Recently we took our 11 year old truck to a shop so they could figure out what was wrong with it.  Rob was out of town, we wanted to sell the truck and paying someone to nail down the ongoing problem it was experiencing seemed like the logical thing to do.

The truck was running very rough.  It started after pressure washing the engine.  Weeks of dry time had not resulted in the problem going away.  I explained everything we’d tried and where we were now.  The amazing mechanic declared, “It’s probably a coil”. 

Well, it ended up being an electrical problem - with the spark plug and coil that are recessed in an unreachable crevice of the engine cavity.  The area where the problem was could only be reached with extremely small, dexterous hands by a person that can perch on top of the radiator without messing up something else.  Because our mechanic was more the Grizzly Adams type than olympic gymnast, we figure he gave up on fixing the problem when he got to the last coil.  He returned to the truck to us after giving it his best shot and charging us $700.  The problem was better, but was not gone.

Rob came back from his trip and finished the job - with the help of my smaller (but not quite small enough) hands, we managed to resolve the problem.  Was the mechanic right?  He was on the right track.  Did he fix the problem?  No.

This all comes to mind because I am in the process of writing an Analytical Trouble Shooting course for technicians in a manufacturing plant.  The wasted time and money troublshooting our truck were frustrating for us.  The same process applied in a high-pressure equipment downtime situation in a plant would be more than frustrating - it could set off a chain of events that could disrupt the entire plant’s operations.

Our mechanic probably thought he was pretty smart.  He had pointed to the problem right away.  He just didn’t fix it - probably because it was too difficult and time consuming.  He got the truck running better…but he didn’t fix the root cause.  He got our $700.  I guess he was pretty smart after all.