I just axt a simple question!!!!
But your discussion is interesting, and it's not just dealership service departments. It's the whole damned culture.
I grew up distinctly redneck, and there was always a non-working car somewhere on the place to be taking things apart on. I grew up hotrodding everything I drove, 'cause that's what you did. But that's because the culture affirmed it. Boys began taking shop classes (wood, metal, auto) in 8th grade, at the same time the girls started Home Ec. We didn't learn how things worked by looking at some computer-generated graphic, but by actually holding the pieces of machinery in our hands. Every boy in my hometown had held the crankshaft of a Briggs & Stratton engine in his hands by the time he got out of ninth grade. And if he was mechanically inclined, he moved on. If not, at least he knew what one really looked like.
Nowadays, tell me that's the same. Nope. In the town I live in, if you are mechanically inclined and you want to learn about engines, the first classroom oportunity is when you go off to trade school or junior college. Talking with the instructor at the nearest trade school, he says it's not unusual to have half of his students in auto mechanics be virgins, auto-wise. I mean, not even have changed the family car's oil, much less have done a brake job or (gasp!) have performed a tune-up. Which, nowadays, is, what? Spark plugs and wires? Air and gas filter? (Oh, and don't forget the cabin air filter!)
Why? becuse they grew up in the 'burbs, where lawns are neat and cars don't puddle oil, and where you CERTAINLY DON'T tear a car apart in the side yard. (Remember where the term "shade tree mechanic" came from? No?) Where plumbing is done by a plunber, and remodelling the den is done by a remodeller, and light switches are replaced by an electrician. And they're going to schools where every student must be prepared to go to college (which might be true) so they don't need the practical experiences of shop (which is absolutely NOT true) and they are taught that the only knowledge worth knowing has to do with technology.
So they go off to school to learn everything they are going to need to know, when the thing they really need to know is, just simply, how to be comfortable with machinery. To know that it doesn't bite, and there's no majik, and it doesn't take a specialist. Because once you get through all the electronic stuff, it's still an internal combustion engine. So when I talk to the techs at the nearest dealers, they were only echoing what they've been taught by our culture. That the diagnostic machine has all the answers, and that a reman company is the only place one can really have an engine properly rebuilt. Everything is high tech and specialization.
I was reading another thread here, where someone was trying to diagnose a problem by "reading the codes". But it was pretty clear he had a vacuum leak. I'll bet he didn't have a length of 1/4" gas line he could stick in his ear and go hunting for the hiss under his hood. (sigh)
So, it's not a matter of the horrible state of dealer techs. It's our world that sucks. And the kids who are now the mechanics at many of the dealerships do not know what they are missing.
And when one of them wants to go racing, they'll buy a crate engine. :shrug:
