212 - Think Like the Circuit: Mastering Electrical Diagnostics

0:00Hello everybody and welcome to today's webinar. We are kicking off our technical training series. I got to tell you, the content that we have today is awesome. We've got some incredible instructors with us and some really fun stuff we're going to cover. So to get things started, I'd like to, uh, introduce the webinar. There we go. Today we're going to be covering mastering electrical diagnostics as well as some critical thinking skills.

0:25Um, where's everybody coming from? I'm out of, uh, Utah today. We've got some people on the East Coast. Our trainers and instructors are on the East Coast. Let us know in the chat. Um, we're going to be watching that as we go through this. Our real goal with this series was to dive into a lot of the technical skills, but at the same time, some of the critical skills that you need to be a good technician in the shop, to work well with your, uh, the, the skills that you need to develop, the team that relationships you need to develop.

0:53And so we kind of had a mashup of technical and business training, some development training here. And it's, it's awesome. I've loved to see how these guys have put this content together. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to dive into some technical content, some critical thinking skills. At the end of this training, we're going to open up for Q&A.

1:12And we'll actually hang on a few minutes past, maybe 10-15 minutes after the hour, to answer any additional questions that you guys might have. So first off, we're going to be asking some questions throughout, so let's practice this. Uh, what tool do you guys tend to start with or rely on more when starting electrical diagnostics? And type in the chat either a 1 or a 2 to answer the poll.

1:34Uh, 1, a scan tool, or 2, an altimeter. Let us know in the, in the comments section. So it looks like we've got southeastern Tennessee, we've got Wyoming, South Florida. Oh my gosh, Milwaukee, Brookfield, Wisconsin, New Jersey. My goodness. So we've got that poll going. Let us know, uh, do you tend to start with a scan tool or with your, uh, multimeter when you start electrical diagnostics?

2:12At the same time, if you guys have any questions, um, I mean, I've been involved in a lot of these trainings. I've gone and taught classes. I tend to enjoy open discussion and conversation. Now, in this type of circumstance, it can be a little challenging, but hey, that's what I'm here for. I'm going to be your guys' voice with the instructor. So if you have questions or comments or you want to add to the dialogue, I strongly urge you guys to let us know in the chat, and I'm going to answer those questions for you.

2:37Or ask those questions for you so we can get them answered. At the same time, let's keep things positive and constructive. We wanna make sure that questions get answered. We don't wanna, you know, maybe punish somebody who, if they don't know what's going on or they do have those curious questions, that's what this space is for, right? So we wanna keep things positive and constructive.

2:56And again, take notes, key takeaways, and most important, we want you guys to have a lot of fun. So before we introduce our instructors, what I'd like to ask is, what would you rather leave with today? Actually, do we have poll results for that? Can you post those for the first question? All right, well, let's try this one then, guys. What would you rather leave with today?

3:18Number 1, one big idea that you can take back, or number 2, several practical tips that you can deploy in the shop? While you guys answer either 1 or 2 in the chat, and I think it's just a 1 or a 2, I'm not quite sure how the poll system works, but There we go. We've got a few there. Several practical tips.

3:38Love that. The guys that we have on here, we've got Jim Kokonas and Nick Pope. These guys have been some incredible instructors. I'd love to bring them on and introduce them. I'm very excited for the content they're going to share with you today. We've got a lot to dive into. Welcome, guys. Thank you for joining us. And Jim, I'm going to hand things over to you.

4:02Awesome. Welcome everybody. For those that don't know me, Nick and I had a conversation and I always start off classes with, my name is Jim Kokonas and I don't know everything. Um, we were joking about making the title under my name Eternal Student, but I have a question for you and this is an official poll, but just, just give us a yeah or a no.

4:25Um, Has anybody in the room ever had their hind end put in a bucket and carried out of the shop by a car that was being difficult? Um, I have, I have, and I'm going to share a story with you early on. But, um, when, when we think about electricity, is there anything on the car that isn't controlled, monitored, or or communicated with electrical anymore?

4:56I mean, you don't— you can't even do suspension work and brake work without understanding electricity and systems and, and how those components work. Um, I'm seeing some yeses in the chat. If, if you're— if you say no to that, I'm like, what are you working on? Um, wrought iron gates? I don't know. Uh, we've all, we've all been humbled by a car.

5:18Right, right, Nick. I mean, you know, we've all, we've all had that. And what I wanted to share with you is that I had a long time ago in my career— I've got enough experience highlights— um, I was diagnosing a vehicle with an inoperative blower motor, and I had bought one of those newfangled logic probes. You know, you hook it up to power and you go around and you touch places on the circuit And right, if you touch something that had power, it goes meep, gives you a green light.

5:54And you touch something where it's supposed to be on the ground side of the circuit or the low side of the circuit, goes murp, and it gives you a red light. So I go to the blower motor and I get my meep and I get my murp, and I call a blower motor. And I put the blower motor in it and it didn't fix it.

6:09Um, for the longest time I had that, I had that logic probe It was great for some uses, but I had that thing in my toolbox with the pigtail cut off of it to remind me that electrical testing has other, other aspects of it that we've got to keep in mind. So with that said, this slide was just kind of an introduction to that conversation.

