Mechanics Seek Out 'Right to Repair'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703555804576102272750344178.html

Mechanics Seek Out 'Right to Repair'
By ANGUS LOTEN

When independent mechanic Joe Marconi replaced a faulty windshield-wiper switch last summer on a 2004 Saab — a minor type of repair often done at his shop — the car wouldn't start. Mr. Marconi, who owns Osceola Garage in Baldwin Place, N.Y., discovered the switch needed to be "initialized," something only a Saab dealership can do. Initializing is a problem that has been happening more and more often, says the 55-year-old mechanic. "The entire car basically has to be reprogrammed to accept the new part," he says. In the end, he was forced to pass the vehicle, and his customer, on to the dealer.

As auto makers design vehicles with increasingly sophisticated technology, independent mechanics complain they lack the proprietary tools and data to service many late-model cars. There are some 500,000 independent auto-repair shops in the U.S., industry figures show. Many garage owners hope the new small-business-friendly tone in Washington will re-energize the Right to Repair Act, a bill they say levels the playing field with auto dealerships. The bill, which in various forms has languished in Congress for nearly a decade, requires auto makers like Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., to supply smaller repair shops with the same onboard-computer data they give to their affiliated dealerships. Technology in newer vehicles controls everything from the steering wheel to the fuel delivery system, brakes, air bags, tire pressure and more.

Supporters, including a range of auto-service-trade associations, consumer groups and small-business advocates, say the move will boost competition in the auto-repair market, forcing dealerships to lower prices. Auto makers, who fiercely oppose the bill, say they need to protect trade secrets from cheap generic parts makers. The car makers say mechanics already have access to what they need to get vehicles back on the road. Yet there appears to be some grass-roots support for the bill. A survey in November by AutoMD.com, an auto-repair-information website, found 83% of 2,800 car owners polled said they favored right-to-repair legislation. Supporters have shown up on Capitol Hill in jumpsuits and overalls to rally lawmakers to pass the measure.

Initially introduced by Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas) just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the bill was buried under a wave of national-security legislation. It has since been reintroduced in every federal legislative session, only to get bogged down amid strong lobbying by auto makers and dealers. The latest version was sponsored last year in the Senate by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) and Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), while a bill put forward two years earlier by Reps. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.), Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.) and George Miller (D., Calif.) had more than 60 co-sponsors, including high-ranking members from both parties. Both Sen. Boxer and Rep. Towns expect to reintroduce the bill as early as possible in the new session, with concessions aimed at easing auto makers' intellectual-property concerns, their spokespeople say...

K&R

Perhaps that would be a good field to train young people in if the present mechanics cannot work on them? Won't they still need the mechanics to fix the car once the computer tells them what is wrong with the car?

:shrug:

They could have first dibs on any openings.

ha - accidental pun

Read the article. It's not about training

the parts or the switches. How do they do that if they are not trained??

that the manufacturers won't sell.

It's an antitrust issue, imho.

Make all the manufacturers embed linux to control the onboard systems. :)

If you bought it, it should be yours!

thereby driving out the possibility of small businesses. The mechanics will be able to work for the dealership repair agency in the future, but won't be able to aspire to owning their own shop. It's the difference between working for Fantastic Sam's and owning your own beauty salon, except in this case there are barriers being erected to prevent the 'own shop' option from staying viable.

to create their own businesses. It also wipes out the ability of private individuals to seek out bargains in maintaining their own property. How many working people are able to afford cars now only because they know a mechanic who gives them a deal?

It is one more area of our lives in which we will not be able to escape what the corporations decree we should spend to maintain and operate our possessions. They can plan and time the intervals for maintenance and control the costs. Gone are the days when someone with some know-how could buy a wiper at the auto parts store and install it himself.

This will not stop at cars and computers.

They are no longer selling things to us. They are pulling us into contracts that they can control and amend at will for the lifetime of everything we buy and need.

That they will not share with mechanics not working for them and for replacement parts manufacturers. Sort of like trying to write software for an Apple product - you also have to reverse engineer the OS to get the information to write the program. And most mechanics do not have the knowledge to get into a car's OS.

