Service Repair | ||||
After considering your symptoms and this basic information, he may order more specific system tests to narrow down your possible ailments before finally making his conclusion and prescribing the cure. When that's all done, he sends you to the receptionist to schedule a follow-up appointment to make sure the cure worked. Sound Familiar? We essentially follow the same procedure when diagnosing our customer's complaints. We interview the customer and the car to find out how it's feeling; we perform basic tests on the systems and gather preliminary information before moving on to more specific tests that help us narrow down the cause of the complaint. Then we reach our conclusion, make our repair, and verify the result.The only difference, as one physician once told me, is that we can turn our machines off while we work on them — his have to stay running! The Jaguar in my bay provides a great opportunity to follow this diagnostic procedure and reinforce the importance of taking a logical approach to any automotive repair. Gathering the Basics
In the case of the Jag, all the customer could tell me was the Malfunction Indicator Light (MIL) was on. He didn't experience any change in performance or driveability. So now it's time to interview the car and see what it can tell me. My first step is to take a look at the car. What is its overall condition? How many miles are on it? Are there any modifications that may affect the performance of the car or impact the complaint? Do I have access to any history on the car? (Previous repairs, maintenance history, etc.) Looking in our history log, I found an entry where the customer had just been in a few weeks ago with an MIL complaint with codes P0171 (System lean, bank 1) and P0174 (System lean, bank 2). The previous tech had replaced the Positive Crankcase Ventilation (PCV) hose from the valve to the throttle body because the rubber elbow that attached the plastic hose to the valve had deteriorated and split. The car itself was in good condition, with no obvious defects seen in the visual inspection. |