6:41But here's, here's a, here's an interesting one. This is an example of one of the questions, not how it's presented, but the basic question that's on the platform. And this question is— questions aren't designed to test with today's class. They're designed to teach through the question. This particular question is looking for an understanding, and Nick and I had a conversation about that, and he's going to chime in here in a minute.

7:13But the question basically says, which of the following choices apply to testing a circuit or a device with an ohmmeter? And these are the 4 options. Now, this is what we call a multi-answer question, and so on the real platform, it's always going to say select all that apply, um, and it's going to indicate through a couple of different ways that there's more than one answer here.

7:37So the— there are 2 correct answers on this, um, and a lot of people get this one wrong, I'll be honest with you. And so when they answer the question, they're going to get a response. If they get it right, it'll look like this, and this is an actual screen capture, and it says that it can determine if a wire is completely broken And it can tell if a device has, um, an open circuit.

8:10Then an incorrect answer is it can determine if several strands inside of a wire are broken, and it confirms if a device is good. Um, what do you guys think about that? Put a comment in the chat. But Nick, what do you think about this? Well, Jim, this one really resonates with me. I would be, I would be lying if I said this does not trigger a memory that stuck with me most of my career.

8:44We've all had those. And, you know, this one for me started shortly, shortly after high school. I was working at the dealership, and I had a customer vehicle with the complaint of a flashing 4-wheel drive light. And come to find out, I had that classic no communication with the 4x4 module. And upon traveling through the Ford trouble tree, I came to the point where I was presented that I needed to replace the module.

9:18And I put the module in, went through the programming process, and lo and behold, It was not repaired. And at that point, I had that, that gut-wrenching feeling. I was sick to my stomach. I felt horrible. Went back, went through the motions not once but twice, and ended up coming to the same result. So then at that point, you know, I was embarrassed, I was frustrated, I felt horrible.

9:50I, I spoke with my manager And his automatic response shocked me. He automatically walked me over to the foreman, and the shop foreman came over and wanted to help walk me through this. And that really helped me feel a lot better, aside from, you know, the obvious, right? And we got to the realization that there was a corroded wire. So in specific, it was a corroded ground wire.

10:21And, you know, I, I knew right away what I did wrong, and I— it just slipped my mind. And at that point, I realized a really valuable lesson that has stuck with me my whole life. And, you know, this ties into, you know, resistance is only as good as the circuit is that can withstand the load of that circuit. And now, This is something that I've been able to carry on and share with, you know, all the people I have worked with throughout my career.

10:50And it was a very valuable lesson in so many ways, shapes, and forms. However, it really got me to the point where I understood that I have all of these resources around me, resources and service information, resources with tools, with my experience, with my peers, and I need to use them and I need to think for myself. To really know why the failure occurred, how it occurred, if there were any other variables to it, to ensure that it is repaired properly and it does not happen again.

11:25And the one thing I want to just point out, Jim, is in this process, not only did I have so many great takeaways, it stuck with me my entire career. However, there were people there that were there to support me and help me learn this lesson. And yes, it costs the shop money. However, you know, the silver lining is when we have people around us that are willing to invest in us and lift us up in these moments, it sticks.

11:49And, and those are the really valuable things of wanting to continue and grow in our careers as technicians. So, uh, thanks, Nick. Um, costing a shop money. Scott, Scott made a comment in chat that says an ohmmeter can only tell you when a circuit is bad. Um, you know, there's some other fancy types of, of tools and things that we can use to see very small changes, but most technicians, when they're using an ohmmeter, you know, and, and they, they love to give you— and I know Ford is like, you know, check for continuity on this wire, check for continuity on this wire.

12:25Well, it only takes, you know, 1 or 2 strands to get an ohmmeter to go, yep, beep, and, and, and give you a continuity tone. Um, and yeah, it can, it can cost you money. So when we look at that, this is a— this was a, a real vehicle. Um, and you can put your comments into the chat too. Here was a vehicle that had set multiple codes and the transmission was in limp mode.

12:57All right, and so I've, I've got a— I've got an example of the codes that were set. And I've got an example of the wiring diagram that's on this, um, slide here. And I mean, we're not going to dive into everything here, but this vehicle came in and the shop diagnosed it as a bad transmission, and they replaced the transmission, and it didn't fix the vehicle.

13:27And so The, the, the vehicle got a new PCM put in it. And the reason I know that is because they called me to program it at the time, and I'm like, where are you getting this PCM from? And at the time, they're— the company they were buying it from would bench program this older GM because they had the tools to do it, and they would do it free of charge because they were buying the PCM from them.

13:50So I'm like, they'll do it for you. So they did that. Well, unbeknownst to me Um, customer was in a rental car while they were trying to figure this thing out because they didn't get it back in time. So the customer's in a rental car, they put a transmission in it, that didn't fix it. They've had a PCM put in it, that didn't fix it.

14:10They had the transmission rebuilder, well-known company, send out a test box, and they ran through phone support and did a whole bunch of tests with this specialty box, and they said, we're going to send you another transmission. So now it's had a second transmission put in it, and, um, it's still not fixed. And then I got another phone call, can you come out and look at this?

