Big Mistakes New Mechanics Make

what's going on everybody it's charles today noah and i are gonna be sharing some of the three biggest mistakes that new technicians make and i think more importantly how to avoid making those mistakes uh as you guys know i went to tech school a million and a half years ago noah took a different path and started in the lube bay and then moved up to the line as a technician which i think is a great path to do he's also done that way more recently than i have so it's gonna be awesome to get his insight and his things that he thinks are some of the biggest mistakes that we probably have all made so yeah i'd say the first uh and honestly the the easiest mistake to make is going to be uh over buying on tools uh specifically just you know when you're starting out and in that first year or two um you've got to get in there and you've got to figure out you know what what's going to break on these cars you know you might have an idea of what you know what's gonna break but sometimes things change sometimes even like seasonal things can change you know in the springtime we get a lot of water leaks you may not need some of those some of those other tools um you know don't i would encourage anybody uh you know definitely uh charles knows that uh i would encourage anybody go to your you know your local uh your home home depot or harbor freight and and get you you know husky or whatever your favorite brand is uh some cheap wrenches some cheap ratchets uh and honestly a cheap tool box those four sub 400 toolboxes that they've got are awesome they're gonna hold they're gonna definitely hold your first year tool of tools maybe if you're in an independent shop you may need larger but a dealer tech i can definitely say shouldn't need a giant you know 72 yeah i think staying early on staying off the tool truck and not getting yourself so the problem with spending a lot of money on tools is that like it's fine to spend the money if you have it but you a lot of people get themselves into debt and that debt if you've never had no debt you don't understand how much stress having the debt actually is if you commit to fifty dollars a week on the tool truck you're at an average of like 227 dollars per month brother i have had car payments much less than that it's a lot of money it's a lot of stress and the last thing you need as a new tech this is really where this comes from for me the last thing you need as a new technician learning how to fix cars whether you went to tech school or not is to have the clock ticking in your head going if you don't make x hours this week because you have to make this tool payment you're not going to be able to pay rent or your car payment or all the other crap that you have to buy right you're gonna spend a lot of money on tools even buying that 450 toolbox that's a lot of money brother but what you don't need to do is buy a 200 ratchet or a 700 impact gun off the tool truck there is a place for those tools and as you advance in your career what i did so i started off with all store brand tools everything i owned except like the bump you got from the um from the school you got some tools and i bought a little bit at half price but the majority of what i had was old school craftsman stuff and a craftsman toolbox and i had those for a couple years and then what i did is i started to upgrade and i took those home and then i had a really nice set of tools at the house so big one big one guys don't buy tools you don't need don't spend more money then you absolutely have to you can always upgrade down the road i definitely love watching uh you know youtube videos on you know just becoming a technician and i've i've taken a lot of advice from from youtubers and just people that are in the industry you know guys in my shop or what have you and i believe it was one youtuber i can't remember the name but you know he told me he said buy you know buy your basic tools and when you use that tool enough to warrant needing a nice one then buy it and we all buy tools with the intention of using them and don't but if you again if you take on a large amount of debt well i've got to have all these tools yeah and then you never use them buy buy the you know the cheap ratchet yeah there's a million ways buying online buying at the local store buying used buying stuff on ebay like amazon those are all really good places where you don't have to mortgage a kidney just to roll in on your first day because what's weird about being a technician is your first year you're probably going to spend a ton of money on tools and you're going to make the least amount hopefully anyway and that's hard so don't make it any harder on yourself good advice what's number two uh number two is going to be learn how the vehicle works and communicates okay so you might be thinking yourself well i know i know how a car works okay i realize that but as specifically the dealer techs these newer cars pretty much every manufacturer that i've seen out there is pushing we want electric cars we want this your base model civic from 2020 and your base model 2010 civic are really not the same they are worlds apart as far as you know they're they're they have assistance systems now their traction controls are much more complex all these things that may have not had 10 even 20 years ago so i mean you're going to need to know how that how all that system functions if you pull you know you pull a fault and you say oh you know it's just i just need a sensor but you don't realize that the four other modules are taking information from that sensor and that maybe one of those modules is incorrectly programmed understanding how it will all function how it all comes together is a big part of being