Metric Wrench’s BMW, Mercedes and Audi Blog featuring all of the latest information from around the automotive industry, the latest industry news, view expert opinions, or just join discussions about your BMW, Mercedes or Audi with other enthusiasts from around the world.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Why Choose Metric Wrench

Simple

Experience - Specialization - Equipment - Education - Technical Resources

How is it we able to solve a problem that several other repair shops have mis-diagnosed or unable to solve and do it quickly and make it appear simple?

Experience - We’ve been in the import repair business for over 30 years and often the problems we see are problems that we’ve seen before and this leads us to a solution very quickly.

Specialization - We decided about 15 years ago to specialize. The 2 car lines we chose were BMW and Mercedes Benz. “You can know a little bit about repairing a large number of different makes of automobiles, maybe enough to get you in trouble” or “Know a lot about a couple lines of automobiles.” We have since added the Audi line.

Equipment - Early in 2004 we purchased a GT1, diagnostic tool for BMW. This is the factory tool, the same exact tool used at the dealers. After using this tool and seeing the advantage to having the “real thing” we purchased the Mercedes equivalent a year later. We are constantly updating and have added the Audi/VW factory tool.

Education - Having the equipment is one thing, knowing how to use it is another. Shortly after the purchase of the GT1, I joined IAIBMWSP, international association of independent BMW service professionals, later re-named to BIMRS. See www.bimrs.org. I attended the annual meeting in