14:37And of course, in their mind, um, you have the factory scan tool for this General Motors vehicle, can you come out here and see if you can see something that we can't see? And so I went out there. I did use my scan tool, but I used their service information and got a look at this thing. I went out and scanned the vehicle.

15:00I came in and went to the service information. I went back out. I found an area of the wiring that I was interested in. I found a problem. I took a jumper wire and connected from a fusible link to the output of a specific fuse. And then we took and drove the truck and the transmission was normal. Total elapsed time, 20 minutes.

15:21What do you guys think was wrong? Any thoughts? Anybody, anybody care to, to venture a guess? Nick, what do you think? Gosh, Jim, could it have been a corroded wire? It, it could have been. It could have been. I'm going to highlight an area. You see all these shift solenoids down here on the right-hand side of this wiring diagram? If you look at that, um, you see the splice S116, and you see that the PCM shows that's an ignition feed.

16:05So the PCM knows when the ignition is turned on. Right? And then that wire feeds all of the shift solenoids, and then the shift solenoids are controlled by the PCM. I was gonna, I was gonna add, Scott said something interesting. He said there's 3, uh, fuses in the world: good, bad, and missing. And he says, oh, 4 now— not seated properly. I think I know Scott.

16:35Um, if it— at least I know the name. Um, we don't have faces on here, but anyway, yeah, Scott, and, and you're exactly right. Um, but wait a minute, I'm going to add a 5th. Uh, incorrectly made fuses that are not fuses, they're pieces of wire that burn up harnesses when they should pop. Okay, and we've seen this in the world as well.

16:59So now, now we can make that into 5. Um, the whole sum total of the problem with this thing is this particular vehicle had a specific spot in the ignition switch that completed this circuit, and that's coming from a fuse. And I'm sorry, the way this went on here, it cut it off, but that, that fuse is coming from an output of the ignition switch, and it feeds that transmission power.

17:29And all of those codes were all circuit-related electrical codes. And if we think about that, if we understand how electricity works, there was a reason why I looked at the codes, I looked at a wiring diagram, and I went straight to a specific spot on the truck to get to the fuse block, because it was an easy place to test that computer.

17:54Is doing a voltage drop test at one point in the circuit. We're feeding it voltage and it is saying that coming through these solenoids, I don't have enough voltage to control this thing. It's declaring a circuit problem. That's smoke fuse. Yeah, Michael, definitely a smoke fuse. Um, so that's all the computer's doing when we're checking, you know, continual component monitoring. It's, it's looking at powers and grounds.

18:30And if we understand electricity and we look at this thing, how many of you guys have ever seen a code that says circuit open or shorted to ground? Wait a minute, how can that be? How can it be those 2 different extremes? Well, back in the day, you know, that we didn't run a bunch of extra wires, we didn't have a bunch of extra circuits.

18:49And the computer, if it wasn't seeing voltage when it should, then either I'm on the control side of this device, like on, on the ground side of this solenoid, and the voltage can't come through the solenoid. So maybe I have an open in the circuit, or this wire is broken, or this wire is shorted to ground, which is making the voltage drop there.

19:18And the computer can't see it because it's only looking at one spot. And so the way I used to describe this is the computer only knows what it can see. If that computer was monitoring this little yellow wire here and it also had the ability to monitor here and monitor here and monitor up here and monitor over there, it could tell you exactly where the break was.

19:43Oh, I've lost voltage between these 2 points. But the computer can't do that. That's our job. So how well do we understand electricity? And so just like Nick said, you know, when he had that one early in his career, it told— taught him a lesson. When I misdiagnosed that blower motor, it taught me a lesson. And then, you know, 25, almost 30 years ago, I was going out and doing this type of stuff for other shops and was one of the first mobile diag and programming guys out there.

20:14And I can't tell you how many times you'd get there and this complex problem that had spent, you know, 3 weeks in the shop and had a customer in a rental car turned out to be a pretty straightforward electrical problem. So with that in mind, let's take a look at this one. This is older. Some of you guys will recognize this, but let's say we had a circuit code for fuel injector number 5.

20:49So we had a P0205 code. If we had that, if we actually had that as a code, what is the most likely area that you would look in? Where would you start? Throw something into the comments. Michael said, uh, could I watch a recording of the class? Yes, we're going to give recordings afterwards. We'll post those and share those out, Michael. Same with the resources and links.

21:19Let us know in the chat, guys. Glad, glad to have you here, Mike. Nobody yet. Nobody, nobody's put anything in. Look, look. I'm gonna say something right now. This is a safe space. There will be no teasing, laughing, groaning. We all make mistakes, and I'm not gonna go, hahaha, you're wrong. That's not what this is about. This is about just, you know, I don't know about you guys, but if you've ever been to a big event or whatever, um, you'll realize that the networking and talking through things we think we need to learn hands-on, but actually, if we have a conversation about something and we talk ideas and methods through, we actually are going to

22:09retain probably about 60% of those conversations. When the only thing that gets, gets a little bit past that— so Jim, it looks like, uh, Scott had said injector would be my starting point. Shad said fuse 15 amp. And then Scott also added, uh, the rat chewed wiring. Okay, okay. So, so remember what I was talking about with the voltage drop test, all right?

