Junior

The growth of the Internet has changed the way many places do business and has certainly effected the automotive service industry as well. Much of Internet technology is good, allows information to be readily available, streamlines information and workflow. Before I came back to automotive service I spent 10 years working in web based software development, so I think all of this is a good thing. What I don't like is the business model that most automotive parts manufacturers have adopted. If I simply google most part numbers I get from local suppliers I can get them cheaper online through places like Amazon and Rockauto. There are a few serious offenders like Gates, Standard Motor, Dorman ect. Most times I can find these products significantly cheaper in terms of my cost than my stocking suppliers. Now here is the issue, I don't think that my price is to high, I think the Internet price is to low. I understand that there is value added to a local supplier. Parts are in stock, there are operational and carrying costs, all which add value and cost to the local supplier. What I don't like is that large manufacturers don't support this segment of their customer base. There should be minimum retail pricing that the manufacturer allows which should be no less than the jobber price recommended by the manufacturer, it would be great if it were something like 10% over jobber. This would protect supply chain and the aftermarket service shops while still allowing the DIY to buy off the Internet. Its a hard sell at times when we're making slim margins on parts but the customer looks online, sees a price and thinks we're screwing them. Case in point, TCK271 Gates T-belt kit, cost me $144, list is $362, Amazon sells this for $92 shipped! I sell to the customer for $217, the lowest I can go without slitting my wrists. How do you deal with this problem, how often do you run into it?

we are in the same boat. average brake job is at least $200, often more. Most of the time we replace the rotors, most rotors installed on vehicles have reached their service limit and can not be machined. Every brake job gets the caliper brackets disassembled and cleaned, book rate for labor for most cars is at least 1.4 hrs for a complete brake job. Thats what we charge (book rate) so you're looking at $120 for labor alone. We stock Wagner ThermoQuiet pads, we also have been using a lot of Raybestos pads from Carquest. We use rotors from carquest as we've seen them to be pretty high quality for the price point. We also use Centric rotors. On European makes we use different brands for different makes, usually Zimmerman or Sebro rotors and a variety of high quality pads from the importer we use. If price is an issue we will offer the economy Red pad setup from carquest. We have seen them to be high enough quality to be comfortable putting them on a car while being cheaper, they certainly don't last as long though.

This is why we sell "service" not oil changes. As an industry of service and repair shops we can keep an informed customer that trusts us to maintain their vehicle. They understand that the service we offer is complete and for this service they expect to pay more than a discount place. We encourage our customers to stop in for a checkup in between. Most of our customers know to call or stop in whenever a dashboard warning comes on. This comes from having good communication with the customer and earning their respect and trust. We have had many customers try out the discount route, almost always they come back. Usually after their vehicle has suffered unfortunately. Currently I am developing new software to keep in touch better with the customer and proactively maintain their vehicles. This will be done with predictive reporting based on previous visits and driving habits. Customer interaction will be done though SMS messaging and email based on customer preference and I'm even working on an Android app to link customer maintenance directly to our shop including customer self service as it comes to appointment making. We are putting in this effort because we see a significantly greater profit in maintenance than we do in most repairs. Plus with good maintenance you have a strong relationship that guarantees the repairs come to you. This is paramount in expanding and maintaining a profitable business level in what is becoming an increasingly competitive marketplace. We are in a developing industry and as a survivor in that industry we must continue to move forward and embrace both industry technology changes as well as changes in consumer behaviors. You can choose to innovate and differentiate yourself and your company or you can try to compete with the discount places and we all know who the winners and loosers are in that game.

I agree that there should be a safety inspection. Unsafe vehicles come into our shop every day and these cars should not be on the road endangering other motorists. The unfortunate problem with the state inspection system in NYS is that its seriously flawed. Many safety items are not covered specifically ball joints do not fail unless they are entirely separated, tires pass with 0.002" of tread and brakes do not fail unless they are contacting metal to metal, rusty rotors missing chunks don't fail unless they are cracked. The process as a whole is very inefficient also. The NYS VIP system is built on grossly overpriced very outdated technology. The machine you have to buy from the state is slow and has a very poor workflow design. This causes inspections to take far longer than they should. We get $21 for performing an inspection that if done correctly takes a solid half hour. From that we need to pay for the machine, pay for each time it connects and pay for the stickers. So we walk away with about $12 or so for that work, or about 28% of our regular hourly rate. We can not turn an inspection down if a customer requests one even if we know it will fail and they won't fix it and we are forced to pass cars that are unsafe. I think there should be a safety inspection program, but not like the one in NY.

