Glen Beanard
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Up in Vapor

Gasp! It’s the “Gas Cap Code”! Oh no, you just pulled a code P0422, evaporative purge small leak detected… Here goes the needle in the haystack syndrome. So what do you do? Recommend a new gas cap and ship it? Well you could do that, but would that be in your or your customer’s best

Getting Started

It’s no secret that the first automobiles were started by hand cranking. It’s also pretty obvious that, somewhere along the way, someone replaced the hand crank with an electric motor. In 1911, a friend of Henry Leland, founder of Cadillac, died from injuries sustained while restarting a car for a lady. The need for a

Fundamentals of Electrical System Diagnosis

Electrical principles, like voltage, amperage and resistance, can be described as cars passing along the roadway. Voltage would be the vehicle’s speed, amperage would be the number of vehicles on the road at the same time, and resistance would be the potholes in the road’s surface. Basically, electricity is a supply of atoms with an

Shop Management: Doctor’s Orders

Doctor’s Orders By Glen Beanard, Technical Contributor John is sitting in a doctor’s exam room after having several tests run. The doctor enters the room and informs John that he has been diagnosed with a high blood pressure condition. The doctor explains the condition to John. He informs him that he must make an immediate

Making Sense out of Sensors

Sure, you may be familiar with some basic sensor operation. But as an automotive technician, you may not really understand all of the ins and outs of many common sensors. Do you really understand how they work, how the PCM views them and the possible scan tool and DVOM results when things go wrong? If

Better Breathing: EGR Improvements

So Why Do We Have EGR? By Glen Beanard, technical contributor The Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) system was created in the early 1970s for the same No. 1 ranking motivation that drives every other engine management system design — to reduce emissions. The EGR valve targets one specific pollutant, oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Under normal

Getting Tanked: Flex Fuel Engine Modifications Allow for Alcohol-Based Fuel

In case you haven’t heard, Flex Fuel technology is really starting to take off in the U.S., becoming more popular in late-model vehicles than technicians may realize. If you haven’t had any training on these vehicles, you may find some of the technical changes OEMs have made to the engines will alter the way you

So… You’re a ‘Manager’ Now

You’ve done your time in the trenches. You’ve dreamed of it. You’ve worked toward it. You sought out the opportunity. Now it is your turn to be the boss. So now what? Do you really know what to do? Do you know what not to do? If there is one thing that I have learned,

Loss Leader: Lost Cause?

It seems like there are always certain services that are routinely performed by repair facilities at a loss. Sure, they might generate enough revenue to pay for the direct expenses of doing the job, such as parts and technician labor, however, they often fail to make their needed contribution to the overhead expenses of owning

Under Pressure: Maintaining Ford’s Electronic Returnless Fuel System

By Glen Beanard, Technical Contributor Here we go again. A simple electric pump pushing fuel up to the engine, with its pressure being controlled by a little valve, and returning the unused fuel to the tank was not good enough. Now, we need to make that all fancy by adding a new controller, adding a

Alternator Altercation Electricity Fundamentals

Electrical principles, like voltage, amperage and resistance, can be described as cars passing along the roadway. Voltage was referred to as the vehicle’s speed, amperage as the number of vehicles on the road at the same time, and resistance as potholes in the road’s surface. Basically, electricity is a supply of atoms with an excess

Shop Management: Dining Out

Shop management lessons can be found in many places – even at the local seafood restaurant. I recently had an experience that caused me to reflect on how we conduct business at our repair facility. Let me start by saying that if there are two types of food that I love, they have to be