Monthly Archives: November 2024

Automotive Service Technician Apprenticeship Is The First Step To Success

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Some people who want to become automotive service technicians may be limited in obtaining an education because they cannot afford to take time off work from their current automotive position to advance their education. At Centennial College, students don’t have to choose. With the post-secondary’s automotive service technician training, there is an earn-while-you-learn approach. That makes it possible to learn while still making a living. How? First, during the three eight-week in-school sessions of the automotive service technician apprenticeship, students may qualify for income support through Employment Insurance Canada benefits or training allowance. Meanwhile, there are also five periods of 1,800 hours with an employer during which students are fully compensated for their work. In addition, if that time period doesn’t fit their schedule, students can complete the program by attending one day a week for three years or two evenings a week for three years.

To apply for this automotive service technician training, students have completed an Ontario Secondary School Diploma or equivalent and be employed as an apprentice. However, they cannot apply directly to the college or ontariocolleges.ca for admission. For general information about apprenticeship registration, students are asked to contact the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities.

Once they have gone through the application process and been accepted, students will discover a program that puts the emphasis on ensuring they obtain a good working knowledge of all of a vehicle’s systems: engines, electrical/electronics, fuels, transmissions and drivelines, steering, suspension and brakes. This occurs through the provinces largest transportation training centre, Ashtobee Campus. This facility houses workshop labs that simulate a real life environment and include tools of the trade and entire cars and car parts that have been donated to the school, on which students practice. Leading the students are professionals from the field who can offer one-on-one instruction as well as share their own experiences. More specifically, during their in-school sessions students learn car systems by attending the following automotive service technician training courses: Drive Train Systems, Electrical/Electronic & Emission Systems, Engine Systems, Work Practices and Procedures, and Suspension/Steering and Brake Systems.

After learning about a certain aspect of being an automotive service technician, students spend time with an employer showcasing their skills, encountering customers and practicing in a real-life setting. Upon graduation from Centennial College, students have the potential to be hired by their apprenticeship employers, full-time. In fact, more than other industry, the automotive service technician field looks for apprentices and workers who enter the sector having already experienced hands-on situations. Positions for those with automotive service technician training can be found in: vehicle and parts manufacturers, dealers, garages and service stations, retailers, governments, corporations with their own fleets as well as in self-employment.

Major Automotive Service Technician Tools Found In Every Garage

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When embarking on an auto career, the first things you learn are the ins-and-outs of using the most popular industry-standard tools. In addition to these, however, there are other major tools not usually found in the garage of the hobbyist, but are absolute necessities for the automotive service technician. These tools are indispensable to building up your business from the ground-up, or becoming a valued member of a pre-existing team.

Tools You Can’t Do Without

Early in your auto career, you’ll come across the full range of electrical issues with the parts of a vehicle. As such, a voltmeter is an essential piece of diagnostic equipment, which drastically cuts down the amount of time you would otherwise spend trying to find shorted wires and faulty connections. Often sold together, a multi-meter for the checking of amperages is just as important.

Because a busy automotive service technician can easily encounter tens-of-thousands of bolts, screws and holes in a short period of time, you’ll find air-powered ratchets, ball drivers and power drills to be merciful instruments of construction and disassembly. They save your joints from inflammation and injury and allow you to easily tighten and loosen disagreeable bolts and screws.

For big jobs that involve razing down the thick metal of a car, cutting and making adjustments are easily handled by this next popular tool of the automotive service technician: the plasma cutter. Reaching temperatures hot enough to ionize the surrounding air, this is essentially the perfect knife and slices through hardware like butter. The plasma cutter is an indispensable welding tool that will serve you well in your auto career.

A work light is an absolute must. Even during the brightest day, there are nooks and crannies in the back of the garage where darkness dominates, and it is crucial that you see what you’re doing. Work lights come in super-bright halogens and low-energy LEDs, where the lack of an extension cord and power adapter proves handy.

Extensions and swivels are mechanical tools that allow you to reach and manipulate hard-to-reach bolts, which are either deeply-embedded in some corner of the car, or surrounding by too many other machine parts at an awkward angle.

Jacks and jack stands are instruments of dual-importance, so much so that they’re sold as the feature of many starter packages for the beginning auto mechanic. The jack is for removing car wheels safely, by allowing you to slide underneath the multiple-ton vehicle to inspect the underbelly.

These represent just slightly more than a handful of the essential tools you’ll encounter in auto careers, and serve as the bare minimum for a serious mechanic. Vehicles develop all kinds of problems through wear-and-tear, and these tools help you effectively apply your knowledge in finding solutions for satisfied customers as an automotive service technician.

