One might say the most challenging part of being an automotive service technician in Denver is diagnosing a problem before it can be fixed.

All cars today are made up of many complex systems.  There usually could be a number of reasons for any given symptom.  So it’s challenging to track down and actually diagnose the car’s problem.  And it can be frustrating for the vehicle owner because it can take time and money to get to the bottom of the problem. If it’s not something obvious, it’s easy for the customer to focus on the fixing and not the diagnosing.

Let us at Express Car Care introduce you to something we’ll call ” Customer Detective Work”, that is helping the technician find clues to what is wrong.

We’ll start with the detective basics:  What, Where and When.  Play along with me; You come in to Express Car Care and your car is making a funny sound…

• Where’s the sound? – “Around the right front wheel”.
• What kind of sound? – “Kind of a clunk, clunk, sound”.
• When do you hear the sound? – “When I turn and accelerate”.
• Right and left? Forwards and back?

You see where we’re going?  You’re gathering additional information to help your technician know where to start.  Based on your customer detective work, your car and the tech’s experience, we’ll know where to look on your vehicle and can start with the obvious suspects.

You can see how that would be more helpful than dropping the car off with a note that says “making a funny noise”.

When you think you need to bring your vehicle in, make some notes about the problem it’s having.  Rather than just saying “it’s leaking”, tell the tech the color of the fluid, and approximately where under the car you see the puddle.

Things like “the car is stalling or sputtering” are often very hard to diagnose because they’re intermittent.  They may not happen every time you drive and may not be happening when you actually bring the car in for service.  So it’s a big help for you to describe what’s happening in as much detail as possible.

Your technician at Express Car Care will need to be able to duplicate the problem if possible, so he needs to know details, for example,” it stalls after it’s been driven for about 20 minutes and when I go over 50 miles an hour.”

If a customer does their detective work than the technician is  better able to make a diagnosis and repair.  And then test to see if the repair has solved the problem.