Feature Articles

Repair Shop Confidential Episode Two: The Case of the Two-Stepping TPS

Repair Shop Confidential Episode Two: The Case of the Two-Stepping TPS

When you are the world’s greatest automotive detective, you meet all kinds of guys. Well, guys like Dave. That’s Dave as in “Dave’s Transmission City,” formerly “Dave’s Lifetime Brake & Muffler,” still earlier “Dave’s International Auto Repair,” “Dave’s Dependable Towing,” “Dave’s Quality Detailing” and so on back through a long chain of sequentially failed automotive […]

Hot-Wiring Nightmare No-Starts

Hot-Wiring Nightmare No-Starts

No-starts? Piece of cake. Except when they’re not. Here are some that weren’t, and how they were fixed by a very special hot-wire: the iATN. To a ‘civilian,’ a no-start seems like the most frustrating and difficult of all car problems. It’s always unexpected and inconvenient. And entirely inexplicable! After all, ‘didn’t the engine start […]

Business Software Part Four

Business Software Part Four

Part Three of our Business Software series (Import Service, October 2000) described how to export data from shop management pro-grams with built-in export utilities. This month’s column describes how to retrieve data when your shop management program lacks an export utility, as well as how to import data into Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. When […]

Britcar Bafflements

Britcar Bafflements

Egad! These Yank blighters expect their vehicles to run for hundreds of miles without the slightest attention to the fitments from a properly skilled garageman! Bloody truculent colonials! Where is the adventure of motoring these days, I ask you? The Parthenon, Buckminster Fuller intoned, splendid an edifice as it is, dominating the Acropolis at Athens, […]

Learning to Learn

Learning to Learn

What’s the only edged instrument that gets sharper with use? The same one that solves every problem you’re ever going to solve. Here are a few ways to keep yours honed keen. The car finally rolls out the door and down the road, days late. Ate your lunch? Ha! It was one of those killers […]

(Avoiding) Hammer Damage-Servicing Honda CV Joints

(Avoiding) Hammer Damage-Servicing Honda CV Joints

When we talk about CV joint service, it’s usually just a matter of deciding when to replace a cracked boot or a noisy joint. Customers rarely spot a CV joint problem for them-selves, unless they drive until a damaged joint fails completely and disables the vehicle. That’s why it’s important to inspect the CV joints […]

Business Software Part Three

Business Software Part Three

Part Two of our “Front Counter Mechanics” series on Business Software (September 2000) described how to create a customer mailing list using Microsoft Excel. If you have built an Excel spreadsheet, you know that project is comparatively easy; the real work comes in filling in the data. If your repair business is like most others, […]

…Or Else What? A Mechanico-Ethical Introspective Dialog

…Or Else What? A Mechanico-Ethical Introspective Dialog

Who are those guys with the lab coats and clipboards to tell us how to do our work? What do they know? Let’s just ignore ‘em and hammer out some cars. Then what? Don’t they drive ya nuts? ‘Do it this way.’ ‘Do it that way.’ And never in any way that makes the work […]

Secret Codes, Part One

Secret Codes, Part One

Vince does some super-sleuthing to decipher the hidden meaning behind diagnostic trouble codes. We all used ‘secret codes’ when we were kids. If you wanted to get into my boyhood clubhouse, you had to know the secret code. It didn’t matter who you were — even my father wasn’t excepted. Fortunately, Dad was very understanding […]

Rebelting the Mitsu DOHC V6

Rebelting the Mitsu DOHC V6

Some timing belt jobs are tricky, but on the Mitsu DOHC V6, you can get into serious, destructive trouble just while you’re removing the old belt! One of the most troublesome timing belt replacements is on the Mitsubishi double-overhead-cam V6 engines. There’s not much difference, except for fewer parts, on the Mitsu inline fours, but […]

Scanning for Data

Scanning for Data

Do you remember when the UHV band was added to the television broadcast spectrum? As the old manual TV tuner in our photo illustrates, the new band brought roughly a seven-fold increase in the number of potential broadcast stations (up from the original 12). Later, as cable and then satellite TV gained a foothold in […]

Rotary Engines

Rotary Engines

Unfamiliar shouldn’t mean impossible. Here’s how to check a Mazda rotary engine for basic mechanical integrity. An engine most of us have always found interesting, but (if you’re like me) haven’t worked on enough to know as well as our interest would incline is the Wankel rotary used on Mazdas, mostly in recent years their […]

Diesel Electromotion?

Diesel Electromotion?

Cars with the acceleration of a gasoline engine and the fuel economy of a hybrid, all with an almost classic oil-hammer engine. What’s the drama? (Hint: You already know most of the cast!) The subtle control circuits are too bad, in a way, because the traditional, non-electronic Diesel engine was so simple: If you didn’t […]

Coming Through in the Clutch

Coming Through in the Clutch

After an astonishing 184,000 miles, the original clutch on this one-owner 1987 BMW 325iS finally decided it had completed its tour of duty. The way it failed was curious, though. Instead of the typical symptoms of gradually slipping and losing engagement, the owner said the car developed a decided ‘crunch’ in the clutch pedal, followed […]

Business Software, Part Two

Business Software, Part Two

July’s Front Counter Mechanics discussed the Microsoft Office suite of products. The article was published not because we at Import Service own lots of Microsoft stock (Don’t we wish!), but because Office has become the standard of business information exchange. So, what exactly is ‘business information exchange?’ The way this article comes to you is […]

Blam! Explosions Down Deep, Things that Go “Ping!” in the Engine

Blam! Explosions Down Deep, Things that Go “Ping!” in the Engine

Some of the earliest cars had an odd, pivoting stalk on the steering column, right where most cars have the turn signal/headlight switch now. A few others had one on the dash. Serrations along a quadrant held the position you chose. It’s a long-gone control – the spark advance lever, used to manually change the […]

Vetronix Mastertech: Asian Software

Vetronix Mastertech: Asian Software

Planned obsolescence was once a fact of life in dealer showrooms. Last year’s models automatically looked outdated and tired, just as soon as the new models and the new advertising were released. Those who bought into the ‘newer is better’ sales pitch replaced their cars every two or three years. This was probably a good […]