You know, Ivan, one of the biggest issues plaguing independent garages today is the lack of value some shop owners place on service information (SI). It's truly baffling how they manage to run their businesses without utilizing the tools available in today's modern age. I even offered my customers free General Motors virtual training classes, but believe it or not, not a single one took me up on the offer. The excuses they gave me could fill a book! What's truly concerning is that these are the same people working on your cars every single day.
Left my W2 and never looking back. They’ve lost countless valuable employees and only approved training for unrelated areas requested by new employees who do their best to have someone else do their work.
The desire and will to learn is low among mechanics. I’m going to be teaching automotive part time at a local college in my area soon and I hope to be a part of changing that attitude over time. I think the trick is to give new techs real deal, practical tools and systems knowledge that can rapidly help them feel confident when hovering over an engine bay, or when they put a scanner in their hands. Right now, all too often, the education system is failing aspiring techs by filling them up with useless information for their day to day grind. Honestly, you can get a better education on RU-vid through guys like Ivan, scanner Danner, Eric O, Bernie thompson, etc.!
Back in the early '90s when I worked for Snap-on Tools Corporation, every April, BOCES held their state finals at the New York International Auto Show. Young technicians from every state in the country would compete for the top prize. For many of these kids, it was their first time in New York. And every year, they asked me to participate as a judge in their state finals. We set up secondary ignition patterns on the Snap-on MT3000, requiring them to fill out a form indicating which cylinder was misfiring. I can tell you, those young people and their teachers worked incredibly hard to participate in the state finals. I hope you find as much enjoyment in working with the young students as I did.@@jeremyah78
I was paying as I needed it, for a DIY account that I had setup on my Launch. Having access to just the wiring diagrams alone is a blessing. It's funny that my employer never asked me why I would ask him for $ every time I got stuck on a problem diagnostic. Until he sat with me one day while I was doing a diagnostic on his son's car and saw first had what ALLDATA could offer. And at a sensible cost option. Now the shop has its own account. But yeah, these modern smart battery testers are not worth anything. Just get yourself one of those cheap, old school load testers. 2 or 3 tests with one of those will tell you everything you need to know about the battery's stability.
I have a cheap electronic battery tester. I think it works very well. But like all things it’s only reliable if you fully charged the battery and then you have waited 3 1/2 hours to test the battery. It gives the usual information like the CCA and indicates good, fair or bad. But what’s really important is the impedance of the battery. A good battery will have low impedance. Like no more than 5 ohm, older batteries in fair shape might read 7 ohm and higher than that your battery has become sulfated and either needs desulfated or replaced. I like the electronic tester for that reason but if I have reason to doubt what it’s telling me I pull the battery out of the vehicle and check it with my 1000 amp carbon pile tester. While it’s on the bench I check the specific gravity of the cells. I remove my batteries twice a year and charge them with a PulseTech charger that desulfates them. I’ve even recovered batteries that should have been replaced but are now the same as a new battery. The price of batteries has risen to the point that it pays off to maintain my own. I don’t know about doing the service for customers. It takes about three days on the charger. Balancing the cells probably isn’t an average DIY thing either. Typically only one or two cells will be sulfated the worse and the specific gravity will be low. Everything that was in the battery is still there and desulfating first and only adding distilled water if needed. After the PulseTech charger has desulfated the battery and the impedance has been lowered to a viable level should the specific gravity be balanced. Also I feel like I need to say I’m not a battery scam artist nor am I affiliated with one. Don’t ever put anything in a lead acid battery except distilled water or sulfuric acid. There are no secrets and lead acid batteries have been around a very long time and haven’t changed. The book “The Automobile Storage Battery, its care and repair” can be found on Google books and elsewhere. It’s known as the Whitte battery manual so named after O. A. Whitte chief engineer American Bureau of Engineering. Great Job Ivan, I like all your videos. Wish more mechanics were like you, actually mechanics.
Ivan, you are making mechanics look really bad. LOL Seriously, you are empowering the rest of us DIYers to fix their cars cheaply and correctly. Keep up the great work!
Ivan, You are absolutely right about "smart" battery testers. They are garbage! Many years ago I bought a battery at my Toyota dealer. When I got home I noticed the Voltage was below 12.3 volts after a proper charge cycle. That is not normal, it should be at least 12.6 Volt with a new battery (Lead-acid). I went to the dealer and told them I want a new battery because this was damaged. The tested it with a "smart" tester that said the battery was OK. I was not happy with their finding! After a week a had to visit a friend and the battery was totally dead! My friend took me to the dealer and i asked for the manager. He eventually told his staff to give me a new battery. The battery was a Toyota "economy" part i.e. crap quality. It worked for about two years. After that I bought a new Bosch battery over 10 years ago and it's still fine!
