Car Diagnostics Guide: Your Road to a Smooth Ride
You’re driving down the road when suddenly several lights pop up on your dashboard—some you may not even be familiar with. You go to your local mechanic and tell them about the issue. Your mechanic lets you know that they’ll figure out the problem and get it fixed.
What happens next is your mechanic will run a series of car diagnostic tests to figure out the problem. To help you understand what happens during this process, we’ll walk you through how we diagnose a car when it arrives at our shop.
Does My Vehicle Need a Diagnostic Test?
Whether or not you need a diagnostic test depends on the state of your vehicle. Are you noticing something specific that you’d like to figure out? Are you hearing an odd noise, like a rattling sound? Did your car break down? Is your check engine light on? If the answer is yes, then you’d want to seek a diagnostic test. However, if your vehicle is running normally, then a diagnostic test isn’t needed.
Most of the time, your mechanic will run a preliminary diagnostic test during routine maintenance such as an oil change, so if you’re keeping up to date with your vehicle’s care, you already have a diagnostic test baked into your yearly or bi-yearly routine.
The Process of Diagnosing Your Vehicle
One in three Americans are impacted by car breakdowns, so it’s likely that one day you’ll need to take your vehicle in for a diagnostic test. Here’s what that process looks like!
1. Hearing the Problem
When you come into the shop, the first step of the process is to hear your side of the story and get an understanding of what you’ve been experiencing with your vehicle. This can feel overwhelming because you may not know how to describe what you’ve been hearing or feeling while driving. Here’s a short list of things you can keep track of before coming in for the testing that will help us better understand what’s happening:
- What sounds are you hearing?
- Are there any physical sensations that happen while you drive, such as shaking?
- At what speeds are these noises and feelings happening? Are they only occurring while you’re idle or accelerating?
- Have you noticed any particular smells?
- What lights, whether they’re on currently or not, have appeared on your dashboard?
2. Verifying & Testing
Once we have a thorough understanding of what you’ve been experiencing, we’ll take the car back to our garage and try to duplicate the symptoms you described. For example, if you describe a shaking sensation when accelerating, we’ll test drive (with your given permission) the vehicle to see if we experience the same symptoms and take note of anything else we discover while testing the car. Our team is also equipped with state-of-the-art tools and equipment to analyze the vehicle to see what problems the vehicle’s internal computer is experiencing or what electrical parts aren’t functioning correctly.
3. Analyzing the Data
Now that we’ve run our tests and gathered the needed data, it’s time to actually analyze what we’ve discovered. During this stage, the issue may be obvious thanks to the computer’s information or the tools we use during the verifying phase, but more advanced issues may require further analysis.
4. Narrowing Down to the Root
With all the data gathered and analyzed, we eliminate what we know the problem isn’t and really narrow down the root cause of the problem. During this process, we’ll start with the most common issues first that we see every day. If the data isn’t pointing to the common fixes, then we go down the list to rarer issues to see what’s aligning with the data we gathered.
5. Test Our Theories
Once we’ve narrowed down what the root issue may be, we’ll rerun our tests to see if our theories are correct. This allows us to further eliminate potential causes until we finally find the culprit behind your troubles.
6. Retest & Repeat
We want to make sure we find everything that could be wrong so that there are no surprises when you drive away from our shop. So we’ll retest and repeat this process until we’ve found every possible issue, allowing us to give you a full report of future repairs you may need.
7. Share Our Findings & Fix the Problem
With the issue now known to us, we’ll contact you and let you know our findings. It’s important to know that sometimes, a breakdown could be the result of multiple issues, so we’ll be sure to share everything we found that needs to be repaired. Some things may require immediate attention in order for your vehicle to function safely, but other things should just be kept in mind for the future. For example, a fault in the brake system should be repaired immediately for your safety, but a brake pad that’s slightly worn down (5 to 6 mm) could wait a little longer before being replaced.
Once we have your permission, we’ll fix the issue to get your vehicle up and running again. A test drive will confirm that all systems and new parts function correctly after we complete the repairs.
Keep in mind, if you’re in the market for a new car soon, feel free to also ask your mechanic if they think the repair is worth it or if it’s time to get a new vehicle!
Keep Your Car Running with City Auto Repair
From a simple spark plug replacement to repairing your transmission, the team at City Auto Repair makes sure your vehicle gets back on the road as soon as possible. We’ll walk you through our diagnostic tests so you understand everything we found and our suggestions for a repair plan. So if your vehicle is making an odd noise or has flashing lights on your dashboard, come into our shop to learn the root of the issue and get it repaired with our diagnostic test services!