Factory fixes for
compressor failure raise special issues, even if they resemble
“standard issue” repair.
Many technicians think a
complete factory fix procedure can be “interpreted.” That leads both
to shortcuts and alternatives that don’t work. Believe that a factory
procedure is a safe minimum, because anything extra raises warranty
costs. Factory service engineers can’t try every possible combination
to validate a fix, but they do develop a feel for what’s
necessary—probably better than you could when you face the problem on
a customer’s car. If the “what’s available now” fix is expensive and
the problem is not going away altogether, someone will work on a
lower-cost approach to be released later—after it’s also been
validated. Leave the experiments to the service engineers.
An important issue at
factory service engineering departments also is the repair’s
practicality. It can’t be so sensitive to individual technique that a
high percentage of technicians could get unsatisfactory results.
That said, we don’t claim
the factory fixes are always absolutely perfect. We add a caution:
with some low-volume problems, the factories often are “pushed” into
accepting superseding parts that are physically different but seem
technically calibrated for the job. The parts seem to work, and there
are higher-volume, bigger problems out there that need solving. The
“technically correct part” turns out to be not so good a choice, and
doesn’t always work. The aftermarket soon learns about these and the
word gets out, perhaps even before the factory finds out and hustles
to release still another part. So listening to the aftermarket
grapevine (which we at MACS Service Reports try to do) can often
produce “enhanced” data. But that’s a lot different from just going
ahead with any “I think you ought to try this.”
Now let’s look at some
original equipment specifics when there’s a catastrophic compressor
failure.
