Well speaking for myself and I am sure numerous others that we will miss your input. But on the other hand wish you the best. And I am sure you are going enjoy every minute of the competition. Would you have a link where we can monitor some of the results of the competition?

Good Luck
Bob

Sounds great! Best of luck to you. Thanks for the helpful tips and the stories of how you ran down difficult problems. Hope to see you on TV someday!

Yup. You'll be missed here. But best of luck in the competition!

John_G:

I will miss your inputs, but you gotta go for this. Opportunities such as this only come around once. Who knows. Maybe someday, you'll run an automotive trainning salon.

Good Luck and smidge of persistence.

Good Luck John! Pretty impresive that you've gotten this far. Give it your all and try not to get too stressed out.

Best of Luck to you!!

John G - that is most excellent news & very exciting! I do believe that your extremely outstanding knowledge is being rewarded. GO FOR IT & BEST OF LUCK! Knock 'em dead!

Marty

Well I didn't make it to the finals. But it was fun trying and the "feel good" part of hoping helped us get through last month while the shop suffered the usual September slow down. I've been reading on here from time to time, just refraining from doing any responses. But there is one thread that needs a response, and that is slinky, with the Jeep. As I read through that thread, I keep getting hung on the fact that she calls the shop, and the techs criminals. She accuses them of somehow making her passengers door window not work, some period of time mind you after the drivers door was repaired for a "similar complaint" of it's power window failing. Then she tries to justify not doing repairs to a car by using the silly argument that leasing is better. I guess she just hasn't figured out, either way she is going to pay to get to drive. Whats important really is whether it's more important to drive new all of the time and bear that expense, or to own and maintain a car for a long period of time at what ever expense that ultimately becomes.

In the end it comes down to people like me, working hard, studying all of the time, and investing a fortune in the depreciating assets called tools, for people like her to call us criminals for trying to be there. Any wonder why it gets discouraging?

Oh well, BP of course has invited me to compete again next year. Congratulations to the finalists, and everyone that made it to the final 25. That is no small feat in itself, and everyone of those guys needs, no not needs, deserves to be respected for the committment that they make to be the best that they can be.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't make it to the finals, but even getting that close puts you head and shoulders above most of your peers. That's quite an achievement. Congratulations, John -- and good luck with it next year!

john_g
sorry it didn't happen for you this time.
All other arguements/comments aside. Can you think of a way to amass a $700 bill to fix a single failed power window on a car that has not been physically damaged by accident/fire/some other act of God?

I would think that complete diassembly of the door and replacment of the motor with an OEM unit would be less expensive.

Off hand my first thought is that there was more actually done than just the window. Many, many times I see statements like "It was $XXX to fix my whatever", but when you actually look at the bill it was also an oil change, tire rotation, filters, inspection, and a window repair and the total was $XXX.

Now can I think of a way that it COULD be $700? Yes I can. Especially if it was a bad motor, and the motor is supplied with the rgulator, and if the bad motor damaged a window serial controller, otherwise known as the door module. Lets just say that a particular European import car that I can think of off hand can exceed $1200 for this very set of failed components. To make matters worse, the controller has to be programmed on the car, and without the O.E. system and software (Some $18,000+) an independent shop can't even do the complete repair without a dealer assisting.

I understand about lumping the total bill.
We're talking specifically about a 2002 Grand Cherokee driver window. Assuming the only symptom is that the window no longer operates $700 seems high.

As far as progressive failure of other components, that's what they make fuses/overload protection circuits for. I suspect that programming window controllers is limited to very high end cars (they automatically close when it starts raining that type of thing) and $1000 bill on a $70-80k+ car is probably a little more palatable to the owner.

anyway thanks for the input.