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This podcast is dedicated to changing the automotive industry for the better, one conversation at a time.
Whether you're a technician, vendor, business owner, or car enthusiast, we hope to inspire you to improve for your customers, your careers, your businesses, and your families.
David Roman [00:00:00]:
It, you know, I'm just going to point out that I don't know how this is going to work out with David and David. We've never had David and David before, have we?
David Roman [00:00:08]:
David and David on him.
David Roman [00:00:09]:
David's a pretty common name, but I like this guy.
David Roman [00:00:12]:
Common.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:14]:
I like this guy. And so I'm just worried that, like, if I say, f you, david, he's going to think it's about him, not.
David Roman [00:00:20]:
A Facebook group where the entire, the entire premise behind the Facebook group is pointing out ridiculous spellings of names.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:30]:
La Dasha.
David Roman [00:00:31]:
Oh, so it's the, the name. The name of the Facebook group is that that name is a tragedy. But instead of tragedy spelled correctly, it's t r a g e. Like d e I h or something. And so, yeah, the names are, you know, the random y thrown in there and x, you know, and so they, I'm sure the parents feel like, hey, I'm gonna do something cool and unique for my kid to make them special because everybody's a special snowflake and it's all, it's all great and fine until they're adults. And then they go, yeah, my name's Ashley. Okay. A S h l e y.
David Roman [00:01:22]:
No, it's l l e I g h e e. Wait, okay, you know.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:30]:
The, the teacher that had the Ladasha issue? I have met. I can't remember.
David Roman [00:01:37]:
Why are you talking about?
Lucas Underwood [00:01:38]:
You don't remember the Ladasha story? No, it was a, it was a huge deal in North Carolina. And so the teacher is going around calling out names, okay. And looks at the sheet and it's l a a dash a. And the teacher goes, la. Uh, it was la Dasha. She says, my name is Ladasha.
David Barden [00:02:03]:
Oh my.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:03]:
And the teacher says.
David Roman [00:02:09]:
Oh, okay, that's good. I like that. That's great. I love that.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:15]:
Um, David.
David Roman [00:02:16]:
La dasha.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:17]:
La dasha.
David Roman [00:02:18]:
La dasha.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:20]:
How you doing?
David Barden [00:02:20]:
Good. You know my boss David too. To avoid confusion, I'm known as od other.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:28]:
Your boss is a pretty cool guy. Yep. I've known him for a while now. Pretty legit guy. So you're mister power pro?
David Barden [00:02:35]:
I guess so, yeah, nowadays.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:38]:
So how did you get involved with power pro?
David Barden [00:02:41]:
About that.
David Roman [00:02:42]:
I think you insulted him. He said nowadays he's like, you know, I've done more than power probe in my career. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:47]:
Well, I mean, I'm just asking. Are you gonna.
David Roman [00:02:50]:
This is another Ladasha incident right here. It's Ladasha. Not.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:59]:
Please don't do whatever you just did to make that sound. Tell us about yourself.
David Barden [00:03:10]:
Well, I was a working technician until I came to Powerpro. That was about 13 years ago. And some of the places I work, I always talk about, one of them was rental car facility lax. Her.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:24]:
Oh, my God.
David Barden [00:03:25]:
One of the largest rental car facilities in the world.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:28]:
Right.
David Barden [00:03:29]:
50,000 car fleet. We had to support.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:32]:
Holy crap, dude.
David Barden [00:03:34]:
And we got paid factory warranty, just like if I was a dealer for almost all the brands that we had.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:40]:
Really?
David Barden [00:03:41]:
So they loved us doing warranty work.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:46]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:03:46]:
Got them money.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:47]:
Right.
David Barden [00:03:48]:
But when your. Your focus is supposed to be keep them out on rent.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:52]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:03:52]:
They start panicking if you got something in the bay more than 30 minutes.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:55]:
Yeah, for sure.
David Barden [00:03:56]:
And is much as we got delivered brand new cars, just like we were a dealer. He'd be surprised how many problems they had right off the trailer.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:03]:
Right.
David Roman [00:04:04]:
Well, since they were renting out Jaguars.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:06]:
That'S what I was getting ready to say. They gave me a jaguar. And who'd you rent with? Davis?
David Roman [00:04:12]:
Avis.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:13]:
And I looked to the guy, and I was like, you. You said jaguar, like, that's a good thing. Does it come with free roadside assistance? He said, no. Why? It's like they're a premium vehicle. Defined. Premium, bro.
David Roman [00:04:24]:
What happened to Alamo, huh? They don't have any jaguars available for you?
Lucas Underwood [00:04:29]:
No. It's a new year, bro. I got to get my. I got to get my American Airlines points. And they don't have a program with American Airlines, but you can use American Airlines with Avis, and you get tons of extra points. Yeah. And I. As much as I talk bad about American Airlines, it's not going to do me any good to talk about on the show.
David Barden [00:04:45]:
But poor people.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:48]:
Poor, poor people. Now, where are you based out of?
David Barden [00:04:53]:
I'm still in California.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:54]:
All right.
David Barden [00:04:54]:
Power probes in North Carolina now, they moved about two years, three years ago.
David Roman [00:04:58]:
Now in Charlotte with everybody else. Yep.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:00]:
So the. The running. The running joke about power probe is. Is like, there's a lot of running jokes about power probes.
David Roman [00:05:08]:
I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:09]:
Yeah, well, everybody's, like, always saying, you know, the smoke out.
David Barden [00:05:13]:
Yep.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:13]:
That's the power probe. But, you know, that's not really the tool's fault. That's kind of the technician's fault. Right. And not knowing how the circuit works.
David Barden [00:05:21]:
I use a hammer.
David Roman [00:05:22]:
Wrong.
David Barden [00:05:22]:
I can do a lot of damage to a car.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:24]:
Well, and so.
David Roman [00:05:26]:
Hold on. What are they doing? They zap in modules by applying power to a module.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:30]:
I don't think they understand how electricity works.
David Barden [00:05:33]:
I believe that is a lot of it.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:35]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:05:36]:
We do a lot of trade shows and stuff, and we have, we used to have these big demo boards with circuits on and you put fault bugs in it and stuff like that.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:44]:
Right.
David Barden [00:05:45]:
And had all the power probes out there on display, and they'd be shows that are supposedly for professional technicians.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:52]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:05:53]:
Quote unquote. And these guys would walk up, pick up the power probe and just start applying power to every point on this thing. That's not how you fix a car, I hope.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:02]:
Well, you know, and it's like the, I remember at a particular dealership nearby me, the, the original power probe, when it came out, remember that little plastic slide that was on that would hold the switch?
David Roman [00:06:14]:
Yep.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:15]:
And there was a technician and he. Young guy. Right. And he was a master level technician at this particular dealership. And he would put that little switch cover on it and he would slide it back and he would hold it and he would go. And he would. He would touch it to each, like, for instance, if he's going to a switch circuit or something. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:32]:
He would go down through there and he would touch it to each one of them. What are you doing? He's like, well, I'm looking to see if the ECM has the ability to trip the breaker and the ECM will trip the breaker, then I know the circuit will carry current, and I'm like, uh, hold up. Let's not do that. But I mean, there are technicians who. I don't know, man. Yeah.
David Roman [00:06:55]:
I mean, that I. He's doing a voltage top test. He just. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:04]:
You know, I still upset people because I talk about how much I like my hook.
David Barden [00:07:11]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:11]:
And I get that you don't have the hook anymore, but it was the best tool you ever made. I'm a little, I'm a little sad they don't make it anymore.
David Roman [00:07:18]:
Not that big clunky thing was huge. Why? What was the deal with it?
