Geez, and we have lousy on both ends.

I think the attention to detail is where it's really at.
Not the "OK, I'll get it running, and then I'll come back and neaten it up tomorrow".
Seems like tomorrow never comes.

I work on an aircraft mechanics boat. He is a do it yourselfer on his boat but like most he comes to the shop when he can't handle something. He is a top aircraft mechanic that gets flown all over the country to diagnose and repair problems. After seeing the work he's done on his boat engine, I feel unsafe flying. Maybe it's because he's out of his area of expertise, but some of his work is just plain sloppy.

Very true, I hate paper work. The worst guy in my shop could hand write greeting cards, I can't even make my name look good.:D

My curiosity stems from my association with other techs in this field. I've met 5 so far that came from the aircraft maintenance side and they had difficulty making the change. Especially with the Verado applications and they were usually pretty stumped at the prospect of 6 drive work.

Transmissions (racing or otherwise) were another topic altogether.

Bobl hit the nail on the head ! The majority of the techs I have worked/am working with are "non-diagnostic". For the problem described these guys will just throw parts at it until it's fixed.

That mentality infuriates me.

The worst part of the AP guys for me is they all 5 finger all the Ti. hardware from their shops and use it on their bikes and it's all Euro. metric.

Don't always blame the guy in the field. When you take our labor rate vs. the cost of the replacement parts, it has become company policy to just figure out what component is causing the problem and replace it. It's cheaper to replace the whole (whatever) and send it back to china/mexico/texas and have them rebuild it than to have us do it in the field.

That's all I see out of the techs we have. And when that doesn't work, fly in the Factory guy.

Cheaper to send something back to China????? What??????????????

In my shop the way we weed out the parts hangers / bad techs is.

1. We pay 100 % flat rate comm. we pay well but you have to turn to earn.

2. I have to ok any high dollar part before it gets ordered or put on.

3. I Q/C ( look over ) every bike, jet ski, mower, that go's out the door, nobody wants to miss something that should have been done or didn't do it right, and in turn one of them looks over my work because I am human too, plus they see I do everything I make them do. And the person that does the Q/C gets to pay himself 15 minutes witch is billed into 95% of the jobs we do.


We get a lot of people that try to rush to flag as many hours as they can but they wind up loosing time because I make them go back and fix / service it right , or they just can't grasp it and can't get up to speed. I have been lucky now I have 8 great guys they have all been there over 3 years I don't need anybody now so it's less training I have to do and more work I can get done.