In the market for a new A/C machine. Ours is old and after ten years of service life its time for a new one. Looking for something fully automatic and compact as space is a premium at our shop. What do you have, why do you like it or why do you hate it?

True for most manufacturers. Honda lists service intervals up to 150k, most manufacturers do the same or greater. I've yet to see one over 200 though. This is the kicker with extended service intervals. Small use of oil is normal and people should expect it. Most economy cars do not have oil level or quality sensors so without regular checks the oil light is the only way they know they're low, and we all know that's far to late. Down a quart in 3k might rarely happen but down a quart in 7.5k and up is almost expected especially on high mileage engines.

I totally agree, I'm trying to reform that segment of my business away from doing oil changes and into doing factory scheduled maintenance. Its a way to both differentiate and help the customer do what they are trying to do, maintain their vehicle. Plus to me its the only way to keep making a buck, no way I can compete with Walmarts and quick lube places. I don't want to play that game anyway.

On these cars check voltage output in ECU measuring blocks. I've seen a number of odd problems caused by voltage issues on VW/Audi cars and Benz's. A new regulator solves the problem. I often have it on the top of my list to check voltage and alternator output and ripple when diagnosing drive-ability or anything that stumps me at first. I do forget sometimes. Had a Chrysler in here the other day with erratic idle and instrument cluster quirks, luckily stumbled on the negative terminal being loose, a quick clean and tighten solved all the problems. Haven't stumbled upon this A/C problem yet but its that time of year now so I'll keep it in mind.

Cat problems on high end cars often end up being the use of low octane fuel in something requiring 91 octane or higher. I've been seeing this more often lately on Audi's quite a bit and a few Mercedes. The key is that the cat is often not bad, just not working. Its clogged up with a velvet fluff of carbon. If you put a good quality high octane fuel in and perform the Italian tune up the cats will get hot enough and blow out most of that carbon. If maintained with good fuel the codes never come back. Sometimes upstream o2s will need replacing as they are also clogged up. If they are bad you'll often see a slow response/aging code also. Bosch, BMW and in some cases VW/Audi recommend replacement of upstream o2s after 100k anyway so its an easy sell and helps fuel economy too in a lot of cases. On fitment issues with aftermarket cats, I'm done with Bosal, They're quality has gone in the crapper and they simply don't fit most cars. Hands down the most cat replacements we see are on Subarus. Bosal cats are a nightmare to fit on a subaru and they will always come back even if you get the "premium load" units. Last few units I put in were from CarQuest, I think were Goerlichs. Much better fitments, we'll see if they come back, oldest one is only in a few months or so now. Like others have said, most cat codes do not require cat replacement, when they do though, like others I have not found an after-market solution that I'm satisfied with.

Initial start of an engine after an oil change causes a period of low oil pressure that wears an engine. Most people don't pre-fill oil filters and on many cars you can't do it anyway due to mounting locations/positions. This period of time where the oil filter is being primed wears the engine more than normal as there is little to no oil pressure. Listen for it when you do your oil changes, you'll notice those few seconds of the cams running dry before it quiets down. So over-maintaining an engine is actually worse than correct maintenance. Notice that car and filter manufacturers have been moving to smaller filters in part to reduce this problem. On Brianp's comment, I agree you are correct if the manufacturer states an interval that short. It is rare now a days though.

Case in point on poor design. This morning I need to scan a car, I pickup my Verus and it has automatically started installing an update. It doesn't ask if you would like to install the update now or not, just starts installing it, forces you to exit the Verus diagnostic application and wait a half hour for it to finish. I don't have time to wait that half hour right now, I have a car in the bay that needs to be worked on. So I'm forced to grab another tool and use OBD generic to get into this car. There is no way that Snap-On got any feedback from anyone operating a shop when developing this tool. It is the most cumbersome thing I have to deal with getting through the day and the worst investment we have ever made. Almost $9k down the toilet.

