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On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy goes over an oldie-but-a-goodie with his 10 thesis on automotive diagnosis. With modern automobiles becoming more and more complex, checking batteries (especially when there are tons of weird or seemingly unrelated problems) is always a good Bet. Things like Visual Inspections and Scanning the vehicle for faults seem to be a given, but can be complicated when an advisor is diagnosing from the chair. Any time that you have access to a vehicles repair history or CarFax report is a good thing, especially when they are in for the fourth time in a month for the same problem and hoping that somehow that problem has gotten cheaper to fix — which is hasn’t, it never has, and that isn’t how this works! 

Also Uncle Jimmy talks about the best tasting parts of a wiring harness (for a mouse) and does his best Joe Cocker impression while impersonating customers. 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy outlines all of the ways that flat rate technicians lose time and money to the inefficiencies of the dealership system itself. Support staff and Service Advisors are key culprits, between not separating items on repair orders, repair orders that are poorly written or feature hand written add-ons, and not going over cars to check and see what else is wrong with them such as check engine lights. This problem is massively amplified with porters and lot personelle when they do not follow proper procedures such as putting the car in numbered parking spots and not hanging identifying hang tags. When you start adding it all up, there is a lot of this going on in any shop that utilizes the flat-rate system, and it doesn’t cost the dealership a nickel! There are also tons of things that the technician is expected to do for free, such as airing up the tires, “complementary" inspections , checking and filling fluids and again — they cost you time, which in this system is costing you money. Also major time wasters; the systems themselves such as internal, OEM, and third party software  even when they work right! Bottom line the best system that a shop can have to be fair and equitable to the talent that keeps that shop making money is a hybrid that features salary with production bonuses — and that might just fix the tech shortage overall! 

Also, Uncle Jimmy completely forgets about the Ford Explorer Firestone Tire Scandal and talks about his favorite secret societies. 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this weeks episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy talks about the nature of customers. No one likes having to pay for their car to be fixed, except some of weirdo’s who can tell when we are running the right gas or not. No, most customers will actively chafe when we recommend repairs to their vehicle, no matter how badly they are needed! This becomes compounded when you do a video explaining what is wrong with their vehicle and the service advisor fails to mention a single recommendation from that video and the customer walks out the door with tires that are showing cords or an oil leak that rivals the Exxon-Valdez. Video however is they key to breaking this down, and with coming improvements to Video MPI and the contextualization and AI integrations that we are going to see in their next iterations, the facts might just turn the tides on these unreasonable people.  What is the most unreasonable customer that you have experienced - let us know over on Facebook! 
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy talks Rez Gas. 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this weeks episode of Grease the wheels, Uncle Jimmy dreams of electric sheep - er, service advisors! Ai is filtering it’s way into dealerships more and more. Some of the immediate casualties of this are going to be in sales, as a well put together data set and website are coming straight for the heads of your underperforming sales people. Getting it into the service department will also completely cull the industry of underperforming service advisors, because an AI will never NOT ask for the sale (which has become a huge problem in some shops given the metrics that we are looking at. However, AI is a LOOOONG way off of being able to fix cars, even if they can sometimes tell you if you need tires. Pairing AI with Video Multi-Point Inspections is going to be an absolute game changer in all of the best ways, and we cannot wait to see how gets it to market first! 
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy prophesies the ultimate AI Sales Consultant - Reese! 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we talk about some of the pull factors that are in fact causing the tech shortage. This is a significant problem in the industry, and thankfully some seriously high up people are actually talking about it. To illustrate this, we talk about the massive tug of war that happens regarding the money in the industry, and how to fix this massive problem that is causing people to leave the industry or more likely avoid it all together. The shop and dealership owners that are feeling the tech shortage the worst are the ones who are not understanding this tug of war, and are often pulling the hardest on the existing money in the system — offering incredibly low wages that cause their existing talent to leave and new talent to not apply to their god-awful job postings. They deserve this! We also talk about how warranty times have caused many experienced technicians to leave the industry, as it is a losing proposition to do some of these jobs which can cause tickets to stack, cars to not get done either on time or at all, and one star reviews to pile up like so many spent tires and brake rotors. Bottom line, it is the money in many cases that are causing experienced techs to leave, and tech schools to go under attended across the industry. 
 
 Also Uncle Jimmy has a poltergeist that occasionally makes his life more difficult than it needs to be, most likely because it is his white collar father! 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy takes to task a newsfeed article that stumbled across his unnamed homepage (it was probably AOL) regarding the common warning lights in cars and what they mean — according to someone who has never worked on a car. These ones are always fun, from the teapot of doom and the drunk robot, to more obscure and abstract examples — people really have no idea how their cars work and when the car tries to tell them something this is compounded. The real takeaway that is missed by the vast majority of the points in this article is that when your car is telling you something, you are more than likely to need professional help when it comes to making that light turn off. Some lights are more dire than others, and some can just make it more likely that either your car or yourself might die! What are your favorite customer names for idiot lights, let us know over at the Facebook page. 

