It's an interesting question - I think there are a few ways of looking at it, and as such, my post has become a bit of an essay - sorry!
First, I don't think there ever was a golden age where workshops were filled with wise and skilled mechanics who were seldom wrong. Most of the workshops I've seen have had only one or two people who could reliably go beyond routine servicing tasks.
What made things easier in days gone by was that if a mechanic got it wrong, and fitted a new condensor instead of a new set of points, it didn't break the bank. If today, a mechanic fits an ECU which has been wrongly diagnosed, the customer typically feels the pain.
From the point of view of garage owners, diagnosis and specialist repairs aren't actually a big earner - they're usually more trouble than they are worth. During the time it takes to do a proper diagnosis and repair, a couple of routine services with brake parts have been missed.
The services are very low risk, and very high profit jobs. While undoubtedly more complex, routine servicing of cars has never been simpler. There is no carburettor to adjust, no points to re-set, and timing to re-adjust. It's almost the case that you need to try to get it wrong.
The diagnosis jobs however are high risk - the chance of comeback and customer complaint is high. The costs to equip, train and inform the mechanics are simply eye watering. After you have made this investment in training, as there's a high staff turnover rate, odds are on your mechanic will just take his skills to the garage down the road who offer him a few pounds more per hour. In other words, even the decision to train someone is fraught with risk - there's no guarantee your trained mechanic will actually be able to diagnose faults - the "all the gear, no idea" syndrome mentioned above.
More fundamentally, one of the vital ingredients in diagnosis is the temperament of the mechanic. It's an area where I fall down, I'm nowhere near methodical enough to be good at it. If you take the number of mechanics coming into the trade, probaly half of them will make good mechanics, and less than 10% of these will be any good at diagnosis, will be worth spending time and money in training.
Going one step further, when you consider the pay, conditions, training oopportunities, and regard in which mechanics are held by the public, most potenital entrants who are any good will choose a different career. The mechanics who have the knowledge, intelligence and perseverance to sit down with the technical books when a new system comes out are few and far between.
A shocking proportion of the trade does its diagnosis via the method of poke & hope. This is along the lines of the last car we had that did this kind of fault needed a new XYZ fitting - therefore any car showing these symtoms needs an XYZ. This method may work more times than not, but it will allways let you down sooner or later.
One problem which is growing is that modern car systems are now interlinked by various bus systems - you can almost think of them as a car wide network. More often than not, most independants actually cause more harm than good when replacing or recoding ECUs. While I don't usually recommend people go to a dealer, there aren't many independants who I would trust with such an interconnected system. My ex-colleague now tells me this is his bete noir - he spends longer undoing the damage done than in fixing the actual fault when these garages finally give up and trailer the car to him.
The clever people in the garage trade were those who cherry picked the low skill, high profit work. Batteries, tyres, exhausts, shock absorbers, routine servicing. They know they can make good money, without employing skilled people, without taking much risk of comeback.
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terranaut
The answer to your interesting question will have to wait until tomorrow as I don't have time to do it justice tonight.
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I don't think they've gone for good -- there have always been good and bad mechanics, or more accurately, those that are interested in how the car works, learn about a specific model's nuances, and how to get the best out of it ... and those that treat it as a job and no more.
An example: in the early 70s, Triumph Stags got a terrible rep for unreliability, but a high proportion of those incidences were because many mechanics and owners didn't realise that the engine needed anti-freeze in it all year round, to stop the water passages furring up. These ignoramuses simply did "what they've always done" with cars, and used tap water for coolant in the summer, then wondered why cylinder heads warp and gaskets blow.
30 years later, even after the VAG PD engines had been around for a couple of years, some VW / Audi / Seat / Skoda garages were happily doing oil changes on PD-engined cars with non-PD oil, and blithely reassuring owners that the oil they used was 'fine'.
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Excellent points made in the posts above - there's not a lot more I could add.
Extending the discussion a little though, leads me to reinforce my belief that the main dealer business model cannot be made to work in the interests of the customer - even if some altruistic vehicle maker actually wanted it to. The overheads associated with the glass palace dealers just don't make this possible.
