More dealership madness.
 

This mornings victim. 2002 Honda Civic, 236,000 miles. Comes in with a missfire. He has had it at the dealer twice trying to chase this problem down. Both times, they did a leakdown, and compression check, and it has on their invoice that they checked for vacum leaks , and checked fuel injectors.
I pulled it in this morning expecting this to be a hard diagnosis. I trust no one, so I always do my own checks. Quick compression check shows 180 psi in all cylinders. Does not sound like a vacum leak, the #4 cylinder is totally dead. I listen , and can hear all 4 injectors working, and i have fuel on the plug for the dead cylinder. Check for spark output, and # 4 is not sparking. I am thinking surely that this will need a pcm, or have faulty wiring somehere, as there is no way the dealer could have missed something as simple as a faulty ignition coil twice. I switch coils from cyls #3 &4, and the miss moves with the coil.
New coil, done, runs like a Honda again.
This customer paid good money two times to have this missfire diagnosed, with no answer. It says on the invoice from Honda that they believe that bad gas could be the culprit.
This was the simplest of simple basic missfire diagnosis. WTF?

But you had to THINK and use your brain. Dealer mechanics plug in the code reader and expect it to tell them what is wrong. That is the limit of their ability.

But they still got paid (twice!) and that's what counts.

We will see more and more of this in the future. America is not training thinkers, they are training parts changers.

To tell the truth am surprised that they did not change all 4 coil packs... but then that would have fixed the problem with little to no thought...

I have a good (totally non-DIY'er) buddy who spent around $1200 on several visits to a well-known P-car shop for failure to start and stalling issues. It was a 993. I suggested he try a new DME relay and that fixed it for good. He was so irate at that shop.

I think that is what stumped them, the owner told me that he replaced all 4 coils , and they were newer looking. Still , how in gods good green earth do you chase a missfire without checking for spark first? Auto mechanics 101.

Thats the problem. YOU are a mechanic, and think about things. Evidently the new crop of wrenches are not taught to do that.

That's because the industry does not reward ($$$) people who think - the 'system' rewards the final product only - even if it is bad or incorrect.

We'll see more and more of this. A long time PCA buddy told me of the same thing happening to his brother with his T bird...poor guy was in California for a family reunion when it happened, he lives in Vegas. To top that off, the dealer didn't have the coils on the shelf. He was stuck there for four days, waiting for parts.

I asked why he didn't just go to an O'Reillys and buy an accel set? Friend didn't know...

I got a smoking deal on a Boxster because it had a high RPM misfire and CEL when you really got on it. The owner had dropped almost $2k at two different shops trying to fix the issue. I gambled and bought the car, and as expected it was a cylinder specific misfire code. Swapped the coil and sure enough, the problem followed the coil. $40 and 5 minutes was all it took to fix the $2k problem.:rolleyes:

My brother bought a nice fairly new riding lawn mower at a garage sale for 25 bucks. The owner said it quit working and no one could get it to run. My brother get it home and the screws that held the carb on were very loose. He tightned the up and it fired right up. 10 seconds with a screwdriver and he had a nice running $25 mower.

They don't make money on quick fixes, they make money on several days of shop-rate time not actually working on your car. My local Honda dealership, from which two of our new cars have come from over the years, is in a new building with a huge shop area, lots of light and very stylish. Many expensive white guys in dress shirts and ties working the parts and service counters too. None of this comes cheap. If they change the bad coil it's about a hundred bucks but if they fuss around and pretend not to know what the problem is and keep your car for two days then it's 200 bucks. Oh, and they aren't interested in fixing a 236,000-mile car, they want you to think it's finally gone kaputt and buy a new one.

Don't dealers make their money on service and not sales? I would think they'd love to keep billing for repairs on an old car instead of selling a new one.

That is what I was always thought. I can remember our boss telling us that service, and parts, basically carried the whole dealership.

Pretty typical for a new car dealer would be for new car sales to have a 5-6% gross margin, used cars 9-10%, parts and service 50%+, and finance of course around 100%. In dollar terms, parts and service could be half of the dealer's gross profit.

Then when you get down to operating profit, potentially almost all of it could be coming from parts & service and finance.

This is a very well-run national dealer chain, some little local guy could be different. Kaisen would know the numbers better.

I just went thru this with my Honda Element. I started out checking coil packs. Nope. checked injectors, changed injectors, nope. Dry then wet compression test. Long block on order. Number 1about 40 pounds. Put a new head on last year.
The engine used a little oil. Bet running with low oil deprived number one cylinder first.
The engine ran pretty darn good at higher rpms. Rough at idle.

I replaced a coil and plug on my Saab, and two months later had to replace it again.

Go figure.

See my thread on our MB. Took it in for a CEL and they came back $10K worth of work (plugs, air filter, fan belt, intake manifold, motor and trans mounts, etc.).

How does an intake manifold wear out? :rolleyes:

This is exactly why you only take a vehicle to the dealership for warrenty work. You all need to find a local mechanic/shop owner that you can learn to trust with your baby who will only replace the parts needed, and lives or dies by his professional reputation.

1). Connect Fluke scanner to 16 pin OBD2 port. (1 minute)
2). Read #4 misfire code OBDII Code P0304 - Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected | HelpForCars.net (1 minute)
3). Read O2 sensor code OBD-II Trouble Code: P0133 Oxygen Sensor Circuit Slow Response (Bank1, Sensor1) (1 minute)
4). Notice on the pretty little digital graph display that the sparkline is flat on that cylinder. (1 minute)

4 minute diagnosis tops. Ask for your money back.