a technician in you know 2020. learning how the car works is huge and there's probably not going to be a time where you can just say hey boss i'm going to sit and learn how cars work some of the stuff you're going to have to do on your own you'd be surprised honestly you'd be surprised how much of that stuff is in the owner's manual i think the volkswagen owner's manual don't quote me directly but it's at least at least 250 pages and that's just summaries that's such a huge resource i i often would go to an owner's manual because i could never remember the sequence for programming memory seats so i would just go to the oh well here's how you do it like five times yeah i'm just they're all different you might not be able to get to the engineering level of that information but oftentimes you don't need to the owner's manual level of that information oftentimes is enough to get you where you need to go you probably will need to learn a lot of things much deeper than that luckily most brands have a lot of resource if the brand doesn't have the resource here's another secret super squirrel secret super secret squirrel tip figure out who makes that eds system or what software is running on the ecm and go to bosch because it's probably posh and go to bosch and see what they have on that information and number three the process the process of how you work on cars this kind of ties in number one and two because you've got your tool in your hand and now you know how the system functions one thing that i will say that i personally struggle with was getting a good process there's so much you know a lot of these i i don't know if all of you work on cambus cars but a lot of these systems again will when when one thing goes they will all they will all just set faults and things like that so you you have to get a process okay i'm you know i've got a check engine light i'm going to pull it into the bay i'm going to pull the faults and then i'm going to look for any tsb's you know that's an immediate i have seen people lose their butt i have lost my butt just straight up i i have not checked tsbs bought round and round and round with a problem call the helpline and then go charles did you check technical service bulletins and of course i'm like yeah of course i ch and they're like why don't you just like check again and see and then i go look and i'm like oh you dumb dumb you spent three hours that you're not getting paid for because you're supposed to know that this is the thing because that's an early step in the process and you know and sometimes tying back into number one it's sometimes in your process you'll realize that you know i don't have the tool for that you know and you'll you'll you'll utilize that you'll go okay now i need this tool and then i'm gonna do this doing it in a sequence you know a simple circuit right you know you've got it you've got to trace it at the correct times you don't want to just jump over and go right to the module you want to go through every single connector you know these are these processes and another thing too that's really you know underrated is these processes take time your your first six months is kind of going to be a lot of stumbling and and realizing that that didn't work you know you can't just jump right to conclusions what was an oxygen sensor the one time the two times the million times is an ecm this time yeah and that's where a lot of dealership guys especially your auto program that when a p2015 code comes in on a tsi engine that's an intake manifold because it's been an intake manifold did i get that code right i think that's right uh because it's been an intake manifold eight million times but you forgot to check the vacuum supply to the diaphragm and now you got to come back that is such a good tip and it's the one that's probably one of the hardest things to do because early on you have no idea what you're doing so you don't know that you don't need have a process right but developing this as early as possible working with the people around you to incorporate the good things of their process and remove the bad things of their process because they do have good and bad every single technician will get you there so much faster and you won't go immediately trying to put a module in taking a breakout box to test wiring before you check the fuse these are all things that strike at home yeah we've talked i've talked so much about like documentation write it down that is so underrated and it sucks like dude i get it like documenting stuff is not fun it's not glamorous it's not saving the day but you know what it's gonna save your butt and it's how you get paid and i know as much as we all love cars and love working on cars ain't no one of us that goes to the dealership and buttons up that shirt in the morning to do it for free absolutely right we want to get paid and documentation is straight up how you get paid you think it's fixing cars and that's part of it but it's how you document that repair that truly gets you paid you know the more i'm just rambling and the more i'm thinking like you sang process i would probably move that up to number one yeah if we were like ranking these in order of importance number one process yeah it is very it's very important and i think another thing too is is realizing one thing i realized after that six months i'm like oh there's so many possibilities you know and and i you know i took time and i talked to some guys and i saw the guys that had the you know the bigger time sheets had a really good process you know they weren't they weren't jumping around or you know not not checking things they were consistent in that process and that's i mean i i absolutely still struggle with those things today