It's an ancient Greek term that means "Lad under the car"

SolRo, you build and/or service car engines, yes? Got a personal best?

Full disclosure I still giggle at 'two stroke' so you may have to explain in detail.

Like personal best what? We don’t remove and slap back in complete engines.

That would be like a racing team thing.

Phrased that poorly. I think everyone has that moment where they solved a problem that only someone with their knowledge would appreciate how awesome and clever it was but there's nobody around to high five. That's the story I'm looking for.

Thanks for letting me brag a bit then.

I actually get those moments all the time because I’m a good diagnostic auto technician, so I get relied on to do those jobs a lot. I actually placed 2nd nationally at a recent brand skills competition.

Real examples;

Couldn’t find a leak in the A/c system of a car. The usual method is to add UV dye and find where it leaks out but it just didn’t show up anywhere. So I pressurized the system to 200psi with nitrogen and used soapy water to find the leak. It was immediately after the built in filter which is why the dye didn’t show up.

Hybrid car came to me for its 3rd failed electric vacuum pump in short order. Would cause a check engine light because hybrids. The guys before me just kept replacing the pump. I identified a vacuum leak in the system which would cause to pump to constantly run and burn itself out.

Lady brought in a very old car that had its battery keep dying. Cars this old basically have very few computers on board, very little documentation on the brand side, so basically can’t use any computers to help you identify what’s happening. I traced it down to the trunk latch being out of adjustment. So the trunk wouldn’t lock and the little trunk light would always stay on and drain the battery.

I’ve been in the career going on 8 years now so I’ve forgotten plenty of situations.

Kudos on that last one. I had a 15yo car where the door autolocks would cycle off and on when it rained. Not only was it a drain on the battery I could never be sure if the car would stay locked after I left it. My mechanic traced it back to the worn seal around the rear windshield washer. When rain came in through the cable to run it the trunk lock would start going on and off along with the doors.

Not only did he figure this out, he knew I was a student at the time and his advice to fix it for free what 'don't use the rear windshield wiper'.

Hats off to people who care about what they do.

Also, what is a brand skills competition?

Some of the manufacturers hold yearly competitions where they do testing based on your role in a dealership. It’s optional but if you get prizes and bragging rights if you get far enough in the competition.

What is the testing? Are you presented with a car with known issues to the judges that you have to diagnose/repair? How is it measured?

Early rounds are just online quizzes but the later ones you do in person and they give you different challenges . Some are cars with bugs set in them you need to figure out, or testing your ability to use certain tools correctly or perform a certain repair the correct way.

They don’t explain the scoring system in detail but it’s timed and there’s like a whole hidden list of things they expect to get done in each challenge. Broadly speaking they’re testing technical abilities, knowledge and attention to detail.

I would watch the shit out of that. TLC broadcasts the wrong things.

Someone did a potato cam upload of part of the awards ceremony.

Otherwise it’s mostly kept within the company.

https://youtu.be/b0j3V0Sd_5E

I saved the long wrap up promo video they did after the event. May upload it some day. It has quick clips of some people doing various tests.