We have had the Snap-On Verus for a year an a half now and I have to say that I don't recommend it. It has been an unstable platform since it was new. Our Verus was replaced twice by Snap-On. I have until recently been very patient with Snap-On tech about this tool. It was new when we got it, we were the first in the area to have one. Some 6 months ago they redesigned the entire software platform and although the interface is easier on the eyes and easier to touch reliability went down significantly as well as performance. I have gone through a dozen contact with Snap-On support and even had a dialog with their development team. They talked to me about Beta testing due to the feed back I supplied. Unfortunately though I supplied detailed information about countless bugs and how to reproduce them I got little response from Snap-On and a year after much of this dialog started most of the bugs are still not fixed. We are shopping for another scan tool and will never purchase from Snap-On diagnostics again. The good about the tool Its ability to retain information on every car you scan for an unlimited period of time. If a customer returns you can pull them up and add to that record. The search function here has been buggy depending on the release and there was a bug that would delete data when you pulled up a previous car but its been fixed. It has a very broad range of supported vehicles and supports pre-obdII stuff. We have the full Asian and Euro package. Many of the new tools we are looking at have no support for pre OBDII diag. Our next solution will probably include an MT2500 for these old cars. Has a scope/Multimeter built in (also see the bad) The scope has many built in component tests to automatically setup the scope for what you're testing. Its pretty broad and covers most sensors that are out there. If its not covered though you might have trouble. Troubleshooter, Snap-On boasts this as a great tool. I've rarely found it helpful but other guys in my shop like it. The Bad Very poor performance. Boot time is very slow, power management is poor and the Snap-On software does not react well to the tool going into suspend or hibernate (Runs on Windows XP). Unreliable, the tool will crash often, it has to be restarted often also. Keys, the key setup is very cumbersome. For example I had to scan a Dodge stratus this morning and had to change keys three times just to log into the engine ECU. Scope, the scope is often very slow. If you want to see a waveform respond to an event it may take several seconds for the scope to respond (it is setup correctly and I had a Snap-On tech here a whole day to try and prove me wrong, they replaced the unit saying it was defective and it has the same problem) Scope, configuration of triggers is very limited. If the scope does not auto-detect the timing of the waveform you're pretty much SOL. I've had simple injector waveforms not come up because it it could not detect the trigger timing. Pull out my old BluePoint scope (which I would use if I could buy a new battery for it) Support, Snap-On has a terrible support system, their level one techs can't help with anything, go up the ladder and you get people who are experienced but can not offer answers. Many of the problems I have (I see one almost every day) must exist to everyone using the tool but most Snap-On techs will act like you are crazy and they never saw that problem before. I had one contact that was truthful to me about the issues I was having and was the only worth while feedback I got from Snap-On tech. He's not my contact anymore and now I get no response at all. That's my $0.02 your mileage may vary

For those of you who follow the manufaturers recommended service intervals how do you manage the information? We follow the OE service intervals for all later model cars (2000ish and newer) We recommend synthetic for all extended service interval cars that don't require it (over 5k intervals). We are looking for better ways to manage this information as its so model specific. We are also looking at better ways to help draw in new business by selling missed maintenance items. We're in the process of evaluating new shop management software and are looking for something with tools that will help us do this. How do you do it? thanks