So, what happens? We have evidence on this site of vehicle makers excluding such items as brakes from vehicle warranties - possibly a fair point but, what do the dealers do? At any opportunity, new pads and disks are "required" within warranty. The costs associated with this scam are of course outrageous. In fact, a new vehicle which requires new pads which are not worn to the backings is most unlikely to require new disks. Similar practices are adopted in other areas of the vehicle.
It seems to me that VAG and Toyota are amongst the worst offenders here. I run my own (non motoring related) business and see lots of new and newish vehicles each week. Rear disks and pads seem to be a favourite.
I have a suspicion that the VAG UK 4 year/60k timing belt change rule for PD diesels is a similar scam. I am awaiting confirmation, but I believe the 4 year rule is unique to the UK - a brainchild of Milton Keynes. It's quite cleverly pitched, because the 60k won't unduly affect the fleet markets as it's not a lot different to other makers' products, but the 4 year rule will suck in loads of private owners who will feel obliged, on a newish vehicke, to patronise their dealer.
I'll do some more research on this and report back.
659.
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@659, I remember from lurking on TDIClub that the timing belt interval for PD diesels in the US is 100K miles (not sure what the time / year interval is, however).
I'm sure the manufacturer / dealer response would be that this requires a "special" belt kit.
But even if a special kit IS needed, why don't we have that special kit in Europe, to save the (significant) labour charges from having to do the job nearly twice as often?
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Some anecdotal evidence at these links: relating to 100K cambelt intervals on a 2004 Beetle Tdi and a Passat Tdi
forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=201500&highlig...t
forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=197299&highlig...t
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Thanks, Craig. I don't believe for a minute that the belts are any different - this would be madness. The Americans only got the PD engine in '04 so there has been plenty of operating experience in Europe prior to this.
I'm going to have a go at e-mailing a VAG dealer in Holland and see what comes back. VAG might get away with this in the UK, but the countries on the mainland of Europe are too well connected for a scam like this (if it is a scam) to work.
659.
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I still have a TDI club log in so I will post the specific question over there, on PD belt change intervals.
Even if the belts ARE different, and cost 2x more than a "normal belt", that would only add a tiny % to the total cost of the job.
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Confirmed by a couple of senior posters on TDI Club -- VW USA give 100K miles as the change interval for PD engined cars.
Hmmm.
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Am I right in thinking that in USA, if the change interval for a timing belt is given as 100k and it fails before this time then the manufacturer is responsible for the repairs?
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That would be really helpful - the more angles from different sources I can get on this one the better. If it is a Milton Keynes scam, it has cost a lot of people a lot of money.
There is a pattern emerging here - brakes, cambelts, recalls - all scare tactics. My PD was the subject of a recall for leaking tandem pumps, but (as I found on the Internet) only pumps from one supplier (LUK). VAG M-K and the local dealer flatly refused to tell me which make of pump was affected (mine is a Bosch) stating that cars had to be "brought in" for checking. I wonder what other faults they would have "found" or caused. In any event, it would have been a complete waste of my time.
The icing on the cake for me was that the recall was issued by post when the car was 1 month out of warranty - although the recall was known about since '04. Sharp practice, I think.
Let's hope the Internet defeats this kind of trading.
659.
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I've raised the point about car maintenance differences between countries before. I suspect that the manufacturers know what they can get away with in certain territories and set their schedules accordingly.
If you check the US maintenance schedules for VAG vehicles, they are completely different to the UK for essentially the same vehicle. They make no mention of 'long life' servicing. In the US a 2000 1.8t Passat requires new oil every 5k. It was relaxed in 2006 so that a Passat requires new oil at 5k, 10k and then every 10k. (Mind you, some of the US forums suggest that an oil change later than every 3000 miles is foolhardy in the extreme.)
Similarly for timing belts, a US 2000 Passat belt should be changed at 80k with no mention of a 4 year rule. A US 2005 Passat TDi belt should be inspected at 80k and changed at 100k.
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@PeterRed, it is unusual that in the US, regular oil drops are an industry in themselves, with lube shops all over. Perhaps the oil service schedules in the US reflect this?
So they get stung for regular oil changes, and we get stung for more frequent cambelt jobs ....
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