Of course, they could go the way of Microsoft and give out enough information for mechanics and replacement parts manufacturers to develop "Plug and Pray" parts. And we all know how well that works! Sometimes it's great, sometimes its a nightmare.

If we don't get something done about this, the auto manufacturers will come up with chips that shut down the cars once they reach the manufacturers' predetermined end of life, forcing us to replace our cars more often! (I'm thinking of those damn chips they put into ink cartridges which do not allow the printers to recognize them if they are too old, have been refilled or were made by a third party manufacturer.)

I'd rather stab myself than go to a dealership for what might be considered a "basic" repair like this.

So where does that leave me?

You must keep feeding the beast.

to offer much reason to stay. So they had to create a never leave system... What a shame...

Because of my job, I cannot give specifics. This is the new big thing with a lot of major manufacturers.

to get customer loyalty, nah nasty hidden rippoff scams are easier

what greedy assholes, glad I drive old pieces of shit even I can work on.

It seems to me that most (if not all) "Intellectual Property" assertions have become nothing more than a way for the the Owner Class to screw the rest of us.

sw

They have their clever ways.

Maybe a loose analogy, but it reminds of me of what is happening with computer games that are supposedly "sold" to the buyer, but include only three or five installations before the game shuts down.

The buyer then has to contact the seller to get the game "reinitialized," supposedly to prevent piracy.

If you buy something, it should be yours. You should not be on a leash to the seller for the rest of the product's existence.

It would be good for the independent mechanics, and gives consumers the chance to use someone other than the dealership.

I remember as a graduate student hearing how surgeons at the affiliated medical school were taught some techniques which were patented.

They could not *use* said techniques when they left unless some kind of financial contract was established with the technique's owner.

I'm sure that any people caught in a life threatening situation would be thrilled to know that their doctor could not chose the best technique to cure them, just the best technique the doctor owns intellectual rights to.

At that point I realized that any laws which try to limit a person's ability to use knowledge or skills are inherently immoral.

And they call US pirates.

I like to keep some of my anonymity, so I'm not going to say what type of equipment. All I can say is that this is the new big thing for several manufacturers of large industrial equipment.

if what this mechanic says is true the car isn't usable until it is brought to the dealer to get 'reset'. I can't see that as possible unless the mechanic doesn't have the equipment to clear certain 'high level' codes which AFAIK most modern mechanics have. Only situation where that sort of thing happens is when there is a change in the smart key system or a computer module like the engine computer but not a 'simple' wiper switch.

Is it possible some automakers introduced new systems/computers that aren't backward compatible with a tool from a couple of years ago or that won't accept an override except through a dealer tool/code, yes, but that doesn't make sense with what is claimed that 'the mechanics have all the data they need'.

The only other aspect I can think of is some dealer firmware/software that can basically only be 'touched' with dealer tools that aren't AFAIK available to anyone except dealers or if you happen to buy one off a dealer that gets shutdown/goes out of business. What little I know about that though isn't generally needed to repair a car, that falls more into modification or customization when making adjustments out of spec with parts that should be used, ie performance modifications etc.

Whatever the case I don't think it makes sense that only dealers should be able to make repairs to customers cars by shutting out independent mechanics or even customers doing the work themselves with technology designed to 'need' a dealer for the vast majority of repairs.

It is a monopoly function.

My brother-in-law works as a mechanic for a large construction company, fixing trucks mostly, and of course, he has to do various things to the engines' onboard computers. Every time he uses the software from the manufacturer to connect to an engine computer in one of those diesels, to tweak various parameters such as injector timing, governor settings, and so on, the software automatically phones home to the manufacturer, and the company gets charged something like $70, every time, for tweaking a few bytes in firmware.

That is pure fucking bullshit.

In fact, that may be where the idea came from. Certain computer models come with hardcoded BIOS features (that cannot be edited without danger to your system) designed to prevent the usage of OEM parts acquired from anywhere other than the manufacturer of the computer. Try letting someone replace a wireless card or a RAM chip in a Thinkpad to see an example.

