I have to agree that there are a lack of 'real' mechanics now, they are mostly trained to replace rather than fix, however all these sensors that our cars have these days are there to pick up small issues before they become big issues that require expensive fixes.
My stepson has just branched out to having his own garage and he aims to fix, rather than replace where he can. He says most of the time a fault is a sensor or a coil pack that has expired, and those parts are quite cheap, however finding out which sensor has packed in can take a good while. A fault in one sensor can throw up a code in other related sensors so it's a case of testing each one until you find out the fault one, and that can take hours. Its also very expensive to get the diagnostic equipment, the scanners cost an absolute fortune, the cheapest my stepson could find was a used one at £5k, and the manufacturers fault database access costs are horrendous too - the VAG group is over £8k to access alone, and you have to pay a top up fee to access data on each new variant of a model. Its the manufacturers that ultimately force these costs on us.
He is operating a business model where he'll tell you the fault, and give you a range of options from just clear the codes, to fix the issue and associated process parts. He's doing quite a good trade so far. One thing he has told is he refuses to work on JLR products because they use the cheapest of parts - we have a brand on sale in the UK called Dacia (part of the Nissan-Renault group), they are the cheapest on the market yet use better quality parts than JLR!
Back to loco repairs, I do all my own but I don't go near steam loco's!!!