Lucas Underwood [00:07:22]:
I use it for all my parasitic draw testing. I still use it to this day. My, my amp, the clamps for the battery broken off. So I got zip ties. I had to go around and zip tie it to a back to do.
David Roman [00:07:32]:
A lot of parasitic drain testing.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:34]:
We get a lot of it. I don't know if it's the corrosion and the salt and stuff like that.
David Roman [00:07:38]:
But we see a lot of them still.
David Barden [00:07:40]:
It not getting any better. That still seems number one of the number one problems. We were just at a Jaguar dealer a couple of weeks ago.
David Roman [00:07:46]:
Well, yeah.
David Barden [00:07:48]:
Jaguar or Land Rover? Jaguar.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:51]:
Yeah, that, that I mean, like, how do you take a bad brand and make it work? You know, put Land Rover in there. Fine. We're gonna get more hate mail, aren't we?
David Roman [00:08:03]:
What's that?
Lucas Underwood [00:08:04]:
We're gonna get hate mail.
David Roman [00:08:05]:
People get upset when you talk crap on Land Rovers.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:08]:
Yeah, we had. We had, like, massive number of complaints because we said bad stuff about Land Rover.
David Roman [00:08:13]:
They say that when we talk crap on Ford, too. They do share the love. Yeah, we're hateful against all of the brands, except for Toyota and Honda. Toyota and Honda.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:29]:
They're. They're easily the best.
David Roman [00:08:31]:
They are. Did you know that the Honda has a service protocol for when they're designing a car? They have a whole checklist of these components. Have to be easily serviceable. Are you kidding? Did you not know this?
David Barden [00:08:48]:
I did not know.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:49]:
We got the whole rundown today. Unbelievable.
David Roman [00:08:51]:
For example, they won't design the subframe, and the oil pan has to be able to drop without the subframe coming out.
David Barden [00:08:59]:
I mean, that's been the running joke for years that these engineers have never worked on these.
David Roman [00:09:04]:
So they have a whole list. And the way they decide if a special tool is needed is if they say, hey, they send it back to the engineers and say, hey, this does not meet our service requirements. The hand has to fit in there. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:18]:
They've got a hand model with a wrench.
David Roman [00:09:20]:
Yeah. And it has to standard hand holding.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:23]:
The wrench, and it has to be able to fit in to get the bolt out.
David Roman [00:09:25]:
Yeah. And so they. And so they. If it. It won't meet that standard. And they're like, hey, we can't reengineer this. Like, this is critical. This component is.
David Roman [00:09:36]:
Has to be there, this, that, and the other. Then they'll come up with a special tool, and that's when they release a special tool. But until then, they're like, we don't want any special tools. We want the car to be serviceable with standard tools so we don't have to send out a special tool. I was floored because it's always been in my mind, they all engineer the cars like the old Cadillac DT's, the north Star. I'm not talking about starters. Starters, whatever. I'm talking about the oil pants.
David Roman [00:10:05]:
To do an oil pan on those cars, you have to drop the entire subframe. And then, even then, like, so, this monstrosity of a drivetrain, huge front wheel drive transmission, and then a v eight hanging with this tool, and then the sub frame comes out, and then the oil panel come out. And you hope that suck will never leak again.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:27]:
Hope well, and you really hope it doesn't do it as soon as you get done.
David Roman [00:10:32]:
Yeah, that's not. Yeah, that's not a comeback. You want stupid things so poorly designed. No, they're like, we're gonna make this to be easy to manufacture, and then that's it. We don't care. Screw it.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:46]:
I think.
David Barden [00:10:47]:
Impressive to hear Honda actually considers it.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:49]:
Yeah, dude, it really is. I mean, I was amazed by it, and he was sitting there with his, like, big grin on his face, like, yeah, y'all didn't know this?
David Roman [00:10:55]:
Yep. Well, he said it like it was a matter of fact. Like, every manufacturer did this. He's like, yeah, we got a checklist. I'm like, whoa, what?
Lucas Underwood [00:11:05]:
Anyways, so I. David makes fun of me because I love my power probe voltmeters, like, hardcore.
David Roman [00:11:14]:
Why do I make fun of you?
Lucas Underwood [00:11:15]:
You make fun of me because I love power probe.
David Roman [00:11:19]:
I want power probe pitched to the technician that is obsessed with lab scopes and thinks a lab scope is necessary for absolutely everything. I have one technician like that. Everything gets lab scope tested. Batteries, alternators, everything.
David Barden [00:11:36]:
I've seen it.
David Roman [00:11:37]:
And then I've got another technician that will not pull out the lab scope unless he absolutely has to, but does plenty of testing with his power probe four.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:48]:
He doesn't pull out the lab scope unless he's holding a piece of paper down with it.
David Roman [00:11:53]:
What? I don't get it.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:54]:
Hyperweight?
David Roman [00:11:55]:
No, no, no.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:57]:
I. You know, I'm. I'm going to tell you something.
David Roman [00:11:59]:
Sometimes the biggest thing that some technicians struggle with is what tests to run. That's what they don't know. They're like, hey, I need to figure out this. This is wrong.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:10]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:12:10]:
How do I figure out whether this system is working properly? Well, you could do this test, and sometimes they need help with that. And so my technician uses this power probe for, like, if it's a simple three wire circuit or whatever, he'll check it for power and ground. He uses his voltmeter, his power probe four. You'll check it.
David Barden [00:12:29]:
All the meter functions.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:30]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:12:31]:
So he, he uses it like a voltmeter. And he was like, yeah, it's got good power. It's got good ground.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:36]:
So I use. I've got a bunch of power probe equipment, right? But I use the Dvom because that is my favorite meter, and everybody says, fluke, fluke, fluke, fluke, fluke. Dude, I'm telling you, I have tried fluke meters. They're not as durable. They're not.
David Roman [00:12:51]:
I think I like a 20 year old 87. It works.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:55]:
I'm just telling you, I have had more issues out of them than I have my power probe. The power probe is a far more.
David Roman [00:13:01]:
Affordable meter, and 87 is ridiculous. It's too much money.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:05]:
It's easy to lie. It's got the light on it. You can turn the light on and off. It comes with a little magnet hanging thingy. That's the meter I use. And I'll put a load pro on it. Right. And so that is my favorite.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:15]:
There's, like, 15 or 20 of them floating around the shop, because those are the meters that I always use, and that's what I buy, like our apprentices and stuff like that. But I would use the hook, and the reason that I was so big in the hook is I use it for parasitic draw testing because it had the 65 amps in it.
David Roman [00:13:30]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:30]:
So you could, you know, if you needed to open the door, if you wanted to run through some functions, it wouldn't. As opposed. Right. As opposed to just doing it.
David Roman [00:13:38]:
But.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:39]:
But the thing that I liked about the hook was, especially when we got into complex problems, I would simulate voltages using the hook, and so I would send in a specific voltage that I wanted, and I would see if the voltage was matching what the tool said. And there were times that I would simulate a voltage, and I'd take the car, and I would drive the car, and you'd see that voltage change. Right. And I would find bad grounds to a module based on the fact that I know what's coming out of the hook is a specific voltage you'd be driving, and you'd watch it creep up or creep down. What in the world is going on? And so you could find the issue with the module based on that. And chances are, if it's movIng, if the voltage is movIng, when you know you've got a good signal to it and you're driving and it hasn't been moving. Otherwise, chances are it's an input, like a power or ground problem.
David Roman [00:14:29]:
Can't you simulate that with a lab scope, though? Channel?
Lucas Underwood [00:14:33]:
You change the. You could, but you're checking.
David Roman [00:14:36]:
You're checking source voltage. Voltage.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:38]:
I am simulating a voltage. I'm not checking voltage. I'm giving it a voltage.
