new on here, old to testing!

Thanks

Welcome matey .
'after all these years' ... I started testing around 1986 . I have spent so much time testing that I often struggle with the modern electronics / diagnostics and have to rely on younger workmates or google for help .

They have to come to me for advice on dwell angles , points , and tappet setting and how to use a timing light when we get an old-school car in though . Things that I did every day as a kid are beyond the comprehension of a lot of highly skilled 'technicians' . Seems that they don't even teach the very basic stuff at colleges nowadays .

Plug in your scanner and do as it tells ya . Fit a new part like it tells you to .

To be fair though 'technician' is probably the correct description for modern day car repairers .They fiddle around with technical things . Back in the day a mechanic made mechanical things work . He repaired things instead of replacing them where possible. We used to have a rack of replacement seals for brake calipers and slave cylinders . Can you even buy such kits nowadays ? A fan belt actually powered a fan . I wonder how many modernday technicians have replaced the friction material on a brake shoe rather than just making a call and getting a full set delivered by the local supplier .
Do any of you more mature folk remember having to spend a morning in the office with a copy of autotrader calling all the scrapyards listed in the back pages to find a part for a car ?... Nowadays even I can find , order , and pay for most things within about 5 mins of starting my online search .

They don't know they are born lol

And as much asbestos as you can eat!