Main course07 June 2011

The growth of vehicle diagnostics has seen a new breed of technicians emerge that require the combined skills of electrician and mechanic. John Challen discovers how training courses are continually adapting to keep with the changes

In the 26 years that Mark Oliver has worked at Scania, plenty of working practices have changed, not least in the area of technician training. The truck manufacturer's technical services manager admits that the courses have had to alter dramatically, but these developments have seen better prepared workers with a greater skills than before.

"Historically you had a technician that dealt with mechanical items as well as an electrician," he recalls. "Now you try and put the two together, because you can't do one job without doing the other. We try and upskill all the technicians and provide them with at least a basic electronic understanding so that they can carry out diagnosis more successfully."

Oliver says a lot of what Scania does is about a logical approach of how to work out and diagnose a problem. "Nowadays technicians have to realign the practical experience they have with the work that they do on a laptop," he explains. "We say to them that knowledge is the eyes and ears inside the ECU, but you still have to have the basic understanding. That way, we ensure that they know how the mechanical components influence a situation because a laptop lets you see that."

Scania training is based around two clear areas: Scania Network Training for all of the company's technicians, and customer courses. "In the network training, every course has an electronic element," explains Oliver. "Where historically you had purely mechanical courses related to, say, the engine or gearbox, there is now always attention paid to electronics."

A similar setup is provided for the customer courses that is open to those involved in truck, as well as a bus and coach, operations. "On a typical course, such as the fuel system course, participants will start will injectors and basic settings and mechanical workings of the system," explains Oliver. "Then we will look at the electronic control and then there will be practical exercises where technicians looking at and measuring signals, and where faults are intentionally put on vehicles.

Oliver says that Scania's helpdesk, also located on-site, also proves a useful addition. "The helpdesk allows us to share experiences easily. We get to know about regular issues or problems and we can input that data into our training course so that wherever possible, we can recreate that problem and help the technicians find the most effective and quickest way of finding, and then diagnosing, the fault." You'd have a series of faults on a vehicle and problems – some mechanical and some electronic –where you look at a laptop using the fault codes displayed in the dashboard to diagnose the faults.

One thing that Oliver ensures is that those participating in the courses do not get ahead of themselves, or lose sight of the basics. "We put a large emphasis on those people on all of our courses, even the electrical and electronic ones, to remember the basic [engineering] principles," he explains. "We don't want people to forget that you're still working with mechanical components containing pistons and valves, and a lot of the time we find people sometimes don't think about that."

Oliver regales tales of helpdesk operators taking calls from customers and dealers thinking they have electrical problems because they see a series of cables going into an electronic control unit (ECU). "People think ECUs are as fragile as they were 15 years ago," he maintains. "An ECU could make an assumption that the mechanical setting of that injector is correct, and it can throw up an electric fault code if it is not. But if we went down the route of changing wiring looms and harnesses, the problem could actually be something as simple as an injector's mechanical properties."

If you're looking for technicians with a specialised electronics background, think again, warns Oliver. "We've had electricians on our courses who have struggled more than technicians because they don't have the mechanical understandings," he states. "They might be good at diagnosing the electric faults, but once you get inside the engine and you are looking at the cylinder balance, if the signals are there on the laptop, that is the end of his task. But you still need to confirm that what he is seeing is correct, and this is where the mechanical know-how is so important."

All in the detail
In response to more and more complex systems being found on vans, trucks, buses and coaches, many training providers have expanded on the number of coursesthat they offer. One of the latest companies to add learning opportunities is Warwick Control, with its' "CAN Bus and LIN Bus fault finding for technicians" event.

This one-day training course is aimed at technicians that require information on dealing with the CAN (controller area network) and LIN (local interconnect network) buses. On completion of the course, candidates will be armed with information that will, according to the company, "help troubleshoot and repair CAN and LIN-based vehicles".

Already offering training in LIN (standalone), FlexRay, and in-vehicle networking, Warwick Control believes this new programme will be better representative of real-life situations, focusing more on fault finding techniques for both networks.

After covering the basics of CAN and LIN, the afternoon is predominantly practical, real-life experience in a lab environment, which allows the technicians to put their newly acquired knowledge to use. Scopes, hand-held DTC readers, and PC-based analyser tools are all used to help improve the skills levels of all technician.

Some of the many topics covered include: the evolution of ECU integration; understanding the electrical signals; understanding bit rates; CAN failures and fault finding; CAN signal data formats; LIN message types and schedules; diagnostic trouble codes (U-Codes) versus realtime network data.

Author
John Challen

Related Downloads
34150\Main_course.pdf

Related Companies
Scania (Great Britain) Ltd

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