David Roman [00:14:42]:
But I'm saying you would check. You would check at the source point. So if it's 5 volts, you'd say, okay, the five volt sources here at the module. I'm still at 5 volts. We're good with the card. Running. Okay, sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:56]:
But I would, there were really unique situations I'd get in from time to time where I wouldn't end up doing that right preference thing. I don't know, but we still use scope all the time. But I'm just saying, like, I would grab my hook and do things that I could not do with any other tool.
David Roman [00:15:12]:
Anyway, one of you guys coming out.
David Barden [00:15:14]:
With a scope, we've been playing with that.
David Roman [00:15:19]:
Oh, breaking wheels.
David Barden [00:15:22]:
No, I mean, I love scopes when, when they're needed.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:25]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:15:26]:
I'm trying to, like, our maestro has a limited, I'm not going to call it scope, but it does show some waveforms on the, on the screen. We're probably not going to go head to head with, like, Pico or any of those guys out there. They just got the market nailed. But we may introduce some accessories, some transducers, damn clamps, that kind of stuff to work with scopes.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:47]:
I saw that new parasitic draw tool come out. That's pretty cool.
David Barden [00:15:51]:
Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:53]:
Tell us a little bit about it, because, I mean, I, especially for a lot of technicians, I think that's a pretty solid tool for them.
David Barden [00:15:59]:
So. Yeah, parasitic draws, a big deal. Still, years later. Yeah, it always was. When I was at the rental car guys and we were sitting around one day and trying to think of some interesting tools. And, like, you usually use a memory saver if you ever disconnect a battery. So that thing's supplying power to the vehicle. What if I just put a current meter on that?
Lucas Underwood [00:16:22]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:16:23]:
So now I know exactly how much power is being supplied. That would be the same as my parasitic draw. Correct. And it ends up.
David Roman [00:16:29]:
It is.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:30]:
Right.
David Barden [00:16:30]:
So we built a tool that has all that in it.
David Roman [00:16:33]:
I thought they were trying to get away with doing the memory savers, didn't it? I was told don't use memory servers because it fries modules.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:44]:
No, I've never had one fry module. I've had some modules get fried because we didn't use a memory saver or we had a situation where, um.
David Roman [00:16:54]:
And, and so you always use memory savers?
David Barden [00:16:56]:
I have, I haven't heard.
David Roman [00:16:59]:
Really? Yeah.
David Barden [00:17:00]:
Because you can lose adaptions. I'm just. Even for a customer, point of view.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:03]:
Radio presets, seat presets, the whole nine yards, the, the, those footwell modules, right?
David Roman [00:17:10]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:11]:
Even w, even just a little arc when you're putting it back on or any destabilization to the voltage to that.
David Roman [00:17:18]:
Module that'll corrupt that, dude. It was supposed to let it fall asleep.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:23]:
It's, it. The issues we ran into was is when they were in QC, they would, like, turn the key on and not realize the key was on, and the battery would get weak, and so the battery would get weak. They'd run out and then go to throw.
David Roman [00:17:37]:
Say a whole thing about, you guys kill more batteries than doing and doing. I I even told my tech, I'm like, hey, we need to. We need to probably put a maintainer on the alignment rack to. To hook up to the car, because you're doing alignment, and that alignment goes sideways for whatever reason. We have some. Hey, it's just not, you know, you wiggle it or whatever, or I got to make 15 adjustments. It's going to be on there, and the lights are on and stuff like that on the car, the brake lights and stuff. So it could drain down the battery.
David Roman [00:18:09]:
One of my Texas, because he's so paranoid about draining the battery down, well, like, lock everything in place and then take the key all the way out. Some of my other checks, though, just draw down the battery very quickly. You got to be really careful.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:25]:
And then, dude, I've seen a lot of stupid stuff happen. I think that's one of the frustrations with modern vehicles and all their switches and doodads. It's that all of this technology can be finicky.
David Roman [00:18:39]:
And that design, this tool.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:41]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:18:42]:
With a current thing on the thing. I don't know anything about electricity.
David Barden [00:18:49]:
Old zones, amps, ohms law.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:53]:
So the. The current flows through this, and then you can take your, you know, facetious.
David Roman [00:18:59]:
I mean, I know a little bit. I know enough to know you don't. I do some enough. Anyway, what I do is I tell my tech, because if he doesn't know, I go, hey, why don't you pull out the lab scope and run this test, and that'll tell you if that components good or not. That's it. And so he does. He knows how to run tests.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:21]:
That's the extent of the electricity knowledge you have.
David Roman [00:19:23]:
I'm just saying he knows how to do the test. He doesn't sometimes know, and I don't know if there's any classes on this is what test to run. That's what somebody needs to come up with.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:33]:
Scanner Danner.
David Roman [00:19:34]:
No. Well, he'll. He'll tell you, like, the theory, and he'll show you how to do the test. But if you have this symptom or this type of circuit, run this test.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:46]:
The. The. Remember the dude who made the original load pro? Yeah.
David Barden [00:19:52]:
Dan Sullivan.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:53]:
Yep. Now, he. Anyway, um, I'm gonna tell you something. He made a video one time.
David Barden [00:20:00]:
Oh, he made a bunch.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:01]:
He did. We're not gonna talk about those. He made one where he talked.
David Roman [00:20:05]:
Whoa, hold on. This sounds interesting. What happened?
David Barden [00:20:10]:
Let's say it was pretty contentious between power probe and him.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:13]:
Yeah, yeah.
David Roman [00:20:14]:
Was he using the tool wrong, comparing.
David Barden [00:20:18]:
It to his low pro?
Lucas Underwood [00:20:19]:
Yeah, it was not.
David Barden [00:20:20]:
Which was disappointing, because it ended up turning into a big fight. And even he will tell you the whole purpose of his tool. In the patent description, it says, enhances the functionality of any voltmeter. Well, what do you think of power probe three is? It's a voltmeter. He should have been plugging them into the power probe three and working together with us.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:42]:
But no, it would have been a. It would have been a great working relationship. He made a video one time, and he showed. He was talking about the fact when we talk about the three types of failures that can happen in a circuit, and we have to think of a circuit as a circle. And so he drew the circle, he dropped the load on, he dropped the power source on, he dropped the switch on, and he went through. Well, if. If you have this here, what does that mean? If you have this here, what does that mean? If you have this here, what does that mean? And. And that was.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:13]:
That was, for me, a big, like. It was kind of the reckoning of understanding circuits. Circuits and voltage drop. And. And I thought, man, it was a.
David Roman [00:21:22]:
Very weird, mechanically minded brain. I can't understand that. I bet you're like, you could.
David Barden [00:21:28]:
I bet you if I ran you through my five. If I had my PowerPoint up here.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:32]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:21:33]:
Get it.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:33]:
Yeah, it just makes.
David Roman [00:21:34]:
I get it.
David Barden [00:21:35]:
Break down even the most complicated circuit on the vehicle into individual circuits.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:40]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:21:41]:
And then those individual circuits have no more than five parts in them.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:45]:
Yep, exactly.
David Roman [00:21:46]:
But I'm saying I would take a device, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like. I'm shaking it. I'm like, hey, this thing is not coming apart. And I. He would do it. I bet you would, too. And I have a text that will look at it and go, well, see that little lever then flips this thing, and then this slides over here. So just pulling this.
David Roman [00:22:05]:
There you go. It's fixed. And I'm like, what? Well, yeah, it's just. They see the path, they see the design behind it. I don't. I go, it's not working. Fix it. I do.