Budget batteries of any brand have a life expectancy of two winters a better budget battery might last three. A battery from the top premium range of a quality manufacturer such Yuasa, Bosch, Varta, or Exide should last seven to 10 years or more if the car electrics are doing their.job properly Smart battery testers do work they are actually very good at spotting a battery in the early stages of failure but should not be used as the only test, that needs a high amp load tester which draws a high enough current to suit the CCA of the battery.
I have an '05 Acura TL and my HFL is in the same spot and was the cause of my parasitic draw. I replaced it and have always been curious what failed inside it to cause it, but never bothered to open the old one. Shops are getting terrible these days. I worked on an '05 Camry recently that had some oil leaks, including valve cover gasket and timing chain tensioner. Went to remove the coil packs - the bolts were practically welded into the valve cover. The spec on them is only 5 ft-lbs! The #3 cylinder (engine is 1 3 2 4) would not move, bolt eventually snapped off, and after removing the cover I could not even drill it out. It had been torqued down so hard it became one with the valve cover. That ignition coil was an aftermarket Duralast coil. Someone had replaced the coil - it was a local shop, the customer showed me the receipt - but the part number was for 2006 through 2009 Toyota Camry, and this was a 2005 Camry. The coil was about 2-3 mm too tall, so the tech torqued the everloviin' snot out of the bolt to get it to sit flush. Probably caused the gasket to fail early in the process. Junkyard valve cover + replacement OE Denso coil and all is well. What a dumb but costly mistake.
Customer probably gave him the wrong information on his car. So AutoZone gave him the actual part for the year the customer stated. As far as the mechanic . You take your chances.
@@2nickles647 Even if that was the case, there are several failed checks there. I scanned the car pre-repair and it tells me it's a 2005 Camry. The date on the door confirms that. The one lone non-Denso ignition coil is physical different and quite obviously does not fit. Why would that be? I looked up the part to check for properness, bingo. This is basic stuff here that should not be messed up. The right parts for the right car, it's not rocket surgery. fwiw, the owner told me it was a 2005 Camry, so I doubt that's the reason. They've owned it since 2008 and provided the sale paperwork in a folder that included all the other past work. The owner was very aware. I've worked on cars that have seen the same shop before and they've had work orders in the glove box with parts that match Duralast on the car, and there's an Autozone in the plaza next to them.
Pretty sad state of affairs in the auto repair and service industry. Hard to trust anybody to do the right thing anymore. At least we have good youtubers to help those of us who want to figure things out themselves. Thanks Ivan.
That's awesome! Someone was not paying attention to what they were unplugging. I have also been told my battery was fine when it was not. That happens when they don't want to honor the warranty.
Step 1 verify customer complaint. Always take what they say with a grain of salt. I once rewired a whole ground system on a Jeep Compass that the customer had told me they replaced the bulb and it still was not working. Being I had seen the same issue at least 10 times before I went ahead and cut the terminals off and put new ones on. Still no turn signal. Pulled th bulb out and it was clearly blown. I couldn't charge the customer for the ground repair and also prevented a problem that he was guaranteed to have. Always do your own diagnosis and start from the beginning.
Good morning Ivan. Always great videos. My knee slowly healing. ALSO! You got one one more subscriber on your channel, my daughter. She is now taking advanced auto in high school. She knows how to use a OBD scanner, do a brake job and a multitude of other repairs and inspections. YIPPY. She doing this so she knows what a car is about and avoid being ripped off.
Yeah, and if he didn’t have access to service data or was being rushed through the job by a service manager that works on commission I can’t blame him. This is why I avoid chain repair shops.
My old boss hired his hack brother to work at our shop, he also taught automotive shop at the local college, I consistently had to repair his comebacks… I was taught to do the job correctly first… still repairing to this day at almost 69
@@kellismith4329 agree, but I'm not sure how these days! can we even special order one with less than 30 random computers monitors and screens and electronics packages??
Ya know, Ivan, some people don't have the ability or resources to do these repairs; it is because of you that I do. You have accurate data to complete your repairs. GREAT VIDEO!
My old neighbor had a 99 Mazda 626 that a shop replaced a battery terminal with a screw on type and cut the wire which made it too short to have the 6 gauge cable attached to the body of the car. They used a much smaller 18 gauge wire attached to the point of the 6 gauge cable (which was attached to the body) to the body of the car as a body ground. Even a older car, the battery cable needs to be as big as possible for the body ground. It destroyed the PCM and other electronics on the car, including the fuel pump and fuel delivery system. Anything with needing cell service with cars, I prefer to use an aftermarket system for that link system. Older cars don't have the modern radio systems for 4G and 5G service. Last time I had seen a 3G setup was maybe 12 years ago. Those no longer work.
