Sigma-galant.com

I do all the general maintenance and parts replacement on the Sigma myself. But for bigger jobs where I do have the means or the space to do the work I would call on one of my mates. Problem is everyone I know is retired or retiring. My best mate is a retired machanic and now does not like getting his hands dirty, the guy that recently fitted a gearbox and assosciated bits to my Sigma has recently retired and sold off all of his workshop equipment. Another mate was the local Repco repairer for 25 years, he has since sold the business and moved on. All of these guys charged me "Mates Rates' or better still, the barter system. Fortunately my "Repco" mate who had done my rego inspections ever since I got the Sigma put in a good word for me with the new owner, so rego's are not an issue. But from now on anything major will mean workshop rates which I should imagine would be up around $100 per hour by now

Haha, that's a shame. I have quite the opposite issue! Being 22 all of my friends don't understand why I've got a thing for my sigma. They don't do much work at all because they're used to having cars that are 'too complicated' to do anything with. Sad.

The biggest issue I can see with older people retiring is loosing the knowledge of repairing older cars. Take an older car with a misfire to an old mechanic and he'll be like "It sounds like the points need to be set" and the jobs done in a few minutes. Take it to a young guy thats barely out of TAFE and he'll spend half a day trying to figure out where to plug in his OBD scanner so he can get the error codes and Google how to fix it.

CAUTION

rant in progress....


:begin-rant:
Knowledge is life (my old High School motto)..

Soo much knowledge and skill is lost with each generation. The main culprit today is the throw away society we now live in.

100 years ago, if something broke you HAD to fix it yourself or go without.
50 years ago (before my time, just) if something broke, first you would try to figure out a way to fix it or get it repaired, if that wasn't possible, you would salvage as much as possible from the item and then see if you can use them for some other project.
Now you just throw it away, dive onto Ebay and buy another one, but cheaper.

Knowledge isn't skill, but repeated application and refinement of that knowledge is.

:end-rant:


Cheers..

C_Fernance wrote:The biggest issue I can see with older people retiring is loosing the knowledge of repairing older cars. Take an older car with a misfire to an old mechanic and he'll be like "It sounds like the points need to be set" and the jobs done in a few minutes. Take it to a young guy thats barely out of TAFE and he'll spend half a day trying to figure out where to plug in his OBD scanner so he can get the error codes and Google how to fix it.

I can remember taking the Sigma to the local Ultratune service centre ( before I figured out how the CD175 worked ) and the owner told me that none of his guys know anything about carburettors. And that was in 2002

C_Fernance wrote:The biggest issue I can see with older people retiring is loosing the knowledge of repairing older cars. Take an older car with a misfire to an old mechanic and he'll be like "It sounds like the points need to be set" and the jobs done in a few minutes. Take it to a young guy thats barely out of TAFE and he'll spend half a day trying to figure out where to plug in his OBD scanner so he can get the error codes and Google how to fix it.

Chris..ever used Skinners at Woodberry ?? I should imagine Bero/Woodberry area would have it's fair share of older cars, so they probably have mechanics , rather that "technicians"

You're getting old when you go to Supa-Cheap looking for a Points file and no-one knows what it is
Ask me how I know :-/
T

mate, the staff at SuperCheap Auto are younger than the computers they do price checks on


Doesnt make u old at all

My mate has a 1998 1.8 EFI Lancer wagon.
He's taken it to 13 different mechanics/auto electricians etc.. None of them could fix his starting problem.
Klosters had it for 3 days and said they couldn't find anything wrong with it, when he got it back still had the same problem.
On their advice he was slowly going through replacing everything. All hit and miss, they never solved it.

I spent 1 night with it, worked out it was the ISC Idle Control Solenoid.
He replaced it with a secondhand unit, it fixed it for a couple of weeks then same problem again (he couldn't afford a new one from Mitsubishi @ over $300)
He then put a new one in I found on ebay for $160 deleivered.
Guess who's car is fixed?

Sad thing is, I am a house painter by trade. Why couldn't the Mechanics and Auto electricians work out what's wrong?

Can't they diagnose anything?

Dave...

If the scan tool doesnt tell them whats wrong, 90% of 'mechanics' cant fix it. I will also admit, as a mechanic by trade i knew very little about the niches of an older carby car and a few times had to take it to my old boss as i had no idea how to do the fiddly things. Problem is a lot of cars today are getting so technical that it has to be brought back to the specialist at the dealer (i think ford have a car thats just release atm that not even some ford dealers are equipped to properly repair/service it) or have someone who has experience on them. Apprenticeships today only touch on the basic fundamentals of carby cars and even then its answering questions in a book that the trainer helps you answer because they just want their paycheck as well

Scan tools display errors...not diagnose problems..... That's y they rarely 'fix' a problem these days