David Roman [00:22:20]:
It doesn't make any sense to me.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:21]:
I am cursed with the. Like, after watching some of those videos, I became cursed with the ability to see it in my head, like, see where the electricity goes.
David Roman [00:22:30]:
Everybody doesn't see that. I'm saying, like, good technicians will be able to look down, or engineers. They look down at something and they go, okay. I can kind of see what the design is behind this and I can figure it out. I need to watch three or four YouTube videos of it working, and then I go, okay, there's a switch down there, and I got my screwdriver in.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:50]:
It broke.
David Roman [00:22:52]:
I will break it. Yeah, I will break it. Not knowing how it works. I'll just sit there and just.
David Barden [00:23:00]:
We'll get you there eventually, I guess.
David Roman [00:23:02]:
No. Heck no.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:04]:
Yeah. I mean, when you buy the new one and you plug that in, that's gonna work. Oh, my God.
David Roman [00:23:13]:
So you guys were beefing with. What was the name of the other company? The amp? What?
Lucas Underwood [00:23:17]:
The load pro.
David Roman [00:23:18]:
Load pro. So he was beefing on you with you guys unprovoked? Yeah, just on his own.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:24]:
It wasn't just them. It was everybody who he was beating with. Everybody snap on. It was. And it was a very, very.
David Roman [00:23:35]:
Why did people do that?
Lucas Underwood [00:23:36]:
It was a bad look, man. It was not well orchestrated. It wasn't clearly defined. It wasn't clearly laid out. The videos came across extremely arrogant. Like, I'm the best. I'm the greatest. Why?
David Roman [00:23:48]:
You know, that's a technician thing. Poor Greg Buckley, who tries to make a video clowning on the EPA. And the fact that all he did, all he said was 1234 YF runs higher pressures. He's kind of said it as a throw. Throwaway statement.
David Barden [00:24:04]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:24:04]:
And he's like. And he's like, our twelve reals used to be called Freon. That's what everybody called it. And then 134 a, which is what.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:11]:
Most cars, and one of them is a major trainer that you would think would, instead of, like, criticizing the video, be like, hey, let me. Hey, there's a couple things I think we should point out. And instead, it's not even that.
David Roman [00:24:24]:
It's like he goes. He goes in 1234, which runs slightly higher pressures, or he said higher pressures or whatever. And everybody just started piling on the, the. The video was about the EPA possibly putting out this. This regulation that would require a refrigerant to be recycled in an off site facility or a facility that was certified by the EPA to recycle refrigerant. Because now we just run this throughput thing through the filter. Right? The machine runs it through the filter, spits.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:58]:
It would mean all these refrigerant machines, if the EPA adopted this. All these refrigerant machines are useless. You can't use them.
David Roman [00:25:05]:
Well, no, they're good for extraction. Extract?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:07]:
No. And my understanding of, my understanding of it was, is that they would not extract unless the company's determined a way to make it do that. It would not just extract. You'd have to buy a different piece of equipment, more of that conventional.
David Roman [00:25:20]:
What the EPA doesn't want you to extract. It wants you to extract and send.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:25]:
They want you to extract and send. But those pieces of equipment are not configured to do that solely.
David Roman [00:25:31]:
Oh yeah, no, they're, they put it into an extra tank and then that extra tank, it just sits there. So after it's been filtered, the, the.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:37]:
Concern is, and what I saw from a couple different people is that if that were to happen, you'd have to refit half the industry.
David Roman [00:25:45]:
Oh yeah, it's crippling, but they don't think about that. They don't think about that nonsense.
David Barden [00:25:50]:
So I don't get the end goal there if you're pretty much self recycling on site, right?
David Roman [00:25:55]:
Well, they, they're afraid of leakage and they're afraid, hey, some, some of this. And you know, they, you know, they haven't done any actual studies to see how much. And if they did, they're like, oh, look at that dirt floor shop. We're going to go in there. They've got this old machine with like manual dials and knobs. We're gonna go in there and see how much of this is getting vented off into the atmosphere.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:17]:
Exact same thing as the farm bill. Right? And they, they hinted at that in these sessions because it's the exact same bill. The farm bill is the thing where freaking Congress legalized marijuana in the United States and didn't even know it because somebody said something to them and they're like, hey, you should do this. And they said, yeah, yeah, that sounds like a great idea, let's do that.
David Roman [00:26:39]:
Well, the problem is that this isn't going through Congress. They're not making a law. This is a, this is a, like a regulatory body with no oversight. They're just doing whatever the hell they want. And they, the only reason why they're doing anything is because otherwise they're not needed.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:58]:
You got a pretty damn valid point.
David Roman [00:27:00]:
They don't put out any new regulation. Like what's the, why are you here? So they have two things to do, new regulation and regulation enforcement. And if we're not looking for somebody doing the wrong thing, and if we're not putting out new rules. They're going to cut our budget. Well, we can't have that.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:17]:
So you bring up some very interesting points.
David Roman [00:27:20]:
All I'm saying about poor Buckley is that he misspoke on the 1234 YF, which it doesn't run any higher temperature. I guess it runs the same. Or lower pressures at certain. Whatever. Anyway, these people were being overly pedantic. They were just, like, nitpicking this one little. Little details. I couldn't even watch it past two minutes.
David Roman [00:27:39]:
A six minute video. I couldn't watch it past two minutes. It was so missing. So much misinformation. It's like, no, they didn't get every little detail right. And guess what the stupid thing was for the consumer. They don't know how the hell Ac works. All they know is, hey, this is going to get wildly expensive for me to service your 20 year old vehicle.
David Roman [00:28:00]:
You should probably, I don't know, write your flipping congressman or woman and tell them, hey, stop this nonsense. Stop it.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:10]:
You know what this is, right? You realize why this is happening, right? All the superfund sites are almost cleaned up.
David Barden [00:28:17]:
Wow.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:18]:
And so, did you know that if they run out of Superfund sites, they run out of funding? And so there will always be more Superfund sites. But we're getting low.
David Roman [00:28:29]:
No, it's not. The Superfund sites can be handled. But I'm saying, like, it's the, like, emissions protocols for factories or vehicles. It's like they hit. They hit a certain threshold. They're like, hey, you cannot hit more than this much in emissions. And everybody moves to hit that goal. But now the goal is hit.
David Roman [00:28:52]:
So guess what? You just. You just regulated yourself out of a job. Unless you make it stricter. Hey, we've determined that we need to make it slightly more strict for everybody. So we need you to do this.
David Barden [00:29:08]:
You try southern California.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:09]:
David, this.
David Roman [00:29:10]:
David hates regulation D. Say that again.
David Barden [00:29:14]:
We have additional people on our back around here, like air quality management district.
David Roman [00:29:20]:
You have. You have an EPA for just this area?
Lucas Underwood [00:29:23]:
Yes.
David Barden [00:29:25]:
And they can get ridiculous. They come and inspect at our sites and stuff. Like, we had gas dispensing facilities, obviously.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:32]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:29:33]:
You know the little string that holds the hose, right. That retracts back up into the holder if it sticks out more than an inch? That's a violation.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:42]:
Do what?
David Barden [00:29:44]:
Yeah, it's just nitpicking, ridiculous stuff.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:50]:
David, maybe you should move to California.
David Roman [00:29:52]:
You know, I. We're sitting at dinner and I'm like, where do you live?
David Barden [00:29:57]:
I live up in San Bernardino. Mountains right now. Crestline.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:00]:
So you're safe to say it.
David Roman [00:30:02]:
You're far away. I don't know what that means.
David Barden [00:30:04]:
I'm still in southern California.