Supposedly, the "high-tech" battery testers are load-testing a battery on a very short-term basis by pulsing a semiconductor like a MOSFET and measuring instantaneous current and voltage values. Problem is, the internal resistance of a good car battery is quite low in comparison to the connections that are made to the tester. It's amazing these testers ever work well at all. Just like so many things, the emphasis has been on eliminating hardware, and enhancing the software used by the microprocessors that supposedly analyze the battery. The temptation is to "program around" deficiencies and make it work, and that's what the manufacturers try to do. Good call on your part!!!!
I don't see any value to the fancy battery testers when the car can perform a real-world battery capacity and current test by itself with no tools required haha
Some of this is basic Troubleshooting 101. Sure, it's good information to know what the last person who worked on it did, but always verify it yourself. At least then, your troubleshooting is valid.
That’s hilarious because I’ve seen that same exact thing more than once. Everyone unplugs that same connector when trying to disable the hands free unit. They never go quite far enough to get to the actual connector they need to unplug 😂
Ha, very funny Car Wizard just released a car video with Acura MDX as well. What a coincidence, just funny but not for a dead battery. Ivan, I like the fact that you do not trust anybody, what they say. I check it for yourself to be sure. Fantastic.
I always check the Reserve Capacity (RC) rating of batteries I am considering buying for my car. It's a good thing to know if your alternator fails or if you have a parasitic draw. "Commonly referred to as RC, reserve capacity is the amount of time, in minutes, that a 12V battery can run before dropping to 10.5V. It is measured in reserve minutes. For example, if a battery has a reserve capacity of 150, that means it can supply 25 amps for 150 minutes before the voltage drops to 10.5V."
Love the way you always strive to verify the customer complaint and not just assume. Never ASS U ME, assuming something can make an ass of you and me!😅😅
To be a good tech in this day and age, it would appear one needs to be an electrical engineer. The failure of all these modules is the reason we will never see these cars in a Meacum auto auction 40 years from now.
Nice straight forward diag. Battery load test using the headlights is now part of my toolkit. Thermal image was a compelling visual image. Thanks for sharing.
Thx Ivan. Because of this vid I revisited a draw problem I have been having on my 05 TL. 3 yrs ago, I tried to chase down a large draw on that same 7.5 amp fuse. The diagrams i had from Mitchel did not show the WiFi on that same circuit, just the interior lights, overhead controls, and remote signal controls, IE key fob signals. Indeed, after pulling said fuse, there was n/p, but several systems didn't work. After looking at your vid, I decided to look into it further. Sure enough there was a module buried in that overhead console by the headliner with the GREEN connector! I unplugged that, and battery draw was down to .018 amps after about 10 mins. What i cannot explain is that the garage door opener, automatic seat positions, and alot more still retained their memory and functions w/o me doing anything. Do you think they get stored in the bcm? So 3 yrs later, everything works but the hands free. But let's face it, few phones will pair with that old system anyways. Thx again!
I’m blown away by the awesome data Alldata has for that Acura. For the VW’s I’ve looked up in Alldata, there’s never any photographs, or even diagrams showing where the components are physically located.
Yessiree...and you can read and get tips all day long but without a good foundation of experience...you will still be limited in abilities to diagnose. As in this video, Ivan had way more experience and fixed this concern in just a few minutes plus, along the way he found the new battery is very limited and should be replaced.
Reliable service information made this fix possible. Every one I have done was under floor console. Location can change when old engineer retires and new one decides it’s better elsewhere. “Job Security “‼️
Man I've had a lot of hands free modules cause draws on all manufacturers. Mazda just yesterday. I've had good results with the Mitsubishi's and Kia's by doing a hard reset and clearing out the numerous unused phones registered in the bluetooth system with no return draw. But those were my family's vehicles and that's iffy on a customer's vehicle you don't want to return.
Ivan, I've watched your videos for years, buddy you are one amazing tech. Hands down the best I've ever seen. I know if I ever have an issue with my two Toyotas you'll be the one I call. Thanks Dan from WV USA
On a 2000 Yukon XL I had the OnStar module draining the battery. I just pulled the fuse for the roof lighting circuit which powered only the OnStar unit. Thanks Ivan!
To all that read these, the cellular network keeps advancing and leaving the older vehicles without the accessories. There is also no way to upgrade them. What a niche market for some upstart company.
