Repair through the ass or why you need debug-thinking

This is Denis with an endoscope in the service station.

Just the other day I got probably the best lesson on project management in life. There is an ordinary Russian peasant who used to sit in an office and worked in the advertising business, my former colleague (I myself am an IT specialist in an agency). He, to our great envy, went to poke around in the technique. He says he always loved to do with his car. He participated in competitions on off-road trophy-orienteering. Sometimes it was necessary to repair the car in shit and improvised means, such as shackle. Sometimes, friends came to him, in the courtyard they built an off-road car for 12 hours, the next day they performed in competitions. There is some experience, well, he decided to do a professional repair.

Then I will briefly tell you what and how he did: it is not directly related to IT, but it shows a model of thinking. Just imagine how it was necessary to think in order to pick up such a toolkit and approach the question from the correct engineering side. This approach of finishing the task to the result by any means just struck me.
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We spent several hours with him, Denis talked about his work. Different cars come to the service, with different problems, someone comes to THAT, change the oil and filters, and someone comes with difficult problems. For example, antifreeze goes away, but everywhere is dry. Or idle speeds are floating, where the air is leaking, and where it is impossible to determine. Or a frame (bearing element) has cracked in a person, and it is necessary to determine the scale of disasters without opening it.

The usual practice in car services is as follows. Antifreeze leaves and there is no leak - the engine in the bulkhead. Swim idle - change all the sensors in a row until you achieve the desired effect. There is a crack on the frame - a patch will be welded on top and that's it, "... hip it and the ship." As a result, the client pays extra money, spends a lot of time and worries about nothing because of his car.

If they had come to him with such friends who will go tomorrow, he would have repaired to the result, and not so. And then he just started to show what he uses and how

Smoke generator:

Leakage of antifreeze can be localized using it. Also, the smoke generator is also suitable for finding a leak in the intake system and finding out where the engine draws air from.

It turned out that in order to determine how catastrophic the crack on the frame is, how far it went (crack) and what scale of disasters, you can use a video endoscope, place it inside the frame and see what happens inside. Denis swallowed the probe once during the examination of the stomach, and thought that it would be cool to put this in the car. Found a suitable device, bought, uses.

Endoscope in the bowels of the frame:

Then he tells:
We had a car with a burst frame. He was put in some kind of service “nashlepka”, made a crack and that's it. And at the same time the car cracks at the seams when driving. We placed the video endoscope through the technological holes inside the frame, were able to see how far the crack went inside the frame and recommended the machine owner a constructive solution, taking into account what he saw. For more than three years, the car has already taken part in rally flights, experiencing huge loads on the load-bearing elements.

Waiting for your high point:

Once, a KIA SPORTAGE I car arrived to us with symptoms of unstable work at idle, an overestimated injection time, the nozzles were poured powerfully. Strongly, there is no STRONGER dynamics, fuel consumption increased to 20-25 liters, the car was shaking. It was really not possible to ride it, before us it was in several services, no problem was discovered on any of them.

We checked the sensors, conducted computer diagnostics. All readings of electronics were normal, for a start they decided to test the sensors and brains with the help of a good old oscilloscope.

And here is the oscilloscope itself:

Diagnostics revealed no problems, but suggested that the problem is still with the master disc, which is on the flywheel. In order to verify this, it is necessary to remove the gearbox, transfer case, clutch and then you can only get to the flywheel. The procedure is expensive and time consuming. And we didn’t go the standard way, we decided to use the same video endoscope. The crankshaft sensor was unscrewed and an endoscope was inserted through the hole in the box. When we looked at the master disc and the flywheel, we saw that the disc had moved some distance away from the flywheel.

And this is how the video endoscope sees the disk:

A repair was recommended replacing the flywheel with the drive plate. Vladimir, the owner, said that a month ago he changed the clutch ... but he could not link the strange behavior of the car with this repair. We provided photographs and printouts, and offered to go with a complaint to the service, in which the grip changed, as it was obvious that the problem exists with that repair. That service does not specialize in Kia Sportage brand cars, so the problem was not identified in time.

We did not offer him to correct the problem with us, and overpay for repairs, but advised us to file a complaint, and this was the right decision. Everything ended well: Vladimir in that service did all the work for free, replaced the flywheel with the master disc, and now he is happy to drive and thank our endoscope.

Actually, what I wanted to say. Practically any task can be solved “as usual”, and maybe - up to the result. And if you, instead of learning from your colleagues, are deeply versed in the subject, there is an opportunity to use the achievements of other spheres. In this case - tools that are easy enough to find and get.

Almost always you can think a little more and still get a solution, and not “heal” the problem with a thick wad of bucks.

Now, remembering the examples of Denis, I will always think a second time and sort out non-standard options.