If you are new to the car repair trade, or are considering a career in this very tough but rewarding line of work, you should take note that being a professional automotive technician in a busy independent shop or dealership is not for everyone. Nonetheless, if you have a passion for cars and have your heart set on becoming an automotive technician, there are several legitimate ways to obtain a formal qualification, but you should be aware that many employers consider enrolling in a trade school as not being one of them.
Of course, this is not to say that all trade schools are necessarily bad, but the fact is that the specialised skills, personal attributes, and other qualities you need to succeed in a tough profession are generally not taught in trade schools. Therefore, few, if any trade schools can equip an aspiring mechanic or technician with the required “tools” to succeed in an environment that gives a real, practical meaning to the old adage that says, “Knowledge is power”. Thus, in this article we will take a closer look at what you can expect to be taught in an automotive trade school, but more importantly, what you can expect NOT to be taught, starting with-
It must be stated that trade schools are not created equal, and while all will have you believe that completing a course will equip you to start a career as a mechanic, this is simply not the case. Much depends on the quality of both the instructors and the course material, and while this writer would like to believe that most trade schools try to cover the theory of automotive mechanics adequately, one major factor is missing in all trade schools, and that is the lack of training or instruction under real-world conditions.
While many, if not most trade schools in Australia have very well equipped workshops, these are at best simulated environments, and almost never bear any real resemblance to an actual workshop where a mistake or misdiagnosis can have very serious consequences, including accidents and crashes that could have fatal outcomes. That said, here is what you can expect to be taught in a mechanics’ trade school-
Theory
A very large part of any trade school course deals with the theory of automotive control and management systems, meaning that you will be taught how all the systems and subsystems on a vehicle work. For instance, you may learn how the fuel, brake, ignition, engine vacuum, transmission control, and other systems work, and sometimes, you may even learn something about how these systems are integrated, and why this integration is needed in order to make a vehicle start and run.
Diagnostics
You can expect to be taught the basic principles of OBD II compliance, and this part of the course may even include some hands-on training with a few scan tools of varying capacities and capabilities. As part of this training, you may learn how to extract active and pending fault codes, and what these codes mean. At this point, you may or may not receive relevant training on CAN (Controller Area Network) and FlexRay™ serial communication protocols, which is required knowledge if you want to understand how fault codes in any particular system can affect one or more other systems that may not necessarily be related to the defective system.
Practical, hands-on training
As a part of tests and examinations, you may be required to diagnose and repair one or more actual faults on an actual vehicle. How well (or otherwise) you cope with this largely depends on the quality of the training and course material you had received in theory and diagnostics, which brings us to-
Depending on the level of certification you are studying for, you may or may not graduate from the trade school, but you should be aware that if you do graduate, your certificate means that you have successfully completed a trade school course at best, and at worst, that you are not yet a trained mechanic. With some luck though, you may find a repair shop that will now employ you as an apprentice, and good luck to you because from this point on, the learning curve is very steep indeed, and you will soon discover-
It should be noted that most trade schools generally present courses in a fairly well structured manner that (theoretically) allows for the effective transfer of knowledge and skills. However, much of how effective this process is depends not only on the experience/skill level of the instructors, but also on their ability (or lack thereof) to teach effectively, which means that the items listed in this section may or may not apply to all graduates from all trade schools. Therefore, to avoid generalisations, the few examples of inadequate training provided by trade schools in this section represent actual observations made by this writer over a period of about 25 years as an employer, starting with-
Technical Rationality
As a trade school graduate, you will no doubt have learned something about how the various systems on vehicles work, but this is often not enough to enable you to solve problems that do not necessarily involve the actual failure of parts and components. For instance, you may have to remove the brake drums from a vehicle to inspect the rear brakes, but the drums won’t slide over the brake shoes.
Knowing how the brakes are actuated is not enough if you have to remove the brake drums, but they will not slide over the brake shoes. In a case like this, you need to have a sound knowledge of the mechanical theory of drum brake systems in order to understand why the brake drums will not budge, which is a common problem that most mechanics encounter on an almost daily basis. If the make and model of vehicle with the stuck brake drums is new to you, and if you don’t know, or you don’t understand the mechanical theory of drum brake systems, you may be tempted to force/lever the drums over the shoes, which will almost certainly break something.
The point of the above is this; if you don’t know how automatic drum brake adjusters work, you probably were also not taught that brake drums wear in such a way that a ridge of metal forms on the inner edge of the drum, which is often higher than the clearance between the brake shoes and the drum wear surface. In this case, the solution is simple, but if you don’t understand, or were not taught the technical rationality of drum brake systems, you won’t know that relaxing the adjustment of the brake shoes manually will allow you to get the brake drum off the wheel hub.