22:40As opposed to a resistance test, a voltage drop test. When this computer is looking— and I'm sorry, this is not a full good wiring diagram, but I wanted to be really detailed in. This is one of those old sequential fuel injection centralized injectors. This is old school, but I could have picked anything that has sequential fuel injection. When you look at this, each one of these pink wires is power to a fuel injector, okay?

23:14And then each injector is individually controlled by a specific driver circuit in the computer. So the fact that I'm setting a fuel injector number 5 circuit code but I'm not setting a circuit code for any of the other injectors— do you think this could be a fuse? Now I know somebody answered fuse, and I'm not picking on them, not at all, but I know a lot of technicians were taught by someone somewhere, always check your fuses.

23:57Now there's some validity to that, so I'm not knocking it, but my goodness, if, if we have a situation where 4 things are fed off the same fuse and 3 of them are working, we can probably take the idea of the fuse being an issue and move it down in priority. Now, if it's injector number 5— huh? Michael said test on the control side.

24:30Test on the control side or at the device, but Mike, I don't, I don't disagree with you, but one of the things you have to realize, this is why I love wiring diagrams for understanding what I'm going to do with electricity. This connector point right here at D10, that connection, there's a splice and there's 2 wires coming right out of that connector.

24:57I could actually have a problem where one of them's making connection And so that's why fuel injector 2 is not having an issue, but fuel injector 5 is. So that could be on the feed side. Now, if I go down to this central injection harness and I go along and I probe at E, D, B, H, J, and L, if I can get to those and they all have power, and then I go over here to this black and white wire at pin A and I don't have voltage, I've got it here and I don't have it here, where's the open?

25:40It's at the injector. But if I have power coming out here and I have it all the way to the computer, could I potentially have a bad driver? Could. But if I have it coming out here at pin A on this black and white wire and I don't have it at the computer, Now I'm looking for a broken wire on that ground side.

25:59Does all this, um, is, is all this making sense? Does it— are you seeing kind of like this logical thought process of how we go after it? Seems like you're going about it the— with the path of least resistance, Jim. Boom! Yes, yes, we don't want electrical work to be revolting, right? Sorry. Um, this is one, and this, this cooling fan setup has been around forever.

26:41I'm gonna zoom in on this thing a little bit. You guys have seen these General Motors cooling fans with the 3 relays used to control the fans. And if you see, it's got a cooling span low feed relay, low speed relay, um, a span— a fan speed control relay. That's an interesting term. And then a high speed relay. And if we look at this, um, there's multiple fuses here, right?

27:14There is Um, there's a fuse here that's a 10 amp, and that's on the control side. Then we have this 40 amp fuse that's feeding the fan. That's hot at all times, right? And then we have cool fan high fuse, 40 amp. So we got 2 40 amp fuses here. So how does this thing actually work? Here's my 2 fans down here.

27:46Left cooling fan, right cooling fan. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because we don't have it and I need to get this thing turned over to Nick. But this fan, this fan, if I understand this diagram, when this relay, the low-speed relay, is turned on, if I trace this right, the power comes down from this, um, K1 fuse, 40 amp.

28:14It goes through this relay and it goes down through this fan. Then it comes up and goes up through this relay, and if this relay is normally open, it comes back down and it actually goes through the second fan to ground. So how are the fans wired? Are they in series? Are they in parallel? In series. They're in series. Okay, so if 2, if 2 identical devices are in series and we understand our electrical theory, they're going to share source voltage.

29:04So if the car is running at 13.5 volts, each one of these fans, if they're the same size, they're going to share the voltage. They're going to run at low speed. And then when we toggle on the switchover relay and the high-speed relay, basically what happens is when we toggle over here, we put the one fan directly to ground So now it has full source voltage, and the other fan gets fed full source voltage.

29:35And so now these things will run at full speed. And I have watched time and time and time again where somebody will get a vehicle in and it's getting awful warm and the air conditioner doesn't work real well, and they've got one fan that runs all the time when the car gets hot. Nothing happens, and then one fan comes on high. So what can be wrong?

30:00It can be one of the relays, it could be one of the wires, could be one of the fuses, but we have to look at this circuit holistically and go after it. And so with that being said, I'm going to show you guys a couple of things that you can use. And Kent, do you have the, uh, Do you have the webpage, the browser?

30:23Drop that in chat for everybody. I have used these simulators from the University of Colorado Boulder to help techs learn electrical and description and operation and theory for a lot of years. I don't even want to talk about it. Um, but I have a couple of these open, and a lot of people have found these helpful. You can actually set up an electrical circuit, and I built this one already, and you can measure the battery voltage and it says 13.5 volts.

31:05And I can actually adjust the battery voltage, and then I can go over and say, okay, with this circuit working how much voltage is actually reaching the bulb. And I'm showing conventional theory, and oh, it says 13.25 volts because I have the ability to add resistivity, which is the real thing that happens when a wire is carrying current. It's going to have a little bit of internal resistance and it's going to cause a little bit of a drop.

