Professional Tool & Equipment News editor Jacques Gordon talks about the automotive service and repair industry.
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Follow the Money
by Jacques Gordon - Thursday May 17, 2012The 'debate' over E15 is showing up in my Inbox with greater frequency these days. In case you haven't heard, E15 is 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol. Current EPA rules require refineries to produce E10 as road fuel, and a few years ago the Agency began the rule-making process to change that requirement to E15. (The actual ethanol blend at the pump is determined locally by state government, and the pump must be labled.) Opposition to this rule comes from a group called the Coordinating Research Council (CRC), which includes, among others, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and eight of the world's largest auto manufacturers. The EPA is tasked by Congress with protecting air quality, while the CRC can be seen as an... -
Can you sell it?
by Jacques Gordon - Thursday April 5, 2012To run a successful auto repair business, being good at sales is just as important as any other skill in the shop. Tell me how you would answer this customer: When they first came out, I had a chance to try a vacuum tool that’s used for leak-checking and filling a cooling system. The brand name was Airlift, and I think there are some other brands now, but these days the tool is generically called an ‘airlifter.’ I remember being impressed at how fast and easy it was to fill a cooling system that I’d had trouble bleeding in the past (VW Corrado with the PG engine). Later I read that some people won’t to use the tool on certain GM engines that suffer a high rate of intake manifold gasket failures. People have also worried about... -
Fuel Prices
by Jacques Gordon - Tuesday February 21, 2012The price of crude oil is now over $100 a barrel, so fuel prices are climbing again. This time it’s petro-politics. Iran has halted oil sales to France (who buys almost no Iranian crude) and Britain (who buys none at all) and has threatened to halt oil sales to other European Union nations. This is because the EU has announced a plan to stop buying Iranian crude in an effort to convince Iran to halt their nuclear program. If the Europeans are already planning to stop buying Iranian crude, why should Iran’s threat to stop selling it to them raise oil prices everywhere in the world? I don’t know, but it shows how unpredictably fragile our lifestyle here in the U.S. can be. Here’s a more predictable reality: If you’ve got it, a... -
Scan Tool Dreams
by Jacques Gordon - Thursday February 2, 2012Diagnostics has changed a lot since the earliest days of OBD II, mostly because there are a lot more codes and other information available from the vehicle’s on-board controllers. But, with the exception of additional modes (bi-directional control, VIN info, and permanent code records), the basic structure of OBD II remains relatively unchanged since the first 7 Modes were introduced in 1996. Still, scan tools are MUCH more powerful today than most of us imagined back then, and there’s potential for even more capability. Just as significant is the potential unlocked by the different ways people have found to use the tool. For instance, Mode $06 was originally intended as a production line tool to verify/document a vehicle’s... -
Opportunity Knocks
by Jacques Gordon - Friday January 6, 2012Just got our first real cold weather here in the mid-Atlantic area; lots of dead batteries and hard-start cold issues, so most shops around here are pretty busy this week. Of course, most of those cars haven’t been to a shop for a while, and experienced techs know now’s the time to check for other items that have been neglected too long. Low tire pressure is almost universal, but rusted caliper slides, muddy coolant, ancient air filters, useless wiper blades and nasty brake fluid are pretty common too. Unless the manufacturer recommends it (and many imports do), it’s kind of hard to sell a brake fluid flush without showing the customer some kind of empirical proof that it’s needed. I know techs who use test strips...
