Danvers mechanics pleased that auto repair bill advanced

A number of Danvers car mechanics are pleased this week that the state Legislature took a first step in allowing access to information locked away in car computers, a practice that has hindered their ability to do their jobs.

“It’s in its first stage,” said Mike Gallant of Mike’s Garage on Holten Street. “We’re all looking forward to its passage.”

He and his wife, Lisa Gallant, and other local mechanics made calls to residents and others to get them to call the State House in support of the bill. They had this fall met with Danvers state Rep. Ted Speliotis, House chairman of the Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee, which on Monday voted in favor of the so-called Right to Repair bill.

“We’re at the beginning of the process,” Speliotis said this week. The bill won approval from Sen. Michael Morrissey, the Senate chairman of the committee, which was crucial, and then the full committee. It will now have to be voted on by the full House and Senate.

The bill will require manufacturers to make computer codes available to both the dealer repair shops and the independents, something that took him months of study to conclude it was necessary, Speliotis said.

That’s because there weren’t a lot of residents clamoring about the problem, Speliotis said. Dealers insisted that the codes were available if the mechanics would buy the proper scanning equipment and software updates. Mechanics, meanwhile, insisted they had such equipment, but there was missing information that required them to send customers to the dealers.

During the course of his research, Speliotis sought out local mechanics. Al Finocchiaro, of Al’s Garage, Gallant, from Mike’s Garage, and Bruce Williams, of Webb’s Auto Electric, all share the same building on Holten Street. In addition, Eric Gaudette of Pete’s Garage on Wadsworth and Dan O’Keefe of Danvers Auto on Hobart Street joined the men at Mike’s on a balmy October day.

Gallant described what the problem entails. He and other mechanics have to buy a scanner, which they plug in under the dashboard to find out what the little red light blinking in the customer’s car indicates, he said.

“It points me in the right direction,” he said. But, it might indicate that the problem is with an oxygen sensor, and there are four such sensors. It doesn’t tell him which one is broken.

He had to send one owner of an Infinity car to the dealer, where the car owner was charged $130 just for the diagnostic information. The customer then came back to Gallant.

The cost of the scanners varies, from $1,500 to $6,000. But, the interpretive tools leave so much information out that the mechanics are stymied.

Eric Gaudette talked about a timing belt issue, for which he was told to “slide the front nose forward; but it doesn’t tell me how to do that.”

The computer software to interpret the data from the scanner can cost anywhere from $2,000 or so all the way up to $80,000. The latter would be the costs per year to subscribe to the full code information available online. Most can’t afford that. So, they subscribe to services like Snap On Tools. Gallant said this week that this has been a good product, but it didn’t give him wiring information.

He’s going to try All Data now, which many mechanics get, he said. It’s an online program. One enters a password and accesses the information, for about $160 a month. He’ll also need to purchase the online service for about $150 a month.

But, there’s no guarantee that these expenditures will give him the information he needs.

“We rattle our cages together,” said Gallant this week about the cooperation among the mechanics. He’ll call Danvers Auto or Pete’s, etc., when he has something he’s never seen before, or they’ll call him. They figure out a lot together, “but look at the aggravation and the time lost.”

 “Rep. Speliotis was great,” said Arthur Kinsman of the Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition about Speliotis’ role. “He did what every good legislator should do. He took time to study the issue.”

There had been an effort by Rep James O’Day that would have gone much further, giving all information to the independents and the individual car owners. This, however, made manufacturers nervous about theft of “trade secrets,” said Kinsman.

“We are just looking for the repair information and diagnostic tools to repair,” he said. “We’re not looking for the blueprints on how it’s made.”

He compared the O’Day effort to allowing a computer owner all the information about all the software.

“All we want to know is how to fix the car,” he said.

The bill still needs full House and Senate approval.