31:33If there happened to be too much resistance, I would see that get bigger. I can do a voltage drop directly across a load. And so now out of 13.5 volts from the battery, this light is getting 12.17. So is that because I've got a problem somewhere, or is that just the normal amount? And I can adjust that a little bit. Hang on a second.

32:08There. Now it's less than a volt lost in the wiring. So you can actually test along and see if there's an issue. And then if there is an issue, it could be because there's additional resistance somewhere. Now look what happens when we start testing voltage. We see 13.5 there. We still have 7 volts after the bulb. That's because it is taking energy to get across that resistance, and that could be bad wire, a bad connection, a bad ground.

32:56And so this little simulator can help you have the time to play around with these concepts and prove them to yourself. And by the way, when you see a guy that's new to a scope and he's like, I want to check the injector current with my scope, which wire do I go around? It's because they don't really understand that the current flow on a series circuit is the same no matter where you check.

33:24And this allows you to reinforce those concepts in your head. You guys think that this thing is useful? Oh yeah, you got it. If you've got a person you're trying to help learn electricity, probably one of the best references. Nick, you want to take it away and talk about, uh, putting this all together? Yeah, absolutely. And And building on what you just shared with us, Jim, you know, we had some conversation and electricity is tough to teach.

33:57It's tough to understand because you can't see it. So having these illustrations really helps and it's a really powerful free resource to use. So I encourage those of you with us to use these and share these with people. All right, so we're gonna talk a little bit about using our minds. And earlier in my story regarding the 4-wheel drive module, I talked about the powerful takeaway I had about learning to think for myself and using the resources around me.

34:31I'd like to go a little bit deeper into that, and we'll just start with some of the items on the left here. So we have our scan tools, our wiring diagrams, service information, oscilloscopes, specialty tools. These are all tools that we can use. Now, we, we do need to spend time to understand how to use them and how they work. And I'm going to just pick on myself.

34:56When I was using the multimeter, I never once even thought about the amount of voltage that's induced into the circuit when I would be testing the resistance, right? And it's a small amount. And that's why when I ran that test to check for resistance that I had an acceptable reading. So those little tiny caveats to this multimeter and really in any tool that we're going to be using make a big difference.

35:22So it's not something we can just pull out of a toolbox and use. Understanding them, understanding how we can read a wiring schematic is huge. Jim did a really good job pointing out how we can use a wiring diagram as a map and we can pinpoint certain areas to isolate. If we have several codes that are gonna be related to a certain circuit, that's gonna give us a really good direction to jump onto, to look at, and hopefully find the problem.

35:49So, you know, those are just resources that we can start to use once we understand them. The other resources I wanna talk about are on the right side. Technical training, experience, mentors and peers, real-world testing, Curiosity and questioning. I can't stress how important it is to be curious and to question things. Take advantage of the situations in the shop and lean on those people that are around you.

36:18It really shouldn't be a competition. At the end of the day, we're all in this together and we're all going to have our strong areas that we are really talented in. However, the more we work together and help build each other up, the better of an atmosphere we're going to have, the more we're all going to learn and grow together. And that's the mindset we want.

36:37The moment that we close that door on being curious or wanting to not learn or grow anymore is the moment we, we are stopped dead in our tracks. And, and with the way the industry has been going for as long as I can remember, it's constantly changing, right? We're always coming up with new innovations. There's new technology, new trends. It's, it's endless.

37:03And Jim, what are your thoughts? Do you think that to stay ahead a little bit, it's great to just try to stay on the cutting edge, to stay current with technology? Jim, I think you're muted, sir. Yes, I muted myself. Um, I, I have a friend that has a nickname called Rural Joe, and some people in the group probably will know who I'm referring to, who, who made the comment about a second 40 hours.

37:42Um, and, and I kind of pushed back on him a little bit that It, it only takes a little bit of effort to stay at the top of your game. Um, and so the way I look at it, Nick, is Michael Jordan didn't do his practice only on the basketball court. Um, best golfers in the world still work with coaches, and they still practice, and they have practice sessions and train.

38:15And putting the time in to do some of that is how you keep up with the technology and you learn the new technique. But if you go try and pick up that fancy new thing without learning anything about it, it can actually cost you time in the shop. So where do you do that? So yeah, absolutely, I think you've gotta, you gotta put some effort in to stay up on it.

38:36Do you think it's a give and take? So, and, and I'm just gonna make some assumptions, guys, and I hope I'm not you know, off base or, or, uh, uh, put myself out there, but do you think that some, in some cases technicians are looking at, well, those questions, those sidebars where I might have somebody who's younger than me is asking these questions, it's taking away from my ability to produce hours, which can hit my, you know, wallet.

39:04And I would just add on that, that I think sometimes we can get into, because I've done it myself. I mean, there's times where I've, you know, hey, I can't help with this or that because I'm really just trying to get this thing done. But at the same time, that investment of the training, having somebody else with additional resources or knowledge or experience, or even just yourself investing in that additional insight, that frees up efficiency later on.

39:29So it's a small investment early on, but you'll make the dividends back later. Do you think that's about right or in that ballpark? I'd like to know what the people in the audience are thinking, but everybody's thinking— Michael added it's the back 40, he said, by the way. Yeah, I saw that. It made me chuckle. I'm sure he'll make a meme of it soon.