Also Uncle Jimmy sits too close to the mic and does his best impression of the Black Keys, ‘Rubber Factory'
 
 This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy watches the interview with Jim Farley, who unsurprisingly completely misses the point of why there is a technician shortage. He does mention that there is one, so that actually gives him a ton of credit in our book. To hammer the point home, Jimmy winds back the clock to the mid-50’s to the time of duck and cover drills, unprecedented economic prosperity, and Edsel’s. In this era, the average earnings of a mechanic was significantly higher as a percentage of the labor rate that the shop earned. Coincidentally the cost and amount of specialty tools, difficulty of the vehicles to work on, and overall social status of mechanics in the labor force has all become notably more precarious. Either way, things need to happen to make this balance a little more equitable, and make people trust mechanics more as a matter of principle. 

Also, Uncle Jimmy forgets that Jim Farley IS the first cousin of the late, great ‘Fat Guy in a Little Coat’

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this week’s episode of Grease the Wheels, we look through the archives at some of the hits and misses of the previous 325 episodes of the podcast. We have undoubtedly had some ridiculous fun so far, including pondering children’s programming aiming to get more kids into the trades with incredible titles such as Mr. Rogers Dyno Room and Sesame Street Outlaws. We also get into some of the early episodes where we talk shop dynamics, how not to get on your coworkers nerves, and how to fit in, to more recent episodes including the new guy survival guides. We also talk the phenomenally fun “You know your Effed When...” 4-part series that has resonated with techs the world over, and spawned a million comments, memes, and listens. What has been your favorite? What do you want to hear more of? What haven’t we covered in the wrenching world? Let us know over on the Facebook page! 

Also Uncle Jimmy makes Erik do the Ad Read.

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. Use code “GTW” for 50% off your training access! 

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On this episode of Grease the Wheels, Uncle Jimmy follows up last week’s episode with all of the stuff that he forgot — it happens, because as a new guy there is a ton of things to learn in a short period of time and sometimes the people teaching you the ropes will themselves forget things. We also get into the idea of changing jobs and becoming a “NOS” New/Old Service when you have a bit of experience and are changing venues. There are a lot of things to navigate with this including the personalities, procedures, and preferences of the new shop that you are going to. From what they are charging in labor for common jobs, to the uniforms, shop configuration, and what special tools this new shop may or many not have the grass might not always be greener, so the more questions that you ask in the interview will set you up better for what is expected. Can you work on your own cars after hours? Being helpful to anyone that is new to your shop regardless of how much they know or how much they do not know is just the right thing to do, especially in an industry that has a historically high turnover rate, because you want to be known as a good person who is generally helpful and welcoming to the new talent. One thing that both new-new guys and new-old guys need to be aware of is the massive proliferation of video in the service lane, and if you see the bottom of the second paragraph and send your service managers and fixed opes directors to it, you’ll find a massive advantage! 

Also, Uncle Jimmy has platypus feet. 

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy. 

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On this episode of Grease the Wheels, we have some serious words of wisdom (and rants) for the new guys. If you have new guys in the shop, this is probably a good one to start them out with, because it should theoretically cut about 90% of the BS if they actually listen! From inherent mechanical curiosity to becoming a master technician, the road for a mechanic is a long one that is fraught with difficulty. Choosing the right tech school is a big part of getting yourself ahead and learning many of the core concepts that we use on a daily basis - that is of course if you actually paid attention and showed up every single day. Seriously, attendance and effort are massively rewarded at this phase, because if you miss something the confusion is going to compound quickly and it can be incredibly hard to get back on track. Research where you want to go to tech school as well, because there are tons of options, scholarships, and external factors that will make your success either more likely or less likely. Continuing ed is a real thing here as well, including manufacturer specific training programs and the relentless march of automotive technology that aims to make our job more difficult every single day. We also get into the tools debate with a simple mantra - less is more! Believe us, we have seen tons of technicians go massively into tool debt and then exit the profession before they are even done paying for the socket set. Bottom line, it can be a great career, but dues need to be paid, and mistakes can quickly compound if you don’t slow down and seriously think about your choices, strengths and weaknesses. 

Also, Uncle Jimmy does a short book report on ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’

This Episode of Grease the Wheels is brought to you in partnership with Surfwrench Digital! For more on Video MPI Training Visit https://www.surfwrench.com/video-mpi-training-landing/ to learn more. Video MPI Training built in the shop, by your Uncle Jimmy.