We are just getting back into looking at software after a brief hiatus. I took a look at Mitchell and found it useless. The biggest problem was the schedule. Its simply a list of text lines at times. You can't assign jobs or time blocks, techs or bays. This is one of the things I need and I don't see how a busy shop can do without. Use of maintenance information from Mitchell was terrible. The software lacked most of the factory maintenance items and had incorrect maintenance intervals on a handful of cars I looked up. That information came with Mitchell repair. If you don't have the full repair information system you still get the parts and labor guide and maintenance guide with Mitchell manager. The software does not allow you to enter maintenance intervals per vehicle so if you';re trying to use CRM tools to drum up maintenance business its useless. It also can not manage estimates. Estimates created appear in your current WIP, so if you do an estimate, and the customer doesn't do the job, you have to delete that estimate and loose a record or ever quoting it. The alternative is keep it and need to see that estimate within all your current open work. This would easily be hundreds of open estimates and simply not manageable. The workflow of the software was relatively poor also. I does not follow the natural progression of work through the shop and is not customizable in any way. I saw no added benefit to Mitchell than I already see with my current management program MotorWare, which is already bought and paid for and outdated. On another note, we are taking a second look at R.O. writer next week with an in house demo. I am still trying to be optimistic about Pace's Yes management, but they can not get their online demo to work properly and in the last week I have started to receive poor correspondence from my salesperson (read none). We'll see how that goes.

Same here, I push recycling pretty hard. We recover almost everything and recycle it. Wire scraps, unusable wheel weights, bolts, rotors and other scrap metal. Every few weeks I make a trip to the recycling center and make a few hundred extra bucks with whatever bin is full at the time. Well worth it. I'm going to watch this thread, I'm also interested in what works best. I looked into this a year ago to try to be in front of the trend and pitch the "green" angle but no local suppliers carried anything but lead stuff. I don't want to deal with the lead anyway. Sick of even yelling at techs who handle the weights without gloves on.

I just took a look at a Bosch KTS 340 yesterday. The tools looks pretty good, european coverage is tremendously better than the Verus, Asian coverage looks very good too. The rep said that they are a little behind in GM coverage, primarily since they also sell the Tech2 specifically for GM. I guess the GM software (old vetronix) iis being merged with the Bosch software on the KTS line over the next year, at least that was the salesman's pitch. Is anyone using the Bosch tools. It runs linux and is significantly faster than the verus. I didn't have time to get into that many cars. We are thinking about selling our Verus and might get into this tool or another like it. The Verus is just to many headaches, especially for the ultimate premium price tag we spent on it.

We use a Snap-On Verus with every option, topped around $8k for it and I would not recommend it at all. The development of snap-on electrical tools and the feedback to their development staff is terrible. We are now on our 3rd brand new unit, a dozen or so software updates and the tool still does not work as it should. There are lots of bugs in the way the program works and snap-on support has no way of getting these problems fixed when you call the tech line to report them. I have gone through a handful of contacts with snap-on diagnostics all of them give terrible feedback. The new update to 10.4 software brought countless bugs. The system simply isn't stable and in many cases simply does not work. The scope leaves much to be desired too. Sampling rate and display response of the scope is terribly slow. Options to configure triggers often do not work. I've had issues where I couldn't do something simple like scope an injector. Even had the snap-on tech guy here and left him with the car for a whole afternoon and they couldn't get it to work. I pulled out my old bluepoint scope on an extension cord (batteries are no longer available or I'd still use this thing) and had a waveform in less than a minute. We also bought the low amp probe for the Verus, it doesn't work at all. It will read up to a half amp draw if you just wave the thing around in the air. Still waiting on a replacement for that, its been a month. The tool is far to expensive for its shortcomings and as the main tool used in our shop it can grind work to a stop when it fails which is at least weekly. We do a lot of VW/Audi work and I have a Ross-Tech for that. I also have the German package for the Verus but it will crash every time you're in expert mode, making it entirely useless. Luckily I can use the Ross-Tech as a OBD-II generic tool which helps a lot as a backup to the Verus. We are unfortunately already heavily invested in snap-on diagnostic equipment but will never buy anything from them again. The hand tools I think are generally worth the premium price but the diagnostic tools are not nearly worth the money and simply do not work as advertised.

Our long term goal after a management software upgrade is to get something like this My link and a bluetooth scanner, that way we can check customers in out in the lot and take customer complaints and vehicle info at the car.

Mobil 1 5w-30 meets the spec. This is really nothing new, European manufacturers have been doing this for better than a decade. With extended service intervals upwards of 15k miles synthetics are required. People need to realize that an oil change is not an oil change, there is regular maintenance at regular intervals and every 7,500, 10k or 15k, whatever (per manufacturer spec) is going to cost a hundred bucks or so. Service shops need to stop pitching 3k mile oil changes because its not only incorrect, its a waste of time, money and will theoretically wear engines out faster by over maintaining them.