There are many other examples, but the brake drum example should serve to illustrate the point that knowing how a system works is seldom enough. What you need to know is that when “X” happens in any given system, “Y” must necessarily follow, which if it does, must yield result “Z”, and this aspect of trade school training is often lacking, and sometimes, acutely so.
Defining problems
This is not the same thing as problem solving, but in this writer’s experience, training courses offered by trade schools often do not differentiate between the two concepts. One example, which this writer uses as a practical test to assess the knowledge and skills of trade school graduates, should suffice-
A trade school graduate is presented with a vehicle that won’t crank, because a critical fuse or relay had been deliberately substituted with a blown or defective fuse/relay. What this writer has observed many times is that instead of approaching the problem in a logical, systematic manner in an attempt to define the problem, most graduates will immediately conclude that since the engine won’t crank, a major problem exists, and that it could take days to repair. Typical “repairs” include replacing the starter motor, replacing the battery, replacing / reprogramming the ECU, and even replacing the entire wiring harness, since the fault could be “anywhere”.
No-start conditions have a great many possible causes and solutions, but diagnosing and repairing this kind of problem requires a sound theoretical knowledge of both how systems work, and how the various systems on a vehicle are integrated. Without this knowledge, which is generally not taught in trade schools (or not taught in any great detail), a trade school graduate can often not define the problem, because the graduate lacks the knowledge to break up the problem into a logical sequence of events, all of which must be present for the sequence to be complete.
Time management
Effective time management rests on two pillars, neither of which is taught in trade schools. The first is an ability to plan a job, and the second is intuition, which is an ability to see right down to the root of the problem without getting distracted by red herrings. You may or may not have a measure of intuition, but you can save a lot of time by learning how to plan a job. For instance, if you analyse a job first before jumping in, you will see that by removing “X” before “Y”, you can get to “Z”, (the actual problem) quicker than if you did it the other way around.
The ability to manage your time effectively is crucially important if you want to succeed as a mechanic in a busy professional environment. While trade schools do not teach this very important skill the fact is that when you are employed as an apprentice you will be expected to learn to complete tasks within specified time periods, which is a very steep learning curve in itself.
If you don’t, or cannot complete assigned tasks in their allotted time periods, you will find that work piles up, which places you under immense pressure to perform, which in turn, will cause you to start taking dangerous short cuts and cutting critical corners to get everything done by closing time. Of course, it goes without saying that cutting corners and taking shortcuts is NOT the way to endear yourself to your employer.
Social interactions
You may not realise this now, but how you interact with other mechanics in the shop plays a very big part in how successful and/or happy you will be in that shop. While you were in trade school, you could always ask the instructor to repeat something you missed or did not understand, but you don’t always have this luxury in a busy professional environment.
Of course, this is not to say that you should not ask questions, but how you ask the question, and how you receive answers or explanations from senior mechanics can make or break you. Most senior mechanics are under immense pressure to get work out by a certain time, and they don’t have time to waste on trivialities, or to explain things to you that you should know. Thus, if a senior mechanic does take the time to teach you something, pay attention and don’t argue unnecessarily because you may find that the next time you ask a question, you may not receive the answer you were hoping for.
Working safely
Working on cars for a living offers almost unlimited opportunities to sustain injuries that can range from mildly annoying, to life changing, and many experienced technicians can tell stories of bad backs, bad knees, bad necks, and other health issues that had come about as a result of working on cars. Unfortunately, trade schools will not teach you how to avoid these types of issues.
However, while you may be taught how to support a vehicle safely with jack stands, how to prevent engine fires, or how to test a battery safely, you will certainly not be taught how heavy a 4 × 4 manual transmission is, or how much effort it takes to decouple such a transmission from the engine. Similarly, you may be taught that modern common rail diesel injection systems work at extremely high injection pressures, but you will almost certainly not be told that this pressure is high enough to slice through skin, muscle, veins, arteries, and tendons, and even to destroy cartilage in your hands should you test a diesel fuel injector the wrong way.
Most injuries and damage to customers’ vehicles occur as the result of inexperienced mechanics not knowing things, but learning how to do these things safely is the only way to prevent injuring yourself. However, there is a right way and wrong way to learn how to do something safely, and if you continually do it wrong, you may gain a reputation as being reckless or careless and once you have such a reputation, you will almost certainly never recover from it because your bad habits will follow you around.
The only ways to learn how to work safely is to observe how experienced technicians do things, to think things through before you do anything, and to ask for assistance if you are unsure about a procedure.
There are many other examples of things you will not learn in a mechanics’ trade school, but this should not deter you from enrolling in such a school if you have your heart set on becoming a mechanic.
However, when you do enrol, you need to manage your expectations and recognise that you will NOT be a qualified, let alone be a competent mechanic when you graduate. Nonetheless, completing a trade school course can be a valuable first step towards becoming a professional automotive technician even though the journey is a long, hard slog that can take many years to complete.