39:57So Michael, uh, a different Michael added, you know, Brian Pollack is a smart guy. By practicing new tests, he is becoming proficient with them. By doing his second 40 hours of learning. Yeah, he— Mike knew exactly who I was referring to. Um, and yet, and yet this person is also, you know, a single dad and a, and a, and a business owner and everything else, and he's trying to, to juggle, juggle it all like we all are.

40:29Uh, and we're not telling somebody that if you want to be you know, if you want to be the absolute pinnacle, that you've got to, you know, work 100 hours a week. Um, I heard a thing a long time ago, Nick, you may, you may actually agree with this, but if you spend even 15 minutes a day doing some independent study or learning in your chosen field, that it's only a few number of years before you're in the top 10%.

41:00Yeah, 100%. And I, building on that, I read a study where if you spend an hour a day working at anything over the course of the year, you're going to be in, in that top 10%. So I think the, the trend here that is a commonly shared view is we don't need to spend, you know, 40 hours a week in addition to training and learning if we want to, and we love that, great, go for it, that's awesome.

41:31However, we can take off smaller chunks and those are going to compound, and in the long run, in the grand scheme of things, we're going to be able to maintain and continue to grow. And it doesn't have to be a one-all-be-all with one resource. There are many different resources. So those are really wonderful things to take take advantage of. But the point of this slide really ultimately is the most important tool that we have is, is in our minds, right?

42:04It is our minds. And when we think about that, how are we sharpening that? So other minds. Exactly. So, so there, there— how, how many of the names that are in the chat do you guys recognize? Because I'm recognizing a bunch, a bunch of these guys, um, and, and they are, to my knowledge, they're people who put in the extra time. So I would really be interested in hearing from them.

42:40What do they think is a good approach to continue the opportunities for these types of conversations, of get-togethers, of building these groups where, you know, because I don't know how Nick feels, but I know me, I don't have to be the smartest person in the room. As a matter of fact, I don't really want to be the smartest person in the room.

43:06I want to be in a room of people who challenge the way I think. I love it when I'm teaching a class and I have a student challenge me because it's like, it, it could be my issue. Maybe I didn't explain it well. Now I have an opportunity to get better with what I'm doing. Or my tongue might have gotten in front of my eye teeth and I didn't see what I was saying, and so I said it wrong.

43:27If nobody ever speaks up, everybody that was in the class gets hurt by that. And so I want to know what these guys think about, um, you know, what, what can we do with— I mean, there's 20 groups for owners, or should there be 20 groups for shop, for shop techs? Maybe we can handle a 40 group, I don't know. But should there be jam sessions like this that are deliberate with a chosen topic that gives us an opportunity to learn skills from each other I, I'm just brainstorming here.

44:05Go ahead. I have a thought, Jim. So first off, I just wanted to bring in, you know, Michael had said everyone should be attending, you know, the ASTA event that's coming in September where Jim and Brian are going to be teaching some great classes. I think, and for me, this has been the differentiator because I flunked, barely graduated high school, totally flunked out of college.

44:22I've never considered myself a very smart guy, but I did surround myself with the tools and the resources and definitely the people that if ever I came into a problem, there was resources that I could lean on to help me move past that point. And I think there is a distinct difference between that back 40 that we were talking about, and it has to do with being proactive or reactive, intentional practice versus just reaction.

44:47So you're going to be going through a lot of these things in your general day-to-day. You're going to encounter these vehicles, you're going to run through some of these, these, you know, diagrams and these maps, and you're going to deal with these problems. And those are all opportunities. You're going to have online sessions like this. That's another opportunity. You're going to have conversations with people about this specific webinar in your shop.

45:06That's another opportunity to gain some competency, to have that microlearning opportunity. And it's whether or not you're intentional about it. If you are paying attention, if you are leveraging that and understanding, this is an opportunity for me to gain a little bit of insight and a little bit of experience. That's where I think you get that compounding effect over time, where you have those, those opportunities because it's intentional; it's not reactionary.

45:31Does that make sense? No, I agree. I just, you know, Scott made a comment in the chat that back in the day, that that's what IATN was. And we used to have different chat rooms, and we used to have um, you know, the forums and things, and there's still venues like that. But the other thing was there were events. I mean, I can remember going to, uh, to Totie's house and shop.

46:03We, we called him Totie because we called him Tech of the Year. Um, but a guy that was in South Carolina hosted a whole bunch of people that came from around the country for a jam session one weekend, and we brought different tools and techniques and showed each other things and had fellowship and beverages and learned. So was it Vision? No, but it was a very— it was a microcosm of Vision.

46:30Tim, yes, Scott remembers Tim Taylor. Yeah, not that Tim Taylor. But yeah, we've been, you know, we've done events like this. And I guess what I'm looking for is— and Big Bird, I mean, Michael is out there calling me the Greek philosopher. Because he knows me too. Um, it's, it's one of those deals where we need to figure out, because what, what is going to change the industry?

47:02And I don't— I think the only thing that's going to do it is us. That's just me. Nick, did you, did you have a final thought on— I, I do, absolutely. And And I want to build on your statement, Jim, you know, what is going to change the industry? And I also look at it as, you know, how can we improve the industry?

