OT Why $7.50 is enough

I am not sure what trick is necessary to install a car entertainment system. Virtually any car made in this century is pre wired for it and DIN mount systems just snap in. You will need the right adapter harness to connect a 3d party system to the OEM harness but this pretty easy stuff. The "radio" (nav, mp3 player, cd/dvd or whatever) is a FRU. (Field Replaceable Unit) I doubt anyone actually fixes them these days, at least not as a business. You don't see a TV repair shop in every strip mall these days either.

That is a big part of the problem. Bumping up the minimum wage does not lift all boats. It just compresses the wage scale. If the raise from being a starting fryer cleaner, floor mopper to shift manager is only 73 cents it makes it hard to motivate your employees to get better and your turnover rate is horrendous. That "$32,000 a year manager" is probably exempt and works way more than 40 hours a week for a straight salary, not hourly, making his "$16 an hour" actually less than the floor mopper makes.

Overall youtube videos are an excellent source of repair information in my experience. They have saved me countless hours. Need to replace a window regulator, for example? You can find videos showing where all the door fasteners are and how it comes apart. Those are way better than even a Bentley manual or the dealer service manual for something like that. I've seen videos where you can change CV boots with half the work that you would have if you followed the manual method.

But there are some examples of misinformation. I was looking at how to replace the non-replaceable battery in a BMW key fob for example. There were very good videos that were very helpful, I got it done. But I came across one video where the guy said that they don't use rechargeable batteries, you can just replace it with a non-rechargeable 3V coin cell battery. To prove it, he showed the ignition switch area with the cover removed. He showed that there was coil of wire there and he claimed that it was impossible that could charge the key fob battery, that it was the antenna for the receiver. Wrong. That wire coil generates a varying magnetic field that is coupled to a corresponding small wire coil in the key fob and that's how they charge the key. A good example where some science education, some basic knowledge is needed. Besides that it should be obvious that it would be really bad to put a non-replaceable, non-rechargeable battery in a key fob.

But our vehicles aren't your 1965 pickup that you use to feed the kangaroos, stupid.

So you'd not look at some of the new car systems have you.

You'd be right if I was still driving my '83 Old Cutlass.

You'd be wrong. Plenty of decent mechanics do what is necessary with fuel injected cars now without any training at all.

Yes, plenty like you do the shotgun approach when say the engine is running rough, changing everything that is easy to change to see if that fixes it, first the plugs, then the leads etc but that's not how the best mechanics do things.

Anyone with any real diagnostic skills considers what can produce the symptoms seen and sees if the OBD2 has anything to say about what has failed. You don't need training for that, just be a competent diagnostician.

And that's all that needs fixing with most modern cars before you replace it for other reasons.

That's bullshit on the training. It isnt hard to check the plugs to see if one of them looks bad and to try moving them around if they look fine. And to try new plugs, that doesn't cost much.

Same if one of the electric windows stops working or the battery goes flat much more quickly than it had done when it was new.

Sure there will always be some curly faults, but a decent mechanic doesn't need training to fix them, just decent diagnostic skills.

Yes, you are one of those that need training. Decent mechanics don't.

Lots of times the managers will actually be making less per hour than some of the workers as they have to fill in when someone is out. Reminds me of my dad. He worked for a mobile home builder. He was one of the first few hired. After about 2 years they wanted to make him a forman at a salary but he did not really want that job as it was a working forman type of job. He did take it and for the first 3 months it was fine. Then the company started working over time After about 3 months of that he looked at his pay and hours and was making a lot less than the ones under him. Told the company to let him go back to his old job or he was leaving. So they let him go back to his old job.

I had that car looked at by the Dodge dealer mechanics in two different towns. So that must mean neither dealer had a decent mecchanic.

What about the ECM? Does you guy have what is needed to check it out and change parameters? What about the many microprocessors? How do you track them down?

Yes it does. And clearly the training they had didn't help them with that curly fault.

Not only that, to reprogram it for better performance too. Trivially buyable on the net.

You don?t normally need to, they don?t usually fail and if say you diagnose that whats in the 'radio' or the screen has failed, you just replace it.

One of our sons wanted to work in restaurant management and went into a training program and that is what he discovered and went into another field. Working as a database manager a couple of years ago he quit his job for the same job at lower pay where in reality he made more per hour as it was only a 40 hour week.

As Clare pointed out, a high minimum wage just makes a shorter barrel. The top wage will be slow to move as the bottom wage starts catching up to it. Unless the market can tolerate higher prices the total cost of labor has to be pretty static. If prices rise, it eats into that gain you got from the wage hike.

What does let it go back mean? I have an idea, but it can't be right.

Many years ago I bought a used Toyota that was almost $5000 less expensive than all of the similar vehicles in the area at the time. I didn't realize until later that the automatic climate control didn't work. Everything worked manually, but the auto part just blew full cold. The Toyota dealer said it was a bad computer and would cost $3800 plus labor. Googling, I found someone with the same problem and the responder asked what the diagnostic code said. Hmm, a diagnostic code? Checking the factory service manual, I saw that holding 3 buttons on the nav unit while turning on the ignition would initiate a self-test. My codes were 11 and 21, with 11 being 'no daylight detected from the daylight sensor", which was normal because it was dark, and 21, which said "no response detected from the cabin air temp sensor", with a picture showing where that sensor is and how to remove and replace it. Reaching up under the dash, it was immediately obvious that the sensor was unplugged. I plugged it in, which cleared code 21, and it worked for the next 15 years when I finally sold it.

Sometimes you get lucky, like I did, but I agree with y'all who are saying that proper training is necessary these days. Without training, it's easy to get into a mode where various parts get replaced, hoping each time that the issue will be resolved.

To me it means drive it to the dealer , remove my license tag and tell them to take that piece of junk and do with it what they want, I will not be comming back after it. That is if I had financed it on time from them and had not made much of a down payment.

ECM problems are not "fixed" with a tune chip. Fact is, microprocessors do fail. Just replace the radio? A head unit for my car lists at $3000. The more you go on how simple it is the more you show how little you know of new cars.

Maybe computers don't scare me but I think new cars are a lot easier to work on than my 69 Corvette. They throw a code that gets you in the ball park, at least what the computer saw that was wrong. Then that MAP Clare was talking about will let you isolate farther. They typically only require modest skills with VOM. You can usually find that page or two from the shop manual on the net or someone will upload it. (I buy the books for my cars and outboards) Sure you can fall out of the MAP but that is not as often as you would think. At that point you are probably not any worse off than the guy at the Stealer anyway. You are looking for broken wires, bad connections or something interfering with that sensor's reading.

I really haven't had any problem navigating codes on my cars but I have much more experience with new outboards. They have the same basic hardware, OBDII interface and maintenance philosophy.

Of course a brake job is still a brake job and not that much different than my old Woodstock era Corvette.

Lots of hardware guys at IBM made more than their boss if they worked a lot of overtime. That is the nature of the beast. At my wife's club the head server was offered a management position many times. She always declined. She was willing to do the managing but she wouldn't take the pay cut to go exempt. I was in a similar position in my job. I had the management responsibility in Ft Myers but not the title. It was a good thing. The manager got laid off long before I left.