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SPECIAL REPORT
DIAGNOSTICS yesterday, today and tomorrow: Part one PMM hears from Maverick Diagnostic’s Managing Director, Andy Brooke, as he gives an honest appraisal of the diagnostic life.
O
ver the last 25 years, I have worked as a diagnostic technician, running my own workshops. I have sold and supported aftermarket and OEM diagnostic tools, I work with manufacturers to develop diagnostic tools and have developed and carried out diagnostics training programmes.
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I am now helping the IAAF and UK AFCAR to build a case to fight for the UK aftermarket workshops right to keep block exemption (MVBER) beyond 2023. Having the right to use OEM tools and data in the future is the single most important thing to ensure our future. I will explain why, and more importantly, what you need to do, to prepare for the future and what you can do right now. Let’s start with a bit of honesty: I’m a diagnostic tool hoarder. I have cupboards full of old defunct diagnostic tools – some are useful, some are not. I have found most workshop owners are guilty of this. Most of these relics were out of subscription years ago, some cost me over £3,000, and I often wonder did they ever pay for themselves? To find the answer we need to look back to the beginning of modern diagnostics, which truly started (post flash code era) in the late ‘90s. Most workshops were happy if they had a tool that could communicate with a car at all. Diagnostics method in the early days was to ‘clear the code’ and hope for the
best. If the MIL came back on, replace the component mentioned in the fault description – all very hit and miss. Thankfully, we are all a little more educated now. However, if you are still using the ‘replacement part diagnostic’ technique please carry on reading! Most workshops (I include myself in this) did not charge for an initial diagnostic check, we offered ‘a quick look for free’ or ‘I will just knock the light out for you Mrs Jones’. What we did, in effect, was lower the value of the tools and service we were providing, a position it is hard to track back from. The real questions are, did we even get a return on investment from any of these tools, were we simply keeping ‘Mrs Jones’ on the road at a staggering £50 per diagnostic session? How do we get a return on these modern tools and how do we keep up? 20 years on and with the benefit of hindsight, the smart, successful workshops