{"id":1654,"date":"2016-12-24T22:21:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-24T22:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/11654\/auto-repair-the-top-ten-mistakes-made-by-your-mechanic"},"modified":"2016-12-24T22:21:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-24T22:21:54","slug":"auto-repair-the-top-ten-mistakes-made-by-your-mechanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/11654\/auto-repair-the-top-ten-mistakes-made-by-your-mechanic","title":{"rendered":"Auto Repair: The Top Ten Mistakes Made by Your Mechanic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Number One<\/b>: <i>Not confirming the concern<\/i>.  Confirming a repair concern is a basic diagnostic principle frequently overlooked.  To fix a problem, the first thing one must do is recognize it.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Two<\/b>: <i>Insufficient Road Testing<\/i>.  The importance of a thorough road test (even for an oil change) is well documented in automotive training manuals.  Yet, many technicians consider driving the vehicle into the shop good enough.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Three<\/b>: <i>Misdiagnosing<\/i>.  For the above reasons and a multitude of others, your vehicle is misdiagnosed <i>more often than not<\/i>.  Mechanics will spend hours chasing the wrong problem, wasting <i>your<\/i> time and money.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Four<\/b>: <i>Throwing parts at a problem<\/i>.  To compensate for lack of skills, mechanics often just throw parts at the problem in the hope of getting lucky.  It&#8217;s common to hear mechanics say:<\/p>\n<p><i>I replaced this, this, this, and that, and the problem&#8217;s still not fixed<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>This goes right back to mistake number one: confirm the problem with <u>diagnostics<\/u>, <i>then<\/i> proceed.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Five<\/b>: <i>Not addressing primary concerns first<\/i>. Technicians often spend an inordinate amount of time looking for easy sells that will fatten their paychecks.  There&#8217;s nothing wrong with this provided there&#8217;s no charge for the inspection, it doesn&#8217;t conflict with your time, and the upsell suggestions are valid (they&#8217;re frequently not).  However, this type of free inspection and the subsequent upselling too often overshadows the primary concern.  <i>So&#8230;what&#8217;s wrong with my car?<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Number Six<\/b>: <i>Overconfidence<\/i>.  Too often unqualified technicians get in over their heads.  Rather than defer to a more experienced technician or facility, they often keep going and do more harm.  How&#8217;s it go&#8230;<i>The road to hell is paved with good intentions?<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Number Seven<\/b>: <i>Taking shortcuts<\/i>.  In the ongoing effort to beat the clock, technicians will create a host of problems: breaking parts, snapping bolts, short circuiting sensitive electronics.  Refer to <i><b>Auto Repair: How Can They Screw Up an Oil Change<\/b><\/i> @ RepairTrust.com or EzineArticles.com for a great discussion.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Eight<\/b>: <i>Poor Repairs<\/i>.  Whether through incompetence or laziness, mechanics frequently don&#8217;t do repairs correctly.  It&#8217;s often sloppy work.  Forgotten bolts, parts not lined up correctly, or components not re-installed properly are common.  It gets worse with computer repairs: incorrect software programming, coding, and resynchronization protocols are just a few.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Nine<\/b>: <i>Not confirming repairs<\/i>.  After a repair it&#8217;s important to re-check to ensure that the problem is indeed fixed.  Too often parts are thrown in and the car is pulled out only to pull in another victim.<\/p>\n<p><b>Number Ten<\/b>: <i>Making a mess<\/i>.  If the above nine mistakes weren&#8217;t bad enough, there are now greasy fingerprints on the hood and steering wheel, and two big greasy boot marks on the carpet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Number One: Not confirming the concern. Confirming a repair concern is a basic diagnostic principle frequently overlooked. To fix a problem, the first thing one must do is recognize it. Number Two: Insufficient Road Testing. The importance of a thorough road test (even for an oil change) is well documented in automotive training manuals. Yet, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[111,855,82,1165,287],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfeatured.com\/automotive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}