I had a mid-90's Chevy S-10 with antilock brakes. One day, the brakes
made a funny sound and the service light came on. I noticed that the
brakes were not behaving properly.

I took the truck in for "Mr. Goodwrench" to take a look. They told me
that I would need a new antilock computer and the cost was something on
the order of $1000. I told them to forget it.

I limped the truck home and later, curiosity got the better of me. I
jacked up the truck so that the front wheels could spin, and then I went
hunting for wheel rotation sensors. Connecting my scope, I could see a
nice, clean sine wave coming off the front right wheel. The waveform
from the front left wheel, however, had a a very irregular shape that
was much lower in amplitude.

I purchased a new rotation sensor for $75 bucks, pulled the wheel and
brake disk, and installed it. Everything worked like a champ after that.

It appeared that the old sensor had been struck by rock, and the core of
the sense coil had probably been fractured. I was left to wonder how it
is that, without the benefit of factory training, documentation, or
diagnostic equipment I could troubleshoot and repair the problem when
the dealership could not....

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"Pete C." wrote:

Not entirely true, the few lucky people who have been able to find
honest, reliable mechanics do tend to speak highly of them.





Remember that the people bringing in the cars in the last 15 years or so
as you have noted, are the parents (or now their children) from the
generation that has deluded themselves into the belief that mechanical
trades (dirty jobs) are somehow devoid of education and skill and have
actively discouraged their children from having any interest in such
things.

This delusion of the PYVs (plastic yuppie vermin) is furthered by the
increasing complexity of cars and the thought that the grease monkeys
couldn't possibly understand anything about computers so they must just
be swapping parts until things magically start working.

It's only going to get worse too...

Pete C.



Seven or eight years ago the gas gauge quit on my dad's jeep. He
took it to the dealer. The changed the sending unit. Then they changed
the gauge. They had it over a week and still hadn't fixed it, so he paid
them over $400 to get it back. I took a look at it and found the problem
in 15 seconds. The lug on the ground wire to the sending unit had
snapped, and the wire was hanging down, in plain sight. A new lug took a
few minutes to install and it worked fine, till he traded it in on a new
car a few years later.