What does it take to fix my car?

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The Premium Auto Repair Specialists in Omaha, NE!

Diagnosing Today’s Vehicles

The challenge in working on today’s vehicles is growing due to not only the ability to get your hands in there and remove items for replacement or inspection but the knowledge of how the engineers program these engines, transmission, antilock brakes, etc. is always changing. Many times a simple complaint of “Can you see why my check engine light is on?” is a simple matter of having the software in one of the computers updated. This is very similar to installing a software patch or upgrade on your home computers operating system!

I have been diagnosing problems on cars and light trucks for some time now and the items used to check certain systems will vary depending upon what the complaint might be. Here is an simple explanation of what may be used on your vehicle and what it will tell us.

The Scan Tool

The scan tool is one of the most important tools used today. This is the tool that will let me see what the various computers are seeing from the many sensors on the engine and transmission. This tool will also be used to update your computers software if needed. This is usually the starting point of any engine performance complaint or computer controlled system operation complaint.

The Scanner to the far left is the General Motors and Saturn factory tool - the same tool the dealerships use! The scanner to the immediate left is a factory Ford and Mazda scan tool.

The Fuel Pressure Gauge

This tool can lead us to the end of the trail on a lot of complaints with the way the engine is running. The fuel pressure gauge is used to get the story on how well the fuel is supplied to the engine. Too little or even too much fuel can cause a handful of complaints. Each engine will have a specified pressure that is needed to be supplied to the engine along with the quantity of fuel. This gauge will give us the ability to test all this and verify if there fuel supply issue causing the complaint.

The Lab Scope

This little guy is my favorite tool! This is basically a voltage/ohm meter that will graph or draw a picture of what the voltage is really doing. This tools usefulness is only limited to the users creativeness. I will use this on every diagnostic problem to help verifying what is really going on. Many times the scan tool will have a value displayed that is incorrect and now we need to check and see what is the reason for the faulty data. The lab scope will be the final test on a lot problems. This tool has been called my best friend for the last 7 years!

Things can get a little hectic under the hood with all this equipment hooked up to the patient!

The Automotive ER

It takes all of the above to get the your vehicle repaired along with other items. The one item that cannot be left out is being able to get information on a particular vehicles system. There are many sources of information available to the technician. The problem with the information is the cost in most cases. These subscriptions to the needed information are very expensive. At Powers Automotive Services, Inc. We have many sources of electronic repair information. We use Mitchell and Alldata and have access to the same service information that the GM service centers have over the internet! We also have just recently purchased the factory information used by Ford technicians!