What More Real Fixes Mean for You

What More Real Fixes Mean for You

We know that shop technicians are under considerable pressure to diagnose and repair vehicles quickly and accurately. To speed the diagnosis process, many techs turn to expert tips to understand what is wrong with the vehicle. Real Fixes, a growing addition to our expert content and tip offerings in SureTrack, are created using our source of hundreds of millions of actual documented repairs.

More is better… We’ve accelerated the creation of Real Fixes by leveraging a number of technology tools and methods. Over the past two years we really put the pedal to metal and went from 28,000 Real Fixes in 2012 to 13 million Real Fixes in 2014. That’s huge!

Besides codes, we have Real Fixes for a variety of symptoms such as drivability, noises and electrical issues. Our technology also allows us to detect pattern failures in the source data. We use the patterns to augment Real Fixes with a “Fixed It!” count. The “Fixed It!” count indicates how many times a Real Fix or Tip has helped at least one technician in the SureTrack community repair a vehicle in their bay.

Why is this important? A symptom or code can have several solutions, but thanks to the “Fixed It!” count in SureTrack, a technician can quickly see the most likely cause for the symptom. We have more than 83 million “Fixed It’s” in SureTrack. In the example below, for code P2181, the “Fixed It” count is 850 for the thermostat vs. 472 for the temperature sensor. The difference in “Fixed It” count is a great indicator to the technician for where to start the testing process — thermostat wins in this example.

With Real Fixes embedded into ProDemand via SureTrack, techs have expert tips right where they need them, speeding the diagnosis and repair process. Information is good, but information when and where you need it is even better.

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About the Author

Patrick Merg

Patrick Merg has worked at Snap-on Diagnostics for 15 years and is Sr. Manager of Information, currently responsible for OE and expert repair information and analytics for ProDemand and SureTrack. Pat is a car nut and enjoys taking his Challenger to car shows and watching auto racing.