Cascade Crew

[alloy]

Ran across something that I'd never seen before and thought I'd share. It's not a 3rd gen, but unfortunately a lot of us work on "other" types of vehicles.

98 cavilier, 2,2 auto. Some times when you tried to start it the engine would jump and buck, and the SES light would come on for crank and cam sensors. Ok, can understand the jumping and bucking if the ignition does not know when to fire and fires in the wrong place.

Anyway somewhere in the process of figuring out how the hell to get the cam sensor out the starter drive died. So............$150 and 15 minutes of work got a new starter on. Guess what? No starting problem now, no bucking, no SES light. I never dreamed that a starter drive failing could cause a problem like this. There were no indications the starter was failing til the drive died and would not engage.

Just thought I'd share with all of you.

[Twilightoptics]

Seems to happen alot in shops as I watch customers come in. Even friends.

Recently a friend of mine got quoted some 500-600$ for Plugs/Wires/O2 sensors. The car was running poorly. 4cyl and would barely keep running.

The prices were inline with the work/parts. SES light was indeed on for O2's, which were spendy.

I replaced the plugs/wires that were arching and bam no more O2 problem.

Good find Dan!

[alloy]

Thanks Paul.

I had my kids 98 chebby pickup with a vortec 350 come up with all 02 sensors, cat, and maf codes. He took it somewhere are was quoted well over $1000.

Started thinking about it and realized if the maf went bad the 02 sensors would try to adjust the A/F ratio up, and then the cat couldn't handle all of it and throw more codes. I put a new maf in and all was good. All the "other" expen$ive problems the shop wanted to fix went away. Odd how that happened with "professional" mechanics that work with OBD2 all the time

But I do realize that I don't work with OBD2 very often and I got very lucky on this one.

[chevymad]

When you work as a mechanic for a few years, you'll have jobs like that come in and you try to do the cheap fix for them. You replace just the maf say, clear the codes and send the customer away. Only to have some of them come back in a few weeks angry as hell cause the light come back on, and you fixed it just last month. They'll bitch and yell and want a freebie. It ends up being simpler just to change it all in the first place, and cheaper for the shop cause you don't end up doing the freebies.

[alloy]

I understand where you are coming from.

But..............this was a shop with all the computerized gear able to see readouts in real time, and it should have been very easy to see that the maf wasn't responding. I used a code reader at Schucks with no data streaming. I had to use good old fashioned brain power to diagnose the problem. As I said I got lucky, but with the fully equipped shop there should have been no luck involved at all in finding the problem in about 5 minutes.

In my mind it would have been better for them to replace the maf and make a few $$$ than turn the customer away with a $1000 estimate and a bad taste in his mouth.

[izcain]

Shops will also go by the milage as well as the code..... If the pickup has a ton of miles on it and it is throwing those codes then the O2's should be replaced anyways. The come backs can kill a shop.
In my shop I like to repair the problem, but then also relay to the customer that there is other issues apparent that should be taken care of to help it not happen again!

[alloy]

Again I see both your points. The pickup had around 28k on it, and it's been around 10k more now and no other problems.

In today's economy people can't spend that much $$$. In fact kid just got laid off, and if that were to happen again now it would be a choice of my 9 month old grand son eating or not eating. Yes he will get unemployment, but that takes about 3 weeks for his first check to arrive. I'm just glad I was able to help him find and repair the problem so quickly.