Adk46

In the NY Times today:

Shortage of Auto Mechanics Has Dealerships Taking Action https://nyti.ms/2ppVRtG

'"There’s less of a mechanical interest and understanding among young people,” said Gary Uyematsu, national technical training manager at BMW of North America, noting that the biggest hurdle in hiring is the difference in basic skills. “They are not hands-on. Mechanics used to start with some gas station experience. Now the experience a person gets working at a gas station is selling slushies.”'

Perhaps this is good news for the future owners of vintage "digital" cars, but not for our complex non-digital 928's. I don't like slushies, either.

I should find some young person to train on my car.

hacker-pschorr

The article is spot on and 15+ years too late.
I'm friends with the lead instructor at our local tech school which teaches a 2 year ASE certified program. He complains all the time the kids coming into class have zero passion for the work, drop out rates are high and even those who graduate struggle to make it in the field.

Unfortunately this problem is spread through any "physical" labor type job. We are running out of plumbers, carpenters, HVAC techs, machinists etc... Talking to local contractors they are turning away jobs and losing money because thy cannot find anyone to do the work. This is a huge problem getting worse by the year, with no real solution in site.
The average age of a master plumber is 58 years old, I suspect similar numbers at most repair shops.

Look up Mike Rowe and his work, he's been leading the charge to turn this around for about a decade but it's not changing fast enough.


Newer cars are infinitely more complex than a 928, it's not even close. Try working on a BMW VANOS system, you'll wish you were doing a clutch master blindfolded with a chimpanzee high on adderall as your assistant.

IMO the issue with 928's is people assume they should be simple like a 65 Buick and do not take the little quirks seriously. Yes this even applies to electrical faults. In our cars you have a switch, some wires and a relay. No try to diagnose a faulty BMW window which is connected to multiple ECU's and fiber optics. The expensive factory computers do not do a great job at telling you what the exact problem it. Most of the time they point you in a general direction where the real fun begins.

Vintage shops do exist that take the time necessary to do the job right, even if they have zero experience in such cars. Most of what these shops see are not anything they "know". The downside? They charge accordingly so yes I agree having our cars serviced will be ever increasing, that goes with the territory of owning a classic exotic car.

V2Rocket

Maybe the shortage will make dealerships start to offer pay that is worth the hassle of being a staff mechanic.
Dealer charges $100-$150/hour but even a hot-shot high quality, fast-working shop tech might get $15/hour out of that.

Working on "newer stuff" isn't really that enjoyable compared to older stuff because of how masterful the car companies have gotten with packaging. Certainly getting 10lbs of sausage into a 5lb wrapper these days.

dr bob

History suggests that the best mechanics/tech used to work for a negotiated slice of the revenue on each "job". The 'service adviser' (read: salesman) had a slice too. There was often some cooperation/collusion between the salesman and the mechanic to add to the intrigue.

Meanwhile, dealers are trying to manage costs by paying only a minimum to get workers in the door. The majority of what they do is classified as service, so fluid swaps and brake inspections are the talents needed. The ability to accurately diagnose and repair things has been superseded by the ability to plug in a diagnostic computer and swap components.

Our local PCA chapter has an ongoing relationship with the auto tech program at the community colleges here. I need to go sign up for some classes there to bring a few of my "skills" out of the dark ages. And hopefully add to the partnering relationship that the chapter promotes.

In the past year, some of the highly-promoted tech schools have gone away, mostly it seems because of the high costs and relatively low graduation and employment rates. Entry qualification included financial but not necessarily technical capabilities.

There was a time when a measurable percentage of the population "grew up on the farm" and learned how to make things work starting at a young age. Parents taught their children and grandchildren, as everyone depended on the family farm for their livelihood. That learning path is all but gone too.

-----

The local Wendy's is trying to entice new employees with a $12-15/hr starting wage. Young people here would rather work in a social environment with their friends than actually "work" at a trade. Places that have a drug screening program for new hires are suffering in a state where marijuana use is legal. It's hard to illustrate to youngsters that a single positive test can affect their ability to get a security clearance later in life. Education only goes so far these days.

M. Requin

All comments spot on. My HS had shop courses in woodworking (electronics, too!- back in '59) that turned out highly skilled craftsmen - some of their senior projects would blow your mind - who were immediately hired by the local furniture industry (Hickory, NC). All my HS cohort (just about) did some work on their own cars, from changing oil up to building them. Skills were passed on, and acquired. No longer, and our collective loss. There is an old German guy over in the Shenandoah Valley who will close his shop because he cannot find anyone to take it over. I think he would GIVE it away if he could. It's a shop that looks like a derelict mom-and-pop gas station with two big above-ground tanks of Sunoco racing fuel (he services the local drag strip), and a Sunnen honing machine, among other things, of the type required to refinish 928 blocks, which he knows how to do. Soon gone. What a planet.

Hold On

Not sure about CA. but a hot shot ,high quality, fast working flat rate mechanic here makes $100K+ a year. I can`t touch a producer for less that $30/hr.

