Here - TAT - The Automotive Technician

Training event was a knock-out
more please!
Two groups of
Australian auto
technicians have
just completed advanced
workshops on electrical
fault-finding with leading
American specialist and
trainer Dan Sullivan.
Author of a 200-page
electrical diagnostics book
used in technical schools
in the US, Dan has
trained more than 4,000
technicians since 1996.
He is specifically skilled in
electrical theory and practice. His training concepts are based on
the peculiar nature of electrical systems, why they fail, and how
they should be diagnosed.
Dan was brought to Australia by electronic tools importer and
wholesaler, Dayle Thomas of OLTC, for only two courses, one in
Ipswich, Queensland and one in Murray Bridge, South Australia.
TaT was well represented at both courses. Research director
Deyan Barrie attended both, and TaT technical editor Jeff Smit
and technical writer Jason Smith were in the South Australian
audience.
Both training sessions were highly successful and voted tops by
all attendees.
Deyan Barrie said he found the courses most rewarding, and that
he learnt much from Dan’s training technique.
The Queensland session was a full four days of learning about
electrical circuits and how to diagnose faults correctly and
efficiently. The South Australian session over two days at the
Murray Bridge TAFE covered logical electrical trouble shooting.
Organiser Dayle Thomas said his decision to bring Dan to
Australia had been fully vindicated by the enthusiastic response
to both sessions.
‘The highlight for me was to see experienced technicians like
Deyan Barrie rubbing shoulders with newcomers to the industry
who barely understood multimeters and yet both technicians
came away with new knowledge about testing and diagnosing
faults in electrical circuits.’
Jeff Smit, himself an accomplished technical teacher, was equally
impressed. ‘Dan
teaches that there are
only three possible faults
in an electrical circuit
– open, short and high
resistance.
‘His training was
hands-on and he had us
working on training boards
and constructing our own
circuits to which faults
were introduced – and
then we had to diagnose
those faults,’ Jeff added.
TaT’s Jason Smith, from Melbourne, said he thoroughly enjoyed
the training and picked up a lot of knowledge just by working
together with other technicians.
Other technicians said the training session had helped to push
their thinking on electrical fault-finding in new directions, which
would ultimately play out as time saved in the workshop.
Trainer Dan told Jeff Smit that he would happily return to Australia
as a result of the great feedback he received. He said he found
Australian technicians worked quicker and seemed more
confident than their American counterparts. He believed that
those who rolled up to his Australian courses seemed surprised at
how much they could do with their multimeters and the influence
of ghost voltages.
Given the warnings issued in another story in this issue, ‘Too
many distractions’, TaT directors Jeff and Deyan, said that training
events like Dan Sullivan’s should have been swamped with
participants.
‘Trainers should be turning people away,’ they said. ‘Instead, we
often wonder if enough people will show up to justify the expense
of putting them on.
‘It’s also interesting to note that you will see the same faces at
most training events. Organisations like VASA, for example, which
has been running annual training events for many years, believes
that 80 per cent of their audience are the same technicians who
turn up year after year. They never seem to tire of training, even
though sometimes they’ve heard it all before.
‘TaT is dedicated to training and is working at programs to
encourage younger technicians to join in and discover what an
exciting world automotive diagnostics can be,’ they said.
practical theory
hands on
skills
The Automotive Technician 32