David Roman [00:30:06]:
Well, I'm sitting here and there's people on top of people, which I can't deal with. And then there's like the lanes. I don't know why you guys make your lanes so narrow. You drive enormous vehicles, but the lanes are designed for teeny tiny cars. So you have teeny tiny lanes. Everybody's parking on the street because there's nowhere else to park. And everybody has to have a car. So everybody has a car.
David Roman [00:30:30]:
There's nowhere to park. The lanes are this wide and everybody's just people on top of people. For like, I'm driving through the neighborhoods. I didn't see any houses. Now we eventually got to houses, but.
David Barden [00:30:42]:
There was like moved up to the mountains.
David Roman [00:30:44]:
Well, okay, so it's just, it's apartment complexes. Like, hey, we're going to put, you know, 5000 people in this tiny block and everybody's on top of each other. Just makes me anxious. Like I can't, I can't handle it. Why would anybody want to live in this chaos? Just chaos. Then I found out that like the low for the year 65 and the high is like 75 and I'm like, oh, okay. Well, there you go.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:08]:
I thought you were getting ready to go into a tirade about how all Californians look the same. But David doesn't look like all the Californians.
David Roman [00:31:15]:
I would not guess him to be a californian.
David Barden [00:31:18]:
Most people don't say that. Not like your long haired surfer dude type or what?
David Roman [00:31:24]:
No, they just got it. And people in California go, look interesting. Not everybody, you know, it's a bell curve. It's always a bell curve. It's always a bell curve. He said I look like I'm from the east coast. And he's like, ah, it's your teeth. And you know it.
David Roman [00:31:39]:
All this. And I'm like, what are you even saying?
Lucas Underwood [00:31:43]:
You would picture him from being from Boston, wouldn't you? I mean, it's just, it's obvious.
David Roman [00:31:48]:
I don't agree with that.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:52]:
So y'all have been in just this like swing of development of really cool new tools, right? And you've been doing some really neat stuff. Like you've been given tools away to schools, right? Like you've been given a lot of stuff away. I find it interesting that there's no more engagement in that, in that than there is. Because like I watched the Facebook page and stuff. It doesn't seem like that many people engage with it. Why do you, what do you think the deal is with that?
David Barden [00:32:17]:
I don't know if it's just, you know, who's on Facebook anymore. Everybody seems to have moved to newer, like tick tock and stuff. I don't know if that's it or. I don't know. That really is a good question because I noticed that too.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:31]:
Right. Well, and so tell me about the tools that you've been giving away to the schools because you've got a couple different things you've been working with, don't you?
David Barden [00:32:38]:
It's kind of like a test light, but it has a little battery in it. So you can not only, you know, with your typical incandescent test light, it lights up on power.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:48]:
Right.
David Barden [00:32:48]:
You can reverse it and light it up on ground, but it also has the ability to check grounds. It has a little battery in it and give you like a blue light at the grounds or green light if the ground's good, blue light if it's over like a certain amount of resistance.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:01]:
Okay.
David Barden [00:33:02]:
And if it's, it also has a little weird feature where if it, as long as the voltage is over twelve volt, it vibrates a little bit.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:08]:
Huh.
David Barden [00:33:10]:
But it's so it's like a fancy test, like continuity tester one. They're giving them away to tech schools. Anybody that.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:18]:
Right. Get the kids one that they can work with and kind of start getting a feel for it.
David Barden [00:33:22]:
Correct.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:23]:
Now there's, there was, I don't want to call it a merger, but there was. You're working with another tool company now.
David Barden [00:33:30]:
What it was trying to think how many. Six, seven years ago. Yeah, we got. Power probe got bought out by MGL, which is a manufacturer of. They made industrial electronic testing equipment for forever years. So that kind of gave us a couple. We got more manufacturing capabilities. And just in the last few years, our R and D team has really come online because they realize, you know, they've been doing the traditional stuff for years and years and years and we're trying to push, okay, we need new capabilities, new functions.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:10]:
Right.
David Barden [00:34:11]:
And our R and T team that we have in place now, they're, they're getting really quick at it. They're getting good at it, you know, because a lot of it's communication, you know, over the seas and.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:21]:
Right.
David Barden [00:34:21]:
Different languages. But we're finally getting a nail. Like we just did a. Went through a prototype exercise, proposed tool, and within 90 days we had a working prototype.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:32]:
Holy cow.
David Barden [00:34:33]:
It used to take us years.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:35]:
Right to come out with something. Right. Well, I've noticed that. And then I was looking at the other tools on the table, and I don't think the rest of the industry knows that you all have those other.
David Barden [00:34:45]:
Tools much more than just power probes.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:48]:
Yeah. And, I mean, they're.
David Roman [00:34:50]:
What.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:50]:
What I like about their line is it is a very affordable line compared to what you see everywhere else in the. In the market. And so when I first started buying their tools, except for the hook. Right. The hook came on later, but I was buying, like, those volt meters because they were affordable, and I didn't have any money at the time.
David Roman [00:35:09]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:09]:
And I realized how durable they are, and I realized how good they were. I'm like, man, I tried other meters. And, like, for instance, the meters, the.
David Roman [00:35:18]:
Display with these tv oms.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:20]:
Dude, I'm telling you, it's. It like the readout on those meters compared to the other meters, like the flukes. The readout on their meter is the best readout on any meter out there.
David Roman [00:35:31]:
Legible.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:32]:
Yeah, it's. It's a much bigger. And it's much easier to see. Yeah, it is a much better readout.
David Roman [00:35:38]:
Nice and bright.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:39]:
It's got a light in the back of it. You go, boop. And you turn the light on. Yeah, but they're. But so then I started realizing how much other stuff that y'all had in the market, and it's really affordable tooling, especially compared to what some of the other stuff out there is.
David Roman [00:35:58]:
My tech has a breakout box, I think. Don't you guys make a breakout box?
David Barden [00:36:02]:
Yep.
David Roman [00:36:03]:
And something with fuses. Yeah. I can only remember. Oh, my phone on me. I check it.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:14]:
Something with fuses.
David Roman [00:36:15]:
Yeah, I don't remember what it was.
David Barden [00:36:17]:
We haven't. Might have been something you saw yesterday. We have a new meter that's launching in another month or two.
David Roman [00:36:22]:
No, this is like an accessory kit or a box. This power probe on it. I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:28]:
I mean, I don't.
David Roman [00:36:29]:
Come to me.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:30]:
I had tried the. I tried the short finder, and I did not have good success with that. For me, it was a. It was a cool tool.
David Barden [00:36:39]:
It's kind of situation it. In some situations, it nails it others.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:43]:
Yeah, I just.
David Barden [00:36:45]:
At all.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:45]:
Yeah, I just didn't find that many that it worked for me for. Um. And. And I'm gonna piss Noah off when I say this. Typically, if one's shorted, I just cut the wiring over, and I'm done, and I'm going about my way.
David Roman [00:36:58]:
Yeah, but that works that works sometimes. We had a. We had a. We had a town and country with the rear ac would immediately default to. Would throw an error code and it would default to heat in the back or all of them. Sorry. All of them did it. And so that turned into, well, we got to disassemble this, that, and the other.
David Roman [00:37:21]:
What it. What it was. If we unplugged the back, everything would work beautifully.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:26]:
Come on in.
David Roman [00:37:27]:
If we unplug the back. If we. As soon as you plug the back in the back, it would immediately freak out the entire system. You can sit. You can take a seat there. Oh, okay. Oh, jeez.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:44]:
So you can't say anything bad until that David walks out. All right.
David Roman [00:38:01]:
We thought it was that. We thought it was the actuator. We had power and ground. The problem was short. As soon as that. That back actuator did this little sweep thing, it would short out and then it would default. All of them, the actuators. All the actuators would go down and it would switch the heat, and then that's all it would do.