Car Care Tips To Ensure Smooth Holiday Travel

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Holiday travel can be a bust if your vehicle breaks down on the way to visiting friends and family.

With today’s busy schedules and high-tech vehicles, most drivers are left with neither the time nor inclination for an afternoon of tinkering on their car. But motorists can still do their part.

According to the experts at the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE), good communication between the repair shop and the customer can help ensure satisfactory service.

ASE offers the following tips to help make the repair process go smoothly.

* Do your homework before taking your vehicle in. Read the owner’s manual to learn about the vehicle’s systems and components. Follow the recommended service schedules and keep a log of all repairs and service.

* Don’t ignore your vehicle’s warning signals. There may be explicit dashboard messages or subtle changes in performance. Make a note of any problems – and under what conditions they occur.

* Inspect your car frequently. Check for unusual sounds, odors, drips, leaks, smoke, warning lights and gauge readings. See if you notice changes in acceleration, engine performance, gas mileage or fluid levels. Also, check for worn tires, belts or hoses, and problems in handling, braking and steering or vibrations.

* Communicate your findings. Be prepared to describe your car’s symptoms. Carry a written list of those symptoms to give to the technician or service consultant. Do not suggest a specific course of repair; let the technician diagnose and recommend a remedy.

* Stay involved. Do not be embarrassed to request simple definitions. Professionally run repair establishments recognize the importance of two-way communication in automotive repairs. However, don’t rush the technician to make an on-the-spot

diagnosis.

* Leave a telephone number where you can be reached. Ask to be called and apprised of the problem, course of action and costs before work begins. Before you leave the shop, be sure you understand all shop policies regarding estimates, guarantees and acceptable methods of payment.

ASE is dedicated to improving the quality of automotive service and repair through the voluntary testing and certification of automotive technicians. ASE-certified technicians wear blue and white ASE shoulder insignia and carry credentials listing their exact areas of certification. Their employers often display the blue and white ASE sign.

Achievements In Ford Car Sales

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The auto business handled assorted hardships this preceding year with considerable outstanding car businesses in the USA acquiring economic funds to preserve business. Ford nonetheless, not only triumphed in executing its business free of any outside negotiation, it in fact obtained a great gain in car sales. Lauded for a magnificent assortment of cars, which promote agreeable gas reduction, Ford intends to preserve its goal of unveiling prime caliber, gas efficient cars to nurture this progression.

Different clever proposals have been adapted by Ford to confirm that its car sales can cope proficiently. The main feature is the importance of buyer desires, amenities and boosting consumer affinity. Ford wants to organize this by offering pivotal preferences in its cars that could really magnify the car owners appreciation and so, improve purchaser dependence with regard to Ford cars. Technologically vanguard preferences will make it more difficult for individuals to switch to diverse cars but will in addition attract different buyers for its car sales.

Gas saving and accuracy have continuously been linked with Ford cars and fresh vehicles appear to be becoming imperceptibly more desirable. Ford adeptly attained a portion of the Hybrid industry, a market essentially prevailed over by Prius, a hybrid automobile fabricated by the planets well-established car company Toyota. In spite of being a comparatively modern technology, Ford hybrid car sales improved by just about thirty percent from the prior year.

An essential perspective of the policy relates to the forward-looking entertainment and transmission amenities in the brand new Ford cars. The acclaimed car company comprehends the compulsion to execute different manual activities in the car connected to mobile phones and entertainment and is targeting to come out with stress-free speech identification attributes that will enable you to broadcast directions without removing your hands off the wheel. In spite of fears because of episodes with comparable preceding technology, Ford warrants that their creation will run nicely.

Various protections have moreover been executed to guarantee that the modern specifications will not curb the operator’s security, an added grounds for satisfactory cars sale in the preceding year. For instance, a consumer will be allowed to accept phone dispatches forwarded to them but will by no means be capable of key in a cell phone message when controlling the vehicle. The online gateway is furthermore opened totally when the car is immobile. Protection checks like those indicated are remarkably meaningful to car buyers and in addition markedly raise Fords safety classification.

A myriad of auxiliary preferences are being launched in a phenomenal selection of imminent vehicles. Ford has affirmed that characteristics associated with one car may be communicated to alternative Ford cars by operating flash or SD appliances. Ford appears to be sticking to an expedient procedure to foster car sales in the forthcoming years and with recent, progressive choices not only might it expand its percentage in the trade but certainly grab unusually faithful car buyers.