FredR

The art of repairing things has all but dissappeared. Sometimes it work sin our favour but most of the time it does not. On my Jaguar I had three failures on system equipment and the component that cuased the failure was peanuts in each case. The stalk to adjust the wing mirros failed- a pissly liitle plastic stalk- cost for a new switch pack unit $1k. Service manager said they could not fix it but offered to remove it and fit for free if I could get it fixed. 24 hours after getting the unit I gave it back- fixed- by me using a darning needle as the replacement stalk and a plastic valve cap as the new ****. A few weeks later the steering rack input shaft seal sprung a leak- same thing $1k for a replacement steering box - they removed it and I boiled it in washing powder for 10 minutes to re-soften the lip seal - 10 years later still sealing. Then the drive gear in the windscreen motor wiper unit failed- again $1k for a new unit- pulled it apart, spotted the problem inserted pins into the poxy plastic drive gear that had sheared, cut out the bits that were shot and rebuilt it with some two pack epoxy to hold it all together once more. Simple repair components just not available to Joe public. I guess it is pretty much the same story the world over. The more high tech cars get the worse the problem gets.

On the other hand over here I managed to get my high pressure power steering hose rebuilt for $13 a few weeks ago! Life is not all bad but...?

Bigfoot928

This is the same in IT and especially Security..... the kids today learn basics.. but no fundamentals... and get lost when outside a script or list of things to check... and companies wonder why your salary covers 5-6 times what a rookie costs... because you can bail the company out time and time again..

Captain_Slow

The article is spot on. All that Hacker says is true also. I see it everyday as a high school science, GIS, and Tech Ed teacher. It's gotten worse over the years, especially after the iPhone and other smartphones arrived.

GregBBRD

Welcome to my life!

It takes me about two years to train a qualified mechanic (not some kid out of a trade school....they generally know absolutely nothing) how to understand, diagnosis, and work on a 928. A non-mechanic with basic understanding of tools...three years minimum.

This is to train them to understand one single model car!

I can't fathom how people work on Porsche's, BMW's, and Mercedes all under one roof. (Actually, looking at the work that has been done to these cars before they arrive here, I do understand how they do it...it's not pretty.)

Over 50% of the work I do has been attempted or already "done" by someone else! Over 25% has been attempted or already "done" by more than one shop. I've literally had cars brought into the shop that have had thousands and thousands of dollars spent on them to repair a problem, which I diagnosis over the phone....before they get here.

I got a call from a "bigtime" Porsche shop in San Diego (100 miles south of me) that had a 928 that wouldn't start and run...that had their top guy working on the car for an entire week. He was literally 40 hours into the car and was no further than when the car arrived. I asked three questions and waited on the line for him to go check these things one at a time. The third question was the problem. Diagnosed the car in 13 minutes! He got paid for his 40 hours....I got paid....well nothing.

The main bitch about my shop (from people that have never been here) is that I'm expensive.

I just laugh.

The local ones all end up here, sooner or later.....

worf928

+1 what H-P wrote.
+928 what Doc Brown wrote. And that's exactly how I got started working on other people's 928s: actually re-repairing what shops messed up.

The really sobering thing is that all of these 'physical trades' (e..g repairing, installing whether it's cars and car parts or plumbing and pipes) are the jobs that cannot be outsourced to China. Damn near anything else - and especially jobs where someone's sitting in front of a 'puter - can and will be either out-sourced or replaced by machine leanring algorithms.

The exception are those 'puter jobs that have to be done by American citizens in an air-gapped environment.

GT6ixer

It is a shame that we don't have good apprenticeship programs here in the US. My wife and I are saving up for our son's education, however we are not going to push him to go to college unless he has a passion to study a subject that a college would be best suited for. If he has an interest in a vocation like carpentry, landscaping, welding, blacksmithing, being a mechanic, whatever, that's what we will encourage him to pursue.

twinreds

If that makes you concerned, wait until you see what they are doing to the training of physicians and surgeons in the USA. You'll be better dead than ill

ammonman

I work in maintenance and reliability engineering at the corporate level for a fortune 50 manufacturing company. The lack of technical talent coupled with the baby boomers exiting the work force is so bad that we are in near-crisis mode. In part, I blame us for not having a meaningful "skilled trades" brand and not educating students and parents on the career possibilities in skilled trades. If you get into industrial maintenance and repair out of high school you can easily make over six figures in 10 -15 years with no student debt. I also fault the elitist academics in our public school system that have painted a picture to young people and their parent that your only choices are a four year degree (and the associated debt) or flipping burgers. The reality is in not too many years, as people become more and more dependent on technology and unable to do without their creature comforts the skilled tradesperson will be among the most highly paid in western society. "Your AC is out? Damn shame. What is it worth to you to get it repaired?"

Mike

Captain_Slow

True about the over-emphasis on "everyone must go to college" over the past 30+ years. It started with the space race. But the part about "or you will be flipping burgers" is still true if students are not motivated to pursue any form of post secondary education/vocational training. This apathy is contributing to the lack of skilled mechanics/high tech technicians.

I've been impressed with how Chevy supports the Volt. They have an engineer hotline the mechanics can call for help, or to report their observations of problems with design. In my experience I've noticed it results in very swift troubleshooting and repairs. The techs who work on Volts get a LOT of training.