David Roman [00:38:19]:
And it was a broken wire. This was a wheelchair van. It was a broken wire somewhere behind the. The front passenger side seat and the door, there was like a section of wire, and we weren't going to rip up because of the wheelchair mechanism. Like, we're not ripping into this. So we told the lady, like, hey, we're going to do an overlay. We're just going to route this over here, and we're just going to call it good. It's a broken wire somewhere in there.
David Roman [00:38:47]:
I don't know, but we're not ripping all that up. That's when you do the overlay. If you can get to it, don't overlay. Noah, you fight that. Lucas, you tell him no, I want a quality oe style repair. I want to cut that wire. I want to pull it out. I'm going to snake a new one in.
David Roman [00:39:04]:
It's going to look good.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:06]:
No, let me explain something to you. A week ago, he's going to be mad because this is the first time he's been on the podcast without being on the podcast. The rest of them are used to it by now. About a week ago, he's got a abs sensor. And it started with. Yeah, it needs abs sensor. And. And then.
David Roman [00:39:26]:
Did you do voltage stop test you?
Lucas Underwood [00:39:27]:
Of course not. And speed sensors. We cross. Right? So we'll. We'll take a spool and we'll just cross the sensors and we'll see. Right?
David Barden [00:39:37]:
That's a good. Quick test.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:38]:
Yeah, it's really easy.
David Roman [00:39:39]:
What do you mean? So we'll just plug them into different spots.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:44]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:39:44]:
And if they. If the one that doesn't respond switches position.
David Roman [00:39:48]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:39:49]:
Then you got a wiring problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:50]:
Exactly. Well, it gives you. It gives you direction.
David Roman [00:39:52]:
Why not just do a Walter shop test?
Lucas Underwood [00:39:55]:
I'm getting there. And so after he changed the sensor and it didn't fix it, he didn't come to me. He goes to Eric, and he's like, hey, this didn't work. And so they start looking for the wire, and he goes through and he clips little, like, 1 mm sections of wire looking for this short.
David Roman [00:40:16]:
Like what?
Lucas Underwood [00:40:17]:
He's like. He's like it just over and over.
David Roman [00:40:26]:
What are you doing?
Lucas Underwood [00:40:27]:
He's like, this is how we do it at the dealer.
David Roman [00:40:32]:
Are you serious?
Lucas Underwood [00:40:36]:
Alley technicians, bro.
David Roman [00:40:38]:
What's that?
Lucas Underwood [00:40:38]:
Audi technicians.
David Roman [00:40:41]:
Here's the thing. No other earmuffs. They. Dealership techs always get so mad when we talk crap on them.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:50]:
I'm not talking crap about dealership tech.
David Roman [00:40:53]:
I think you are. I think you're saying that they are usually some of the worst technicians. They are terrible. Not the ones that buy power probes. They're fantastic. So dealership techs that buy power probes. Great. If you didn't buy a power probe, you're probably a terrible technician.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:10]:
There was a.
David Roman [00:41:11]:
There was a challenge yourself. That's the question. The ones that are gonna come back and be like, you ain't fine. Quit the dealership. Go find an independent repair shop, and see if you can hack it or.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:22]:
Because a rental car fleet or rental car.
David Roman [00:41:25]:
No, because the same thing as the dealership and same like style, dealing with.
David Barden [00:41:29]:
Brand new cars every make and model.
David Roman [00:41:33]:
I could see that. So challenge yourself and go. Go work in an independent repair shop. The dealership will take you back. They. The course, they can't find technicians. Of course I got to take you back. But go challenges to see if you can hack it.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:47]:
I overheard a conversation. Not gonna say about who or where or anything like that.
David Roman [00:41:53]:
The first time you get a 94 f 250 diesel, you came from Audi, and you've got to work up in 94 diesel, f 250. And he hands you a roll of copper, nickel brake line, and he's like, hey, brake line. The whole truck. Good luck. That's it. He leaves, and he's like, what?
Lucas Underwood [00:42:18]:
I guess he won't ever accuse me of being a hack ever again because he knows that the consequences are terrible.
David Roman [00:42:25]:
You can't. What? A stainless steel line doesn't work.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:28]:
Stainless steel is really hard to bend into place, but if it's pre bent. You ever tried to find a pre bent stainless kit for a 1993 lines.
David Roman [00:42:38]:
To go, I think is the name of the company. They've got them. They're just really expensive. So you like a full dude? I buy. I buy fuel lines for, like, Pontiac grand dams fuel lines. I'm not cutting into that. First off, if I cut into it, it's so rusty that I'm gonna end up, like, I'll be doing the Noah thing, like, every millimeter. Cut, cut.
David Roman [00:43:00]:
No, no, you buy the whole line. And who sells line for 2004 Pontiac grand am lines to go? You buy the whole line. They sell and say.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:11]:
Give you money to say that?
David Roman [00:43:12]:
No, it's just. It's fantastic. I. I bought lines for Pontiac Grand Ames at D 150. No, it was a ram charger. Like, a 1992 Dodge Ram charger with a 380.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:27]:
Miserable.
David Roman [00:43:28]:
Yeah. You know who I gave that to? Brandon. My lab scope. The one that's like, I want to rebuild modules. Anyway, here's this 1992 Dodge Ram Charger.
David Barden [00:43:43]:
No electronics at all.
David Roman [00:43:46]:
The.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:46]:
The tech in question that we're talking about, Noah, he's. He's a sweetheart of human being, and, um, he got mad at me a couple weeks ago because, like an independent, you will see terminals fret and they will go bad. And. And I have had cars I can walk over and I can touch an ignition coil. Right. And touch the wire on it and can induce a misfire and. And just by touching the wire on it, because the wires loose in the pin. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:11]:
And so we. If we replace the connector, I'm replacing the pins. I'm just not even messing with it. And he got really upset at me for saying that we're going to replace pins, and he's like, this is. This is hackery.
David Roman [00:44:24]:
And he wanted to replace just the housing.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:27]:
He just wanted to replace the housing.
David Barden [00:44:28]:
Does that accomplish?
David Roman [00:44:30]:
Yeah, well, they were.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:31]:
They. The clips were broken all. Well, yeah, I'm like, by the time you get the pin out of the connector and get it back in on a 25 year old car, there's a chance that you're going to break the pin in the process, right?
David Roman [00:44:42]:
Yeah. You bend it back or bend it funny or it's not going to sit. Fine. Yeah.
David Barden [00:44:46]:
And if they're already fully.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:47]:
Yeah, exactly. Just go ahead and replace them.
David Roman [00:44:50]:
The whole thing.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:50]:
So then, you know, he basically accused.
David Roman [00:44:53]:
Me, you are a hack before.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:54]:
I am. I'm not. I'm not denying that. So. But I'm just saying it did get him a 1993 Ford f 350.
David Roman [00:45:02]:
I don't do that. I don't. I don't make him work on junk as a retribution.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:07]:
You just make a work on junk.
David Roman [00:45:08]:
It's just. It's a luck of the draw. So sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sticking you with this absolute monstrosity. I don't mean it to be that.
David Barden [00:45:19]:
Way, but that was actually good jobs or bad jobs. One of the things I liked about being a technician, right? Because there's always. Every job, there's, like, a little sense of accomplishment.
David Roman [00:45:30]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:45:30]:
Little wins every day.
David Roman [00:45:31]:
That's one of the best things anymore. That's like, you're so far removed that you're thinking fondly of it going just like. You're thinking back, like, oh, we had.
David Barden [00:45:41]:
To, but not full time.