47:23How can we rise above to the occasion, to the challenge, to find the resources, find the people, create the community where it's going to allow everybody to accelerate consistently? I have one more slide that I'd like to talk about. And this is going to tie the team together in, in the shop. And this works out really well because we're on the electrical topic, and I want us to just think about for a moment how we can think like a circuit.

47:55And we can think about when we're linking our technician through our service advisor through the customer, right? When we have a complete circuit, our communication is clear. At any point, if we run into a resistance issue, that can slow down that process, right? In any, any of those areas, the technician could have a delay and, and maybe get caught up, uh, looking at something on the vehicle and, and then delay communication to the advisor, and then that trickles down to the customer, right?

48:28Just like on a vehicle, if we have high resistance in a circuit, it's going to slow down our voltage and Again, you know, the process is delayed. So thinking about this, the power of continuity, not only on a car electronically speaking, but in our buildings and our businesses is extremely important and valuable. I do realize that sometimes there are disconnects in really any of these areas and I'm curious.

49:00I want to know, for those of you listening and that are with us in the chat, type in— and I want to know if your team is connected or disconnected or has resistance. So type in disconnected, connected, or resistance. I'm curious to know. This is extremely important. And when we're firing on our cylinders, our team dynamic is going to be outstanding. And it's just going to continue to build a really great environment where we want to be, uh, at work every day.

49:32So I don't see anybody chiming in, so hopefully you do. I would really love to hear if you are connected, disconnected, or have resistance with your team. Jim, as we get to an end here, um, I want to share something with you and everyone with us. There are There's one thing that I like to talk about, and it's the space between. And we're going to look at the space between thinking and knowing.

50:03So we've all had multiple issues where we feel we've been here before, we've seen this before, you know, we get that technician intuition where we, we have a code and a symptom, and we just know we've been there. Now we think this is it. It's so tempting to just say, gosh, this is just what it needs, and I'm going to send it and we're going to let it go.

50:29So tempting, right? We can get that 1 hour for our labor diag and, and move on to the next thing. Most of the time, does that work? I don't know. I'm not going to say anything there, but I think you guys know where I'm going with that. But on the other side, there's knowing Knowing isn't always just for you. It should be, but it should be for our customers, should be for our business.

50:54That's the valuable part of doing what we do to the T. The value in going deep to find out the real why, even though we feel like we've been there before. It might feel unnecessary. However, it's critical to do that because it's part of what we do. So I just want you to think about the gap between thinking and knowing. And when we close that gap, that really unifies us to a high-level professional.

51:23And at the end of the day, it's, it's the right thing to do. Agreed. Just tell Scott not to load the parts cannon. He's over here laughing in the chat. Anyway, I think it's, I think it's really important what you're saying here, Nick, when you're saying the space between I think when we're in that point of, I mean, it's, it's chaos at the shop, you've got so much on your plate, we can become reactionary and then we don't think about, um, that gap.

51:49We think about either we hit it or we missed it and that's it. And when we look back, that's what we're looking back towards. It's all, it's all past. We missed the mark and then we feel bad. And by the way, you can't change anything that happened back there. But when you look at the gap, that is a forward-facing thing. Here is where I'm at.

52:07Here's where I want to be. And there's a space in between I can focus on. That is momentum building. That is progress. If you can focus on the gap, you can ask the right questions, you can leverage the resources available to you. That's how you close the gap. And that's how you make progress. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can make mistakes.

52:27But then what's the gap? Right? Are learned. Lots of lessons are learned in the gap, and, and the goal is to not make them over and over again. To learn it— the goal is to learn from them and, and share those with those around us so they can do better than us. I love that. Yes, absolutely. So that's, that's all I have for my slide, everybody.

52:54Jim, I'm gonna throw this back to you. I've, I've actually— my presentation portion of that's done. I think Kent had some— well, I was going to ask— go ahead. So Jim, if there's one thing that you would want the, uh, attendees or the students to take away from the electrical training that you covered today, what would that be? The, the biggest thing that I was trying to point out in that is that anything advanced that we want to do is all in the basics, and it's that way in everything.

53:30Um, if you don't have a solid foundation under a house, it's not going to be strong and it's not going to stand. You can't build a skyscraper on a sound foundation. And a lot of people get frustrated because they want to learn the, you know, the high-end moon phase type stuff and they want to focus on that, um, my message is that if you really understand the fundamentals, you can be the person that creates the moon phase tech when you— technique when you need it.

54:02But if you're just copying somebody else, um, I want to be careful how I say that. If you're just copying somebody else, you haven't internalized the skill yourself. That's it. I, I think that's really insightful. And I want to go back because I, I learned quite a lot. I'm not a car guy. So thank you for this. But I really liked, you know, when you were talking about the sequential and connecting the dots, I think sometimes with those problems you're dealing with, it's, it's more of that sporadic, well, I'm just trying to solve the problem.

54:32And you end up spinning your wheels, you're going in this direction or that direction. I think it's really important to have that base foundation to start with. And an end goal, and just to connect the circuit. And if you can follow the path, then you can look at the opportunities or the challenges that you really need to deal with rather than the busywork that might be distracting you, the red herring that might be, you know, pulling you in the wrong direction.