but those that is definitely a large key you know we get we want we want as a new technician to be fast and good and like speed comes with time speed comes with process i think of that saying like slow is smooth and smooth as fast like that's really how it is and it's hard it's hard to slow yourself down because you want to hurry up you want to make a lot of hours committing to that process developing it early fine tuning it forever will set you apart from other technicians it will make you a better technician it'll make you a more accurate technician and you will not waste time what about a bonus i feel like we need a bonus one is there a bonus one uh you know attitude attitudes what just overall attitude if you're gonna go in every day and have a sucky attitude the i don't want to be here the slouched over on the side if you're if you're just going to blow everybody off just don't don't come in man don't come in not at all don't don't if you if you truly hate it there attitude is one thing so my old boss and i oftentimes would go to the local tech school nti and we'd talk to students and the main thing we would talk to them about is your attitude is everything right think about any relationship you've ever had with anyone co-worker friend spouse significant other boyfriend girlfriend whatever like your approach and attitude is everything to that interaction there's so many cliche things like attitude this and attitude that like i i don't even want to think about them because just it's literally like one of the most cliches you could say but it's that for a reason it is so so true think about when you go through the drive-through at the local drive-through food spot and that person in the window is like smiling and happy versus like them essentially throwing their your food at you if you don't love it and you don't want to be there maybe the building sucks maybe your boss is a jerk absolutely there's a hundred other shops that'll hire you if you're decent and you have to really think are is your boss a jerk because of my added like because of your own attitude or is it is your boss just a jerk because the boss is a jerk and like you know either one is feeding into you know attitude you know when that applies when you're working on cars too because i and i've definitely done it i'm sure i'm sure when i get in you know to the to the shop guys are going to be like ah look you need to need to go go back through and watch that buddy take your own advice no wow dude uh yeah i'm definitely gonna get that but you know i there was a there was a vehicle that i had on on the list and i was like dude i do not i don't want to work on this car i psyched myself up for it i think it was like a water leak or something like that and all day i i just psyched myself up for this car and it ended up being you know an easy fix going into a car with a bad attitude is not a good idea because a lot of times you're just going to get mad at it and like i i do this all the time so i'm so guilty of this but you know it's hard like we we can sit here and say like attitude is the most important thing and that's really easy to say but don't misunderstand that it is not easy to do that all the time consistently especially when you're already kind of having a bad week and like some dude cut you off on the traffic on the traffic in traffic on the way to work right i get it i totally get it and i'm not perfect either i don't have that chipper attitude on every single car i work on but if you come in fresh ready to go good attitude good spirit your brain is cleaner your mind is more open to the problem that you're about to address right and being a tech's not a glamorous job nobody goes there because you're awesome right nobody goes there like they go to the amusement park they go there because their car is broken so they're not happy either it's not like you got a customer at disneyland that's excited everybody's already kind of like a be the hero be the good example to other technicians be the positive light for your customers and do a good job you will set yourself apart from everyone you will earn yourself a bank of customers that let's be honest if you go somewhere else come on customers you're coming with me that's what you want to do if you can't do that that's a you problem you may not want to agree with me you may not want to accept it but that's a you problem either you need to get out of that building you need to change your attitude you need to get out of the career in the field altogether there is a place where i am 100 on board with you're like i'm out i don't want to be a technician anymore the auto industry whatever i support that 100 because what i don't want is i don't want you all doing stuff you hate and that might mean you get out of the industry altogether yeah sometimes things change the shop changes the people you work with change the brand sometimes can change but yeah you what if it's changing you well that is three slash 3.5 really great things i think process tools and learning the car huge huge huge things when you circle them all together with attitude can really make you not only a great technician but you can actually enjoy being a technician it's a hard job it's a hard career it's mentally physically emotionally draining i get it but it can also be really darn rewarding financially mentally i don't know if it's rewarding physically or not unless you want back pain as a reward but anyway with that we are going to wrap it up thank you guys for watching noah great advice and we will talk to you again next time

Channel: HumbleMechanic

Views: 97,670

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Id: e2wfY_ieX08

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020