We use the factory recommended service interval for all later model cars (roughly 2000 and newer). If a manufacturer states an extended service interval (over 5,000) and does note require synthetic we recommend synthetic. We only use oils that comply with the manufacturer spec. We stock mobil oils in both conventional and synthetic. Older cars we do 3k on conventional, 5k on synthetic.

Joe, the kits you have, do they include the stems on sensors where the stem is removable? I've been looking for a kit that includes these, talked to my carquest rep about it too. I only seem to find kits that have the seals and nuts, 500pcs kits that are mostly valve cores and caps. We leave the sensors alone unless there is a problem. Same with valve stems, we check them, replace cracked or rotted looking ones, thats it. Charge for them when we need to replace them. On another TPMS note through, what do you charge for resetting the TPMS system if needed. On some cars it needs to be reset just for tire rotations. Most shops around here seem to charge straight labor, usualy a half hour. What's the rest of the world do?

I evaluated MaxxTraxx, I found it lacking in many categories and simply not refined enough to run an even moderately busy shop. Work management and work flow is poorly designed and almost every feature I asked about was "in development" R.O. Writer seems like a very capable program. It is significantly more expensive than most everything else available. It also has some shortfalls specifically in the schedule, though it is very usable it has some basic design flaws that are surprising based on how well refined the rest of the software is. R.O. Writer's integration with Activant is flawless and by far the best out of any we've evaluated to date.

Mitchel demo is on the way so we'll be looking at that soon. Does anyone else here run the Pace Software Yes package? It seems very capable and I really like the workflow but the demo just seems to always be broken. I really need to know if this is just a problem with their demo setup or is this is systemic in their reliability. If the software would work as designed it would be the best fit that I've seen so far, unfortunately it simply doesn't work as we've seen it.

We are in the process of evaluating shop management software right now. We currently have a product called Motorware. It has served us relatively well for nearly the last 10 years but has not kept up with our needs. We need a much more robust schedule as we book work out over a week, sometimes two now. We also are looking at new ways to manage and sell regular maintenance based on manufacturer's recommended maintenance schedules. Other needs include better ways to contact and connect with our customers. Email and SMS messaging are some of the tools we are looking to add. We'd really like to add some customer self service tools also but it seems no one in the Automotive management software sector is operating on this level yet. I came here a year ago after working in Technology management for 10 years so I's still a little surprised how archaic most software I've seen is compared to where technology is in other business sectors. We have reviewed a few different packages and right now see only two that might meet our needs. R.O. Writer, the most expensive of what we've looked at is very well put together and the people I've spoken with there are both well versed in automotive shop management as well as what software can do and should do in a business operation. This software lacks a little in a few spots, mostly the schedule. There are not as many ways to manage the work flow and it loads into the shop. No way to manage parts on order for jobs due in the future. Total visibility to the workload on the shop is limited. It does support custom report writing through crystal reports, so I can fix most of this, but for a software that's both expensive (compared to others in the sector) and advanced in many other respects I find this a significant short sight. Pace software's Yes is the other that may fit our needs. The schedule in this software is the best I've seen to date. It is very robust as far as managing total work as its loaded into the shop. You can easily sort through jobs in natural states as you would see them in your shop environment (waiting for parts, needs diagnostics, waiting on customer approval, ect) The visual layout and interface could be improved but is very functional. I have been having some trouble through their demo with integration through activant. It does not seem to be very well implemented. My sales rep thinks something is wrong with their demo install and is working on fixing it now. This has left me a little weary about the stability of the software. Both packages offer pretty intelligent kitting, integration with online ordering systems like wrenchhead, carquest, worldpac. They both integrate with Alldata, which we use. Packages that we eliminated from possible candidates. Gem Car Invomax Scott software Maxtraxx Winworks TABS We use Alldata and I have heard that the Mitchell program does not integrate with Alldata. If this is not true if someone could chime in. Are there other packages people are using that I should look at?