David Roman [00:45:45]:
It's like thinking, oh, that music was the best. But then you go back and listen to her, like, ooh, maybe not.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:53]:
I don't know. I enjoy going back and working on cars.
David Roman [00:45:56]:
I know. Because you can. You can pick and choose. You can just come in and be like, oh, I get to do a little diag, and then you bounce. Like, I'm out. That. Yeah, okay. That's fun.
David Roman [00:46:08]:
That is fun to get in there. Just a little bit of dye, metal. And not the.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:12]:
Not the hard diags. Only the easy diet.
David Roman [00:46:15]:
No, the heart. Some of the hard diags are fine.
David Barden [00:46:16]:
Tired.
David Roman [00:46:17]:
Yeah, the hard.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:18]:
No, no, no. I'm not talking about that kind of hard. Like, for instance, there is a crossfire at the shop that's been there for a month, and it is. It is a intermittent hard start or intermittent no start. And Mario pointed out to Eric that the can signal would move randomly, and so it would. You could, like, literally watch the scope, and it would be on one side if the car started, and then if it didn't start, it would be on the other side. In other words, the pattern would shift. And so we tried a couple different cam sensors, and eventually we found that the chain was super loose in it.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:59]:
And it only happened when you went to start. Now, before you started it, it would. It would be slacked out, and you could hit it, and it would have a ton of slop in it. But then once it built a little bit oil pressure, it was tight. It was fine. Well, so we changed the tensioner. It didn't do anything. And so it's like, Eric went to start it.
David Roman [00:47:16]:
Why would you, huh? Why would you not go in and like, hey, we're going to do teardown. We're going to replace a whole bunch of parts. I bet you it was the little. The little signal, little teeth.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:27]:
No, we can see, because you can see that from the top.
David Roman [00:47:30]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:31]:
We thought it might have been moving.
David Roman [00:47:32]:
Yeah, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:33]:
We thought that. That when you started, however, that reluctors attached, it would spin. Yeah, but it didn't.
David Roman [00:47:38]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:39]:
And so I don't honestly know what happened when it didn't fix it. And I saw Eric get, like, super down and out and get the pouty face, I was like, hey, I'm going to California.
David Roman [00:47:52]:
Is it still the shot?
Lucas Underwood [00:47:54]:
I think so, yeah.
David Roman [00:47:55]:
But why did. Why would you go in and, hey, we're doing chains, guides, tensioner, like, the whole thing.
David Barden [00:48:01]:
One of those Chrysler v six is with the chain driven water pump.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:04]:
That's that Mercedes.
David Roman [00:48:05]:
It's a mercedes three two. Yeah, that's what the e 320 and the c. Whatever.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:11]:
Those cars are awful.
David Roman [00:48:13]:
Well, this crossfires. But the e 320 things are tank.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:17]:
Yeah, but the crosswires.
David Roman [00:48:20]:
Not the only thing that would go wrong. Those stupid. This little switch things. This one's got the little sketchy russian box. You wire it in there so it doesn't lock out, because otherwise you got to buy the whole lock mechanism. We're, like three grand. So that noise, the little thing, this.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:36]:
Particular car, it has that air to air on it, or the air injection system. All the hoses and everything associated with it are discontinued, and they're all falling apart, and so it's going to become a thing. And the guy loves his car, but I'm like, hey, at some point, have.
David Roman [00:48:56]:
You shown him the new Slks? Go drive a new slk. It's the same car, but, you know, not obsolete. Those were ugly, too. The rears, it looked like just like a really wide rear end. It's unsightly. Wide rear end.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:16]:
Do you think? People say the same thing about you when you walk?
David Roman [00:49:19]:
But I'm not, like, putting myself out there as a. Oh, I guess maybe I am. I'm not.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:30]:
Poor David did not know what he was getting into in this one.
David Roman [00:49:33]:
It's an ugly car, is what I'm saying. Chrysler had some. Some good looking cars. The prowler was a good looking car. I thought the prowler was good. Do you remember Plymouth Prowler? It was a good looking car. It's underpowered. I felt what the problem was when.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:45]:
I bought all those tools from that dodge dealership that time. I got the Prowler kit and all the books and everything else, and it, like, you could tell with five of them.
David Roman [00:49:54]:
That they sold.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:55]:
Yeah. You could tell what they worked on and what they didn't work on because, like, the majority of the toolkits were just still boxed up. They're in those plastic boxes. None of them had never been used. Right. The breakout boxes, they'd never use those. Box stacked up.
David Roman [00:50:13]:
He's the power probes.
David Barden [00:50:14]:
Got a great break.
David Roman [00:50:15]:
That's what we have at the shop.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:16]:
I love it.
David Roman [00:50:17]:
It's a great breakout box. It's good. The pricing is right. It's quality unit. Did you develop that? Is that you?
David Barden [00:50:24]:
It was part of it, yeah.
David Roman [00:50:28]:
Not the bad part. So if you don't like this one feature of it. He didn't touch it.
David Barden [00:50:33]:
No. Like I want actually any of the communication lines where it's looking for proper voltage range and activity.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:41]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:50:42]:
Or they blink blue. So it's actually analyzing some of the common signals without pulling a scope or anything out.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:48]:
That's pretty cool.
David Barden [00:50:48]:
Like one guy calls me up, you know, he had a network problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:53]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:50:54]:
Plugged that in. No blinky, blinky on your can, high and low. So he just at that point, started unplugging modules one by one. And, hey, this one, it started blinking again and that quickly.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:05]:
Right.
David Barden [00:51:06]:
Which module is pulling the network down?
David Roman [00:51:09]:
That's cool. I'm sure Brandon knows how to use that. I don't know. He pulls it out quite a bit.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:17]:
Yeah, we use ours quite a bit, too. When you come as a technician. Right. Because you were a technician. When you come to an event like this, what do you think?
David Barden [00:51:27]:
It kind of new to this. I like. I don't know. It's nice having access to the manufacturers and their point of view. Like you said, you just enlightened me to that Honda thing that I didn't know about.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:39]:
Right.
David Barden [00:51:42]:
And also interfacing with other people in the industry to see what they're doing.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:47]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:51:47]:
Because, you know, we've got. We're trying to stay in our little niche of tools and step on anybody other's toes, but we want to complement them.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:55]:
Right.
David Barden [00:51:56]:
Maybe we have stuff that we can work together with and that kind of.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:58]:
Stuff and create opportunity and. And you know, it. And you're right, because getting to talk to the manufacturers and see their perspective. We were in here having a conversation with one of our friends, and he was talking about some of the reverse engineering that has to happen and where that data comes from and what's the difference between the data that the scan tool gets and where does that happen? Like, what's the pathway for that to happen? And so we're talking about it. And he said, yeah, he said, let me show you how we do that. And so he brings up a tool, and he's talking about the fact that, hey, when you have a scan tool and you say auto identify, it goes to this category and it looks in this category, and it says, okay, I know the VIN number is going to be here, so give me the VIN number. And it requests the VIN number, but it doesn't communicate until you hit that button. He said, so the thing is, is that the car is always talking, and all of these can communications are logged and they never stop.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:55]:
And so he was talking about how they use hexadecimal data to go down through this list, and they pinpoint and they have a way that they find out what the identifier is.
David Roman [00:53:04]:
They look for changes, and so they.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:06]:
Watch for the changes and see how.
David Roman [00:53:07]:
They do something, and then they wait for the change and they're like, oh, that changed. Okay, so if I flip this, this changes, what am I seeing here? Then they pull the binary code or the hexadecimal code, and they can see what that means and they're like, okay, so I'll turn signal switch, flipping up.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:24]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:53:25]:
Looks like this in the, on this module and in this network. It's pretty interesting.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:30]:
It is. And so for me, what I thought was really cool about it is I always, it wasn't just fixing the car for me, it was. I really wanted to understand why it did what it did and why did it think the way that it thought.
