 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Unlevel Playing Field of Information ExchangePosted 5/17/1997By Mark Warren, AAM
To control a population, a repressive government's first order of business is to control the flow of information. The Communists took control of information to an extreme by utilizing the concept of "disinformation," which is the fabrication and dissemination of false information. Civilization is founded on information and education. A highly educated population demands a fair government. Our country's founders recognized the essential need to free access to information, and made free speech an essential part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. While free speech may seem to be a black-and-white issue, this is rarely the case. You can't legally yell "fire" in a crowded theater (unless it's true). So what do we measure the restriction of free speech against? Intent. Intent is a critical concept in law. So, when judging the restriction of free information exchange, intent and motives must be examined. My past series of articles has dealt with the difficulty of repairing vehicles without proper information. Let's examine the possible motives of automobile manufacturers for withholding important information relating to the successful repair of their makes and models. Trade secrets. Any manufacturer certainly has the right to have trade secrets within its engineering and manufacturing facilities. However, it would be naive to believe that these secrets exist after the release of an automobile for sale. Every major manufacturer in the world has a "competitive analysis research department." This department is in charge of purchasing and dissecting competitors' products to see what makes them tick. Any trade secret not covered by a patent is fair game for the competition. The trade secret argument doesn't hold water. The second motive for withholding information is to gain a competitive advantage. As cars have become a commodity and consumer brand loyalty has waned, business for new car dealerships has become tougher to come by. Profit margins on new car sales are so thin that dealers have to find new profit centers to stay alive. Service, parts and used cars are the only places to go. Satellite repair centers are becoming more popular for dealers. We independents are a pretty lean, mean, fighting machine, so you can't blame the competition for not wanting to compete on a level playing field! Hey, didn't we fight this battle and win? Didn't the Clean Air Act state we get access to all necessary information? Well, yes and no. With lawyers fueling this engine, we can be sure it will never stop. Anytime someone passes a law, the interpreters of the law move in. The manufacturers' thought process has seemed to flow along these lines: How about we guarantee access to information only through our manufacturer-specific scan tool? How about we price our scan tool so that no independent could afford to buy all of them? Didn't we comply with the law? The law never stated cost limitations. Perhaps rather than print our technical service bulletins (TSBs), we should install computer terminals in our service departments and communicate through e-mail? Surely the independents have no right to read our mail! Despite the current problems, new rules are in the process. ASA has friends in high places and is assisting shops in getting new rules passed. But expect new dodges and angles from the manufacturers trying to get around the new rules. This game never ends. TSBs used to be the private domain of dealers and manufacturers. Access to this information was championed by consumer groups. They asserted that many bulletins amounted to secret warranties. Consumers who griped loud enough got free repairs and nice consumers got charged. This constituted unfair trade practices. The consumer's "right to know" won. Kodak was involved in a lawsuit a few years back involving access to parts and repair information for their copiers. A large independent copier repair company filed suit when Kodak refused to sell them parts. Kodak asserted their right to limit access to parts and information so that they could assure the quality of their copiers by doing all repairs themselves. Guess who signed on as friends of Kodak in this case? You guessed it, some of the car manufacturers. "Independents aren't qualified." Does that sound like the argument against independents being able to reprogram flash proms in the new computers? I have not followed this case. I am told Kodak won. I'll try to get more information on this subject. The third motive for suppressing internal computer strategies is not wanting to admit what they have done. Who wants to admit they programmed the car to pass the Federal Test Procedure and nothing more? The intent of the law is cleaner air. The intent of many car companies was to squeak by the law. Who wants to confess to cheating on the pristine goal of clean air? I am not anti-manufacturer. Not all of these issues are black and white. Making a car pass arbitrary regulations is not easy. Technology is barely keeping up with the demands of the public. However, the manufacturers would have greater credibility if they had not stonewalled every effort for safer and cleaner cars. The first TSB I saw was in 1970 when a friend who worked at a dealership showed it to me. This TSB related to valve noise on an expensive muscle car that used solid lifters. The noise was normal for this engine configuration, but consumers were accustomed to hydraulic lifters that were much quieter, and consumers perceived this noise as a "problem." The "fix" was to install a thick fiberglass blanket on the firewall and to double insulate the penetrations through the firewall. This is an example of the manufacturer being between a rock and a hard place. The noise was normal, but the consumer demanded a fix. The fix was legitimate, but who wants to step up to the plate and explain this to the consumer? There is another information promise that has never been delivered. States with centralized emission testing realized that the emission contractors were in a prime position to collect pattern failure data. This could save thousands of hours of diagnostics, save the consumer money and help clean the air. Wow! Also they could keep a report card on shops and let the consumer know who was best! Well, we did get our report card anyway. Why wasn't the other promise delivered? The best answer I have heard to date is that manufacturers are squeamish about having the public know they have cars that just won't pass some state emission programs. Case in point: Toyota trucks in Tucson, Ariz. We have an idle and loaded cruise test. These trucks fail the cruise test in hot weather, 7 percent CO. So, the customer drops off the truck. We pull it inside and proceed to run tests. It passes with flying colors. Hmmm. OK, so we don't have a dyno to set the load, but the state load is only 5-15 horsepower, depending on the weight of the vehicle. So we turn on the A/C and lights, and as many loads as possible to simulate the same conditions. Pretty smart, huh? Well, still no failure. OK, let's drive it around for awhile and retest. Still no failure. Perhaps the customer didn't properly warm up the car before the test. Maybe they had the A/C on during the test. Maybe they had a hard time maintaining the speed on the dyno and were pumping the gas pedal at the time of the test. So, armed with all this information, the customer goes back to the test station. Fail. Ah, yes, now I'm the bad guy! OK, bring it back and we'll retest it. Perfect emissions. How do you fix a car when you can't repeat the failure? Start guessing, I suppose. Overhaul the carburetor? Clean the injectors? Check the canister system? Test all systems? I'm here to tell you we tried them all. I know people still trying them today. After finally capturing a few cars failing, we found that they would pass if the gas cap was left off (no longer possible - they check that), or if the canister vacuum hose to the canister diaphragm was left off. But isn't that cheating? So, after five years of wrestling with this monetary and moral dilemma, I learned from a friend that the cure was to fill the tank with gas! Ouch! It seems logical that a 15-gallon tank with two gallons of gas in it has 13 gallons of air in it. In Tucson, the air temperature 18 inches off the blacktop can be 140 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, the exhaust system imparts heat to the gas tank. The two gallons of fuel going to the engine and returning also gets quite hot, especially when idling for 30 minutes in a test lane line. It seems that the fuel is just about boiling in that tank and a ton of fumes want someplace to go. This Toyota purges at 2,500 RPM, so when the cruise test is run ... fuel city! The trucks don't fail in a nice cool shaded shop; they don't fail after sitting around; and they don't fail when driving because of the cooling effect of the wind. No, they only fail at the station. Toyota didn't fail in their design; the FTP is run inside at 72 degrees Fahrenheit! They passed. This is a regional pattern failure that should be identified and reported. The solution is to fill the tank! This is the moral dilemma we face every day in the repair industry. Who picks up the tab for my lack of information? Do I call my customers who wasted money and tell them I'm incompetent and I want to give them all their money back? How do I recoup this money? Do I advise my future customers to "fill your tank, that will be $60 for my knowledge"? I know who pays. The consumer pays and often we pay out of our pocket. How can I charge when I didn't deliver the goods? The solution is simple, WE NEED INFORMATION!
Opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of AutoInc. or the Automotive Service Association.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright (c) 1996-2008. Automotive Service Association. All rights reserved.
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
