Gidday all!  Intro ing myself. Col Keen (by name by nature) 58 years young; recently made redundant by this ******* **FINANCIAL CRISIS/RECESSION, depending on where you are, and looking to reskill myself from steam boilers to Automotive diagnostics. So any intell I get won't go unappreciated. Steam is mostly going over to PLC.'s  these days. Computers made me redundant, so I'll use them to open the next door.  
If I'm going to get into this - Go With The Best - I know Pico rate highly, then I come across Autonerdz on thier site, must have been the 50's when I last saw backup and service like Tom and his team GIVE.   Best of luck to you Col

Hi Col.
   The best luck to you , too. What are PLC's?

Welcome Col to the forum and hope you can learn a lot here with your new career. I was recently laid off myself last week.

fisher wrote on Jun 15^th, 2009 at 6:27pm:

Hi Col.    The best luck to you , too. What are PLC's?

Hi Fisher,

PLC stands for Programmable Logic Controller which are used in the industry to control automated equipment. There would be a rack of modules which include a CPU module with inputs, outputs, analog inputs, analog outputs and modules to measure temperature. A program is written which is usually in a ladder logic form to control the equipment. You can just about put anything in the software such as timers, counters, different gate functions such as and, or, nor, xor to accomplish the programming task to control the equipment. Hope this helps!

Terry

It does, thank you.

Col, you're in for a wild ride if you are just now wanting to get into Auto Diagnostics. You may have been better off going into the computer field so you can service those PLC systems and stay in that field.

Not only will you need mechanical skills, now days you'll also need to possess many of the same skills as if you went into IT or working on PLC systems. In fact, computers and their diagnostics play a majority role in Auto Diagnostics now days, along with an ever increasing tooling, training and knowledge requirement. You'll also have to do it in a much dirtier environment with much hotter (and colder) temps. Add in a small flood of techs in the market now from all the Dealer closings and a pay rate that doesn't represent all the skill, knowledge and ability the job requires.

After all this if you still want to get into Auto Diagnostics then Welcome Aboard.  ;D

Definately a tough field to jump into, even with years of Automotive theory training.  I wish you the best of luck.