David Roman [00:53:44]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:44]:
Because I understand the electricity component of it. I understand the car component of it. Why did you disable x component when y happened? Right. What, what is your thought process? Why are you doing that? And so it gives you, like, this inside look into why it did what it did and what signal told it to turn that off. And so because you can watch it as it happens. And I'm like, dude, that is so cool. I would have never known any of that if I didn't come to this event.
David Barden [00:54:12]:
A lot of the better, because I think seen pretty much everybody's, but a lot of the better, especially oem diagnostic guides, have that data. Right, yeah, sorry about that.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:28]:
No, no, somebody.
David Roman [00:54:30]:
Sorry.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:32]:
I just, I think that there's so much information that changes hands here and so much perspective that happens here, especially for somebody like you that was a technician, and to come in here and see this. Right?
David Barden [00:54:45]:
Yeah, it was really interesting for me.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:47]:
Well, it opens your eyes to how big our freaking industry is compared to, like, you know what I mean? And you went to work for power probe. So, you know, it was a big industry. But then you come in here and you're like, holy cow, this is pretty intense.
David Barden [00:54:58]:
Well, yeah, actually when my story, that's when I. Rental car days is when I discovered power probes.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:05]:
Okay.
David Barden [00:55:05]:
Kind of addressing that. No car in the bay more than half an hour. It really streamlined my electrical diagnosis.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:11]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:55:13]:
So when years down the road, I was looking for a job and this little ad popped up and I knew the tool.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:20]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
David Barden [00:55:22]:
And it was just for somebody to answer the phone, answer tech calls.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:26]:
Really? Yep.
David Roman [00:55:27]:
Hmm.
David Barden [00:55:28]:
That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was still a fairly, it was just Jeff Wis and it was kind of literally a mom and pop company still at that time. Yeah, we just come out with a hook. That was our biggest deal.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:42]:
So we've probably talked at some point. I just didn't know it.
David Barden [00:55:45]:
And they literally, that was one of my biggest tasks that they gave me is training on the hook.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:49]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:55:49]:
So I did a lot of road trips, a lot of training in conjunction with scan tools.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:55]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:55:56]:
And to me, I always thought that was a great pairing. I'd let the launch guy or the autel guy or the Bosch guy do his pitch.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:02]:
Yeah.
David Barden [00:56:03]:
Then I'd be up next and I'm like, okay, that was your x ray machine that tells you where you have the problem. But now I've got the scalpels and tools to get in there and actually fix the problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:15]:
Right.
David Barden [00:56:16]:
So to me it was a really good pairing.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:18]:
So are you still teaching classes?
David Barden [00:56:20]:
Not as much as I'd like to, but yeah, we're going to get back into that. And one of the things they've taxed me that we're supposed to be building like a little online electrical power probe university.
David Roman [00:56:32]:
Oh, that's kind of cool because we.
David Barden [00:56:33]:
Realize electrical training is something that's really needed out there.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:37]:
Well, and there's, there's so much talk about, and I think it, the jokes that get made about power probe are not necessarily about power probe, they're about the technicians using the power probe. Right. And it's kind of like a misnomer that if you're using a power probe. Right.
David Barden [00:56:53]:
But I've been in use with soap, I'm guessing close to 20 years now. I've been using power probe, have never fried any.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:00]:
I was getting ready to say knock on wood. I don't think I've ever fried anything with one. I'm interested though, because I don't ever see you guys at some of the national events, right? Like, we go to vision. We go to Asta's expo in North Carolina. I'd love to see you at some of those events.
David Barden [00:57:15]:
It's been about five or six we used to, and we're probably going to start ramping that back up again.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:20]:
Okay.
David Barden [00:57:21]:
But, yeah, I don't know if you kind of followed the history of power pro, but went through a couple ownership changes, but now we're kind of where we need to be. Exactly right. With our R and D team, our sales team, and we're starting to ramp up our training again, too, so hopefully we'll start doing that again. The shows like vision, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:41]:
That would be awesome to see you guys out a lot more.
David Barden [00:57:46]:
Yeah, we used to. I'd like to get back to this.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:49]:
Well, I mean, being on the boots on the ground, especially from a development standpoint and from a training standpoint, the boots on the ground and recognizing where your consumer is weak, right?
David Barden [00:58:01]:
Oh, yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:02]:
And I think we know for a large majority, and I get that, like, the product is sold through matco and snap on and everybody else. Right. So there's a wide breadth of people who would have that tool, and we see less of those people. You might see one to 2% of the industry at these training events, but to be able to connect with those guys who are using the tool and really pushing to take it to the next level and using it a high level, I think that would be a cool experience for you guys to be able to.
David Barden [00:58:35]:
That's where, you know, my boss thinks I'm a creative genius on some of the tool ideas I come up with. But I'm telling you, I got most of my ideas from talking with technicians, from answering those tech calls, from doing those trainings. Like you just said, I get feedback from them. You know, I need a tool that does this. Well, heck, we could do that, you know.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:56]:
Right. Well, I was intrigued with that. The voltage drop meter that you were showing yesterday that you can just drop on a fuse and, I mean, like, yeah, you can do the calculations, but in the same respect, that tool, you select the fuse and you put it across the top of the fuse and it gives you the reading.
David Barden [00:59:12]:
Yep. Instead of just millivolts, it will convert it directly to amps.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:16]:
Right. And so between that and that parasitic draw tester, I'm gonna buy one of the parasite draw testers. Because what I like about it is you can leave it on the car overnight and you can data log it too. Right. Like, it'll let you data.
David Roman [00:59:29]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:29]:
So something changes with that at some point. You have the ability to go back and see that.
David Roman [00:59:34]:
Yeah, that's worth it for sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:36]:
Yeah, I think I'm gonna get one.
David Roman [00:59:38]:
Sometimes it's two or 3 hours before the.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:40]:
Right. Something random.
David Barden [00:59:41]:
Exactly.
David Roman [00:59:42]:
Yeah. Acura with those stupid bluetooth modules.
David Barden [00:59:46]:
Oh, back in the day, we had onstar modules that would go off in the middle of the night.
David Roman [00:59:50]:
They'll kick on and off over and over and over again. And they don't kill the battery. It takes two weeks to kill the battery, but that's a higher, higher amperage to all. The battery should be good for months, and instead it kills the battery in two weeks. We had a customer come in. They would leave the car. It will only happen when they went out of town. They said that would leave the car at the airport, and I'd come back into town.
David Roman [01:00:13]:
They'd be out for like a week and a half, and the car would be dead. But if I leave, you know, if I just drive it on a regular basis or just normal in town, I never have any problems. Bluetooth module kicking on and off.
David Barden [01:00:26]:
Yep.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:26]:
We had a rash when the, the new keys came out. We had a rash of folks who just kept coming in and saying, my car's dying overnight. My car's dying overnight. My car's dying overnight.
David Barden [01:00:40]:
They leave the keys too close to.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:41]:
And they would leave the keys too close to the car, and we'd bring it in and, like, what is going on? We just, and so then you, you literally have to turn into a little bit of a detective and start asking questions like, let me ask you something. When you get home at night, are you asking me that? Where do you put your keys? I drop them in the bowl as I walk out the garage. How close is it to the car? Right.
David Roman [01:01:07]:
Stupid cars. Okay.
David Barden [01:01:11]:
Yeah. Even in parasite drain testing on these newer cars, you got to make sure that things away from the car.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:15]:
Yeah, good deal.
David Roman [01:01:18]:
All right.