One thing that you didn't show at the end: definitely don't try to start the car while you still have your amp meter hooked up. The way you edited the video, it made it look like you had the amp meter hooked up the entire time. :)
Congrats is highly in order for being able to spot that misdemeanor. Only a very expert tech would have found that anomaly. After every video, my assessment of your expertise goes up a notch. The total grasp of some amazing difficult scenarios never ceases to astound my brain. Keep up the good work and we thank God for your talents.
I can attest to the fact that the digital battery testers are junk. Twice had a shop and a parts store use them and was told battery was good. But put a good old fashioned load tester on it and as the load was applied you could watch the voltage drop clear to 10.5 volts. Its sad that dealerships and parts stores rely on these junk digital testers.
It's a way to sell more batteries. Such as the case where the auto parts stores sell parts. Customer wants a diagnostic check because their car is acting up. The parts guy plugs in their scanner. The kid at the counter says...o it's this. Customer buys the parts. Next day..same problem...wants a new part...done deal. Still not fixed. Told to take it to a shop for actual diagnosis. Customer says no because of the cost😅😅😅
I got the 2005 model... Radiator transmission line inlet and outlet corrode over time. I got an aftermarket cooler and temp valve and bypassed the OEM cooler on the radiator itself. This happens to the 3rd generation as well (2007+) as noted on MDX/pilot /Odyssey owner forums
THANKS IVAN, FOR THE GREAT VIDEO/INFORMATION ON HOW TO TELL THE BATTERY IS BAD WITH SIMPLE CHECKS SO U PUT UR METER ON AMPS NOT ON MA TO CHECK THE DRAW.
I apply at Monroe back in 2019, they pay techs on commission pay. Base pay was around 10 bucks + commission + small percentage on any upsale. The lead tech was bragging about doing front brakes in under 30 minutes 😮.
Part of the problem is that people pay for repairs that aren't repairs. If the shop you use to "repair" your car performs defective work, sue them for it - or file a complaint to Visa/Mastercard for a refund. If they don;t fix it, don't pay them. They won't be in business for long if they make it a regular practice. And don;t bring your car to Monroe for this kind of job. I went to Monroe once - for an emissions test - but that's it.
The shop was soooooooo close. Failed at the last hurdle by not identifying for SURE they had the right module. If customer paid them they should get a refund.
Well done Ivan :-D Odd that the ignition switch output didn't go through a fuse to the overhead module. Not ideal but the power would get there, or a relay....... ha ha im relay crazy :-D. Dam silly designs.
This screw up at the shop makes it had from people to trust auto repair shops and even the dealer shops. Too many unnecessary bells and whistles on these new cars.
I see a lot of comments bashing the "technician". It's not completely the techs fault. The flat rate pay system sucks. Everyone in that industry knows it but I don't see it changing. It's not at all like a salary or hourly job.
Yep, they aren't putting a proper load on it... Just pulsing a small couple amp load for a moment and doing some fancy math based on the voltage drop. A real load tester pulling some heavy current will tell you if a battery is strong as you monitor voltage... Although it doesn't give you a fancy piece of paper. Haha
Great diagnostic strategy, Ivan! Yep, without Alldata information, you might be looking for the HFL in the center console, or something. The level of ignorance of many auto-shops is worrisome.
The good thing about "youtube car repair shops" are instant accountability. If one burns a customer, thounds will immediately know, so no wonder if customers sometimes choose to drive for hours to get a diagnosis / repair.
I got a 2003 Jeep Liberty with a parasitic draw, other people tried to trouble shoot it, but missed the fact that the radio was turned on. You couldn't tell if it was on or off because there is no light.
Man, this video shows how you can't trust anyone's work these days, have to verify everything. The "mechanic" at the muffler shop screwed up the repair and whoever tested the battery failed at their job too. For the latter I wonder if it was wherever the owner bought the battery, I've had places tell me a battery tested fine when it clearly wasn't just because they didn't want to warranty it.
Yeah, Ivan said owner took it to AutoZone for the free battery test 😅 The person probably didn't enter the correct CCA rating for that battery and it passed when he entered a lower number
is it the same for 2010? just put a new battery in, mechanic checked my voltage for alternator and starter and everything checked out good...couple days later battery dead again
The previous "mechanic" didn't unplug the correct component because he had his phone in one hand, facetiming, and attempting to unplug the module with the other....Not his fault!🙄😒😏
After using the classic midtronics battery tester for 20 yrs I've decided that it's the biggest liar in the industry. The "Surface charge detected" and "charge and retest" messages are almost a guarantee that the battery is bad. Set a timer for 7 minutes, leave the headlights on and if it won't crank at normal speed the battery is bad.