And we're getting more of these types of problems every day. Only the dealer can change my oil, and it has nothing to do with the warranty on my new car. There's an 8-bolt plate blocking access to the entire underside of the front compartment, which you cannot remove without a car lift, and the car's computer has to be reinitialized for that procedure as well.

if you were so inclined but yeah dealers have been designing cars to thwart shade tree mechanics and it seems from the article independent ones as well. I can only hope newer EV/hybrids aren't so draconian in serviceable parts, as I really hope that is the only type of 'new' car I'll be buying in the future.

So I think the manufacturers are going to be doing everything in their power to keep you from taking your electric to anyone except the dealer.

You can't use anything other than a Cisco SFP in a Cisco switch.

the cost for that tool is very expensive for a mechanic. My friend had an exotic Italian car that required a 500.00 wrench......in the end he made a tool. This isn't just happening with autos it happends with all sorts of stuff from electronic to appliances.

http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/


a Maker's Bill of Rights to accessible, extensive, and repairable hardware.

Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.

Cases shall be easy to open.

Batteries should be replaceable.

Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.

Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.

Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.

Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.

Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.

Circuit boards shall be commented.

Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.

Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.

If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.

Screws better than glues.

Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.

Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.

Metric or standard, not both.

Schematics shall be included. http://makezine.com/04/ownyourown/

and the practice will spread if not addressed.

One you buy something, it should be yours. Period. You should not be on a leash to the seller for the rest of the product's existence.

I can repair each one, bow to stern, by myself (with a little help from the local pick-it-yourself boneyard).

mikey_the_rat

If I can't fix it, I don't want it.

I've heard 80%-90% of their revenue comes from the service dept.

I'll be damned.

That's how ridiculous it's gotten.

I put a new battery in my 1991 Volvo wagon and, sure enough, the radio didn't work. The anti-theft deal on the radio kicked in and locked it until you enter a code, using the radio's buttons. Fortunately for me, the previous owner kept the little card with the code on it with the owner's manual and every receipt from every service done on the car. So, I had the code. If I didn't have that card, I'd either have to take the car to the dealer, who can look up the code, or get it from Volvo's web site, which doesn't list cars that old on its website.

I thought the stupid car was too old to have an anti-theft deal on the radio, but I guess not. Who'd want an old OEM Volvo radio and cassette player any freaking how?

GM: you need to be a dealer, have access to their proprietary site, GM Global Connect, which gives you access to the service diagrams, computer programs (GDS and GDSII), and computer server which is accessed using one of these via laptop



connected to the car and set up to connect to your dealer internal network. Then you can reprogram the computer and reprogram or program the modules. And it costs $1600.


It ain't right. a customer can't work on his car in the driveway anymore.

Those clunkers could be fixed. The cars that replaced them, not so much.

We can't allow a challenge to that unfair monopoly because it would create problems for this unfair monopoly. What the hell kind of reason is that?

The claims that you can no longer do any work on your own car are not true for the vast majority of vehicles being sold now. This, pardon the pun, SAAB-story is an extreme example, but may be an omen of things to come. On that car, the wiper switch is part of an integrated steering column module that includes all sorts of crap. Here's what I found on Alldata about it:




So we're not talking about just a little wiper switch here. I work as a professional dealership mechanic(I also worked independent for years) and I have never seen anything that convoluted in my experience. The story about poor Joe The Mechanic is a bit misleading. He should have been aware that the car would require dealership servicing before even beginning this repair.

I am not trying to sugarcoat the situation, though. Things are indeed getting worse. There are electronic sensors all over the car now, and sometimes these sensors need to be recalibrated if a repair is performed. For instance, cars with electric instead of hydraulic steering assist may need to have the steering position sensor calibrated if a wheel alignment is performed. Also, the vehicles I work on have up to 30 individual computer modules controlling almost every electrical function of the vehicle. These modules often require reprogramming for improved performance or to cure software glitches, and that can only be done with the proper link-up hardware, software, and permissions.

I do think it's wrong for companies to intentionally make a vehicle more difficult for non-dealership techs to work on. I see exaples of this type of thing often enough, and they piss me off too. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of vehicles come in to the shop with electrical problems caused by aftermarket noodling, and an owner demanding we fix it for free under factory warranty. As usual, there are two sides to the story.