54:57And you can save a lot of time, effort, and stress by being a little more strategic in where your attention and focus is when you're dealing with these problems. Anyway, that's, that's one of my takeaways is look at, look at a lot of these challenges as a sequential, right? Go back through the map from where you need to, where you're starting from and where you need to be, and then work the map.

55:18That was my takeaway. I really appreciated that one. With that said, we're coming up on just a few minutes here, everybody. I want to talk a little bit about this series and what we're planning with this. And I want to give a big thank you to today's class for helping us put this together. We have another training coming up. Part 2 is going to be on the 8th, and it's not just oil.

55:41We're going to talk about understanding modern lubricants and service recommendations, and at the same time talk about, you know, some of the skills necessary on the, you know, to be a good technician, to have a good career in that phase, and things that'll help you out, be better, and put you in a better opportunity. And Part 3 is going to be the Wealthy Technician.

56:01This is about building values, skills, and a stronger future for yourself. Just to highlight some things with today's class, we've had quite a lot of shops who are starting to use it and a lot of technicians who really appreciate it. And it kind of goes back to some of the things that we mentioned earlier. They have a lot of dynamic content in that it's going to kind of evaluate where you're at, what are the needs, what are the gaps that you have in your skill set, and then help provide the training necessary in very short intervals so you can get kind of that consistent practice over time.

56:32There's a lot of fun gamification. I'm still going through and learning some of the, you know, systems myself. It's really fun to beat my dad in scores and share that. And no, it's been a really good treat to see some of the paths that they have there because it's not just for technicians. It can be for service advisors and managers, and you can even curate some of the training in your shop and with your team.

56:55Maybe if you're looking for ASE testing prep and want to get your, you know, uh, really sharpen your axe on those, they've got a pathway for that as well. If you guys want to know more information about that, um, I'm going to go ahead and share— let's see, we'll go to this next slide here, but I'll share a link there that you guys can get more information on today's class.

57:15At this time, we're going to open it up to, uh, just questions and takeaways. You know, uh, we're closing things out, we're going to get to this point here, but any of you here want to hang out with us for a few more minutes and ask some more pointed questions, some more detailed questions, We've got Jim and Nick here to answer those questions.

57:32And just a big thank you to everybody who participated in this, who joined us for this. Keep an eye out for the other ones. We're really excited for those to come out. And, uh, yeah, and again, tell us what you guys want, uh, training on. You can send that to the link I provided it earlier, but, uh, let's see, I'll reshare that link as well.

57:52That's going to be content@todaysclass.com. Any questions? Let's see what we got here. A few comments. As he said, uh, relating DTCS and wiring diagram and the basics of how to work helps a lot. Thanks for revalidating my techniques. I actually, I really appreciate that. Sometimes we just need that, that recognition and validation that we're doing the right things. Christopher Johnson said, know your fundamentals.

58:17Awesome. Wait here for a little bit longer if anybody has any questions. Electricity is actually one of my favorite things because it's physics and it's logical, and unlike other aspects, it's not emotional. It's not emotional. It's not illogical. I'm the only moody one allowed in here anyway. Thanks, Chad. Always learning, lifelong learning. Listen, content@todaysclass.com is an email address. With some planning and knowing, um, we can put together, you know, one of these things and schedule it out.

59:16But here's, here's one of the big things for me with training is how do we know we're covering the right stuff? And how do we know if it actually takes? And that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this, this platform with the adaptive learning content. Because the forgetting curve is real. You can hear something and you can think you've got it down.

59:48And within a few days, you're going to lose 90% of what you heard. If you don't go and reinforce it and lock it down, then it disappears. And so that's one of the reasons why I got excited about this concept of blended learning. So we can do an event like this, we can do an in-person jam session, and if it's intentional, we can actually create content that comes back and asks questions to be sure that somebody picked up the key points, that they lock those fundamentals down.

1:00:27And to me, that's the ultimate way to learn, is because you have to And then, and then you can have a situation where somebody has taken some content and they've got a proficiency of understanding the basic terms we're going to use. So now we don't have to explain the terms and we can get right into the meat of the topic. So if you have any interest in what that can look like in the future, again, send us an email and let's talk about what that looks like.

1:00:56I'm more excited to check out some of the simulations. I mean, I, I've had talks about electrical for a while, you know, over the years, and I, I've never really understood it. This is one of the first times I've actually seen kind of how those charts actually work and the way that the current's going to flow and all of that. So that was really insightful to see it physically.

1:01:15I mean, it's digital, but to physically see you manipulate and show how it is affecting the current was really, really cool. Awesome. I'm excited for the next one, which we're going to be talking about you know, uh, fluid dynamics and, uh, not just oil, right? Lubricants and service recommendations. You guys have some really good content on that as well. All right, well, with that said, if we don't have any other questions, thank you all so much for being here.

1:01:45And thanks for the comments in the chat too. Good stuff. Yeah, thank you guys for your contribution and joining the conversation. We hope to see you on the next one. With even more questions. Thanks everyone, bye for now. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Jim. Thank you.