumps that will start only by spraying a liberal dose of starting fluid into the air intake.

Diagnosing, Servicing & Replacing Batteries

Just last summer, I had three batteries pass a conductance test, but fail to crank the engine on a sustained basis. The conductance tester indicated that these batteries were “good,” but they tested well below 100% capacity. In two cases, I was pursuing parasitic battery drain problems with used batteries. In another case, I had a new battery that would pass a conductance test, but not accept a recharge, said Gary Goms, Import Specialist Contributor.

Finding That Spark Of Genius: Diagnosing Cranking, No-Start Failures

By the dawn of the Industrial Age, the gasoline internal combustion engine had replaced steam power as the driving force behind America’s great economic expansion. In that day, a cranking, no-start condition could easily be diagnosed by testing the available spark at the spark plug. If there was no spark, we touched a test light to the coil negative terminal to determine if the distributor contact points were switching the coil on/off. If the test light blinked, the primary circuit was switching as designed, so we replaced the coil. A pretty simple diagnosis, right?

North, South, East & West: Finding The Right Direction In Modern Wheel Alignment Technology

For the past 100 years, wheel alignment has been about adjusting camber, caster and toe angles. During the past 20 years, four-wheel alignments have done their share to change the wheel alignment landscape. But, with the introduction of the 2018 and 2019 imports, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are once again revolutionizing the wheel alignment market because the alignment technician must not only align all four wheels with the vehicle centerline, he must now align one or more ADAS sensors with the lane of travel.

Racing At 14,110 Feet On Kilowatt Hours: How Battery-Powered Vehicles Are Changing The Service Market

Call it a technological revolution in progress, but Volkswagen’s new all-electric I.D. R prototype hill climb car has successfully challenged the modified electric vehicle class record of 8 minutes, 57.118 seconds, set by Rhys Millen at Colorado’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2016.

Nissan PCM Computer-Control Issues

The American writer Irene Peter said it best: “Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” By 2018, I thought everything had changed since the days of On-Board Diagnostics I (OBD I). Since OBD I evolved into OBD II in 1996, many things did indeed appear to be different. But, once in a great while, engineers design a vehicle that is slightly ahead of its time. For me, it was a 1995 Nissan pickup equipped with the 3.0-liter V6 engine and manual transmission. Surely being an oddity, it would start and run with the distributor disconnected.

Modern Cooling System Design: It’s Not About Temperature; It’s About Powertrain

Reading engineering papers tends to be a boring exercise, but they do give a technician like myself a new perspective on how a common automotive cooling system could actually be improved. Of course, our immediate thought is how the cooling system can keep the engine cooler. Not so, according to one paper.

Brake Shop Economics: It’s About Dollars Per Hour, Not Hours Per Dollar

Shop profitability is always a hot topic in the automotive service business. As a point of comparison for most shops, brakes, steering and suspension services usually top the list in profitability, while engine repairs rank somewhere near the bottom. The key to profitability is to establish a benchmark on how many dollars can be earned per hour.

The Diagnostic Shell Game: Why The ECM Can’t See A No-Code Stalling Complaint

Remember the old carnival game where a dealer hides a pea under one of a half-dozen walnut shells? After the dealer artfully shuffles the six shells, you’re supposed to pick the shell with the pea hidden under it. Good luck with that. As veteran diagnostic technicians know, diagnosing a no-code intermittent stalling complaint can be like playing the old carnival shell game. We know it’s one of maybe six sensors, but why can’t we find the diagnostic trouble code (DTC) that tells us where to find the pea?

Rethinking Fuel Pump Diagnostics And Sensors

The technician diagnosed the 2011 Rogue as a bad fuel pump by squirting propane into the air intake. With propane, the engine runs, without propane, it stalls. But, after the fuel pump was replaced, the Rogue exhibited the same problem, which was a very slow, unsteady idle followed by an engine stall.

Turning The Page… What We Know Isn’t What We Need To Know

Looking into 2018, it doesn’t take any leap of logic to see that the average import vehicle is becoming more reliable. The net effect is that the average import shop probably won’t see as many electronics-related pattern failures during the vehicle’s first 100,000 miles as it did a decade ago.

Getting The Big Squeeze: How Mazda’s New Spark-Controlled Compression Ignition Engine Runs Long On Fuel, Short On Emissions

Until Mazda recently introduced its new Spark-Controlled Compression Ignition (SpCCI) gasoline engine, internal combustion engines (ICEs) were classified as either spark or compression ignition. The historical differences between the two were obvious: spark-ignition engines were quiet and smooth and compression-ignition engines were not.