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the joys of being a mechanic

BillBoost37 said:
There is an art to working on people's cars. The first and foremost thing is typically having them drop off the car and pick it up after you are done. Many people view their cars as a child etc and don't understand how work is done to cars. Those are the hovering, constant nagger types. Then there's the other people..like you and I that are interested in how things work, ask questions to learn and think it's cool how you can fix broken things. Those are the ones you can let hang around. It takes a little time to get an understanding of who you let hang out and who you do work for when they aren't around.

Like any job and daily life..there's a balance of going through the herd of people.
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I'm no mechanic, but my neighbor is. I'm getting a BA in comp engineering by the end of this year. Naturally, I have a love of learning how things work. He's often working on something in his garage or in the driveway; I'd love to go "hover" to learn about what he's working on but I feel like I'd be bothering him or getting in his way. Several years ago, he changed out my brake pads and let me watch (even gave me some pointers on what to do). I've been changing my own pads ever since.
 


I know what you mean, i work at a dealership and it sucks. the cars suck the parts suck the ppl upfront(advisers)sucks. and its always the techs fault no matter what. and half the time you end up doing most of the work for free because they wont make the customer pay, just so they can hope to get a good csi score. But pissing everyone off just to keep the customer happy is all they care about
 
Poil336 said:
chevrolet dealership
i won't make any money at it
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Had a tech job at my local Chevy dealer making $11.00 an hour, got *****ed at about my training when I would work on it that I didn't get more done. Said screw it, got a new job for $17+ an hour. It depends on how big of a dealership you work at, smaller ones are better to work at but bigger ones pay better. You wont know unless you try it, I LOVED my job but I had more bills than money. I had people ***** about everything, one guy got mad because I didn't clean the insides of his windows with an oil change. His additude changed when I explained to him that an oil change only payed 36 min and it took about 45 min with everything.
 
Fatboy501 said:
Lol.. yeah, I've talked myself blue in the face (and I'm a light-skinned black/puerto rican guy, so that's a LOT of talking lmao) about clipping because of turning on "loud", bass boost, etc. etc. etc.

I really hope my education pays off... I'm currently enrolled in a Diesel Mechanic program.
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fatboy...that the field i went into. i like it. i currently work on semis but if i had to do it again i would have gone to heavy equipment, either way. i have yet to find a shop that i actually like, management sucks, people are slobs, etc. but i keep to myself and do my work and enjoy it. its certainly different that working in a dealership or car shop, i work with company drivers and a few owner ops, they know if they want it fixed and done right they have to leave us alone, if they b*tch and moan and piss me off it wont get fixed very quickly at all.

been in it for 4 years and have 8k plus in tool and just spent 2500 on a box. it wont stop but itll slow down
 
the more i think about it, the more i probably shoulda stayed with the engineering program i was in and put effort into getting into the automotive field. something working with cam design, or head design, or something like that. but the cost of the engineering program coupled with the fear that i'd end up designing parts for refrigerators or something scared me off. even if i did get into the automotive field, there weren't any promises that i'd be doing anything performance oriented like that. i imagine it would take years upon years of experience to make it the team that designs the new corvette engine, for example. i just never wanna quit learning. between working on them for a living, side work, building my own projects, and hopefully opening a small speed shop way down the road, i have plenty of goals. i really do live for this kinda stuff, and i think i made the right choice. hard work and long hours have never scared me away
 


It's a communication line from the pcm to the various modules etc for them to communicate to one another. The downside is..it's a big loop from one item to the next on most of our cars.
 
Oh, so if you remove one piece, the rest on that loop can't communicate?

EDIT: And is there some other class line? Like a class 1 or class 3?
 


Steel Armadillo said:
Oh, so if you remove one piece, the rest on that loop can't communicate?

EDIT: And is there some other class line? Like a class 1 or class 3?
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not exactly... bill will correct me if i'm wrong, but Class2 is one type of data communication. there are others, but typically there isn't more than one found on each car. some use Class2, some use GM LAN... there are others but i forget at the moment. the serial data lines carry voltage references, or signal voltages, for the pcm to use. take a throttle position sensor and the accelerator position pedal sensor. the APP sensor is a potentiometer that varies the voltage input to the pcm. the pcm sends voltage to the TP sensor and idle air control sensor if need be, and those sensors send back a signal voltage, somewhere between 0-5 volts. in this way, the pcm figures out where the throttle plate is and compares it to the APP sensor input to make sure everything's working like it should. it really depends on the car and the system as to removing components, but think of it this way. ALL of the modules (sometimes 20+) communicate with each other. the car might work, but the dash will be lit up like a christmas tree, screaming "hey, one of my buddies just got shot, and i think he's dead". they won't be very happy
 
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