<font color=blue>"You'd be surprised how much progress can be directly attributed to the supposed rookies."</font color=blue>
Harv, I agree with you and can even go a step further. I am the furthest thing from a heavy duty diesel mechanic anyone could encounter. However, sometimes simple logic will take the place of years of training.
I had Peterbilt down in FL a while back with a starting problem. We got it into a Kenworth dealership there. The shop foreman calls and is telling me it's a short in the wiring somewhere between the ignition/starter switch and the starter itself. They determined this by running a test lead directly from the ignition/starter switch to the starter and getting it to fire that way. That showed both the ignition/starter switch and the starter to be good. Now we know it's a wiring problem. So far, so good...
The forman then tells me he can't give me a firm price for the repair or a time it'll be done because they'll have to trace that one wire in this huge wiring harness all the way from the dash through the firewall to the starter to find the shorted section and repair it and there was no way now to know where it would be found or how long it would take to get there. Again, seemed to make sense...
I then asked the dummy question, "Why don't we just unhook that bad wire on both ends and just string a brand new piece of wire through there? Wouldn't that work?"
There was dead silence on the line but I could hear the wheels turning. He apologized for not thinking of that himself and told me he was going to go do it himself right now and get my driver on the road and there'd be no charge. He further said that sometimes you get so focused on the solution (finding the short), you forget the actual goal (make it start).
