N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) | Technical matters | Back Room Forum

Sat 20 Jun 2015 04:13

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - mattk1

Hi guys,

I'm new to the forum so first off I would like to say hello to you all :)

I was wondering if there are any professional auto electricians on here who may be able to give me some career advice?

I completed my apprenticeship with Nissan a little while ago but have been travelling for about year and as it's almost time to go back to normality, I've made a decision that I would like to become an auto electrician since this is the area that most interests me.

I am unsure of the best route into this specific area and was hoping to hear from anyone in this line of work who may be able to offer some advice :)

Cheers!

Matt

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Sat 20 Jun 2015 18:11

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - elekie&a/c doctor

It would be ideal to get back into a main dealer to benefit from their training programmes and technical support.However modern day dealerships do not tend to employ a stand alone auto sparks.You could try a local auto electrical specialist workshop(unfortunately pretty rare these days)and supplement any training with courses from Bosch,Delphi etc.As you are aware ,modern cars can be a total nightmare on the electronics side and present a real challenge to fix.Good technical training is a must.Best of luck.

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Sat 20 Jun 2015 18:53

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - injection doc

I would agree with the above comments.

The Motor trade needs skilled and experinced elctricians and in general the trade lack this range of expertise. Partly due to the fact that most garages will not fund training ! because customers dont want to pay for the seriously experinced to work on their cars !!!!!!!!!!

You will need quite some years of experince at diagnosing faults and understanding can systems and using scopes. Scope diagnostics is a must these days and once again most garages lack .

In general repairs are carried out as swapnostics ! or what I call guessnostics or googlenostics !! or even worse down the pubnostics !

If garages had seriously experinced staff working in them most repair jobs would be a first time fix and mostly same or next day.

As a diagnostics specialist and technical trainer I see many vehicles where repairs have been atempted over a period of 3-6 weeks and the same faults excists when I turn up !

Grab a few years working as a sparky in a diagnostics centre or auto electrical specialist and take as many courses as possible. Bosch & Delphi both very good and scope courses.

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Mon 22 Jun 2015 09:17

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - Railroad.

I agree with the above replies too. Many independent garages these days have very little or no product training or access to factory technical information. Many rely entirely on what they figure out for themselves. Whilst this may enable them to get by it is not the same as having the right knowledge and support. Technology for cars is advancing all the time, and sadly even the best of them aren't keeping up with it. If your mind is set on what you want to do then you could consider a career in plant machinery as well as motor vehicles. Plant operators are much more forgiving than car owners, many of whom want perfection for nothing, and will quite happily complain if they don't get it. In the longer term I'd consider working for yourself, but in the meantime I'd look towards a franchised dealer rather than an independent, mainly because of the training you'll receive. Apply to the motoring organisations too. AA and RAC patrols' training is regular and ongoing.

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Mon 22 Jun 2015 09:20

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - mattk1

Excellent advice here thank you! My research starts right now and I will report back on anything I can find out which may help anyone considering going the same road as me :-)

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Mon 22 Jun 2015 09:18

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - mattk1

Hi there,

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me with some helpful advice :-)

You're right about modern day dealerships not employing the stand alone auto sparks, and that's what concerns me to be honest. I feel in order to become a real expert in this field I need to be doing it day in day out and not being distracted by a quick service here and there. Wishful thinking I know but I'm willing to do any courses off my own back and get ahead as far as possible.

I was very foryunate during my apprenticeship to be paired up with one of the top Nissan master techs and he really knew his stuff when it came to electrical diagnosis. This has strengthened my desire to become an expert too.

I will research any Bosch or Delphi courses in the UK that I may be able to complete :-)

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Mon 22 Jun 2015 09:41

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - Railroad.

When I left school I went to work in a Vauxhall dealership. I completed my four year apprenticeship there and stayed for 15 years in total. During that time I became very familiar with Vauxhall cars and light commercials. We had an all singing and all dancing diagnostic machine which was state of the art at the time, as well as Tech 1. We also had a multimeter which I knew how to use, or so I thought.

At the age of 31 I joined the AA as a patrol. After a week of local training, and a further week of being out on the road with another patrol I went to the AA training college near Nottingham for my recruit induction course. It was there that I realised how much I didn't know. Also during that course I realised I didn't know how to use a multimeter at all. That course was like a huge fog around me that just cleared.

My point is that training is essential. And the right training is even more essential. Electrical principles aren't that difficult to understand, but a good sound knowledge of the basics is where you need to start. Learn now to use a multimeter properly, and develop an understanding of wha it's telling you. The meter doesn't know how to lie. Once you are confident in using it you'll realise that more sophisticated diagnostic equipment is based on the same principles.

Good luck with whatever you do and wherever you go. Please keep us posted.

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Mon 22 Jun 2015 12:22

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - Wackyracer

You could do alot worse than to attend a college and to do a proper electronics course, there you will learn what components do, how typical circuits work, how to fault find to component level, how to use test equipment properly and how to measure waveforms etc.

Once you know that, You'll find working on cars electronics quite easy.

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Thu 25 Jun 2015 08:57

N/A - Any auto electricians on here? Career advice :) - mattk1

Hi guys,

I am so very grateful of the replies on here, thank you so much!

I feel I am going the right track in persuing electrical diagnosis training and if I can get very good at it I think it will prove to be a valuable skill to have.

One idea I had for a career path to try and follow;

When I worked at the dealership and we had issues with new model vehicles that were proving very difficult to solve and the customer was becoming irate, Nissan would send a tech support guy out to us and he would arrive with specific testing equipment and be assigned to help solve that problem.

I always remember thinking to myself how much I would enjoy that job, I guess his job title would have been field service troubleshooter?

That is another line of enquiry I'm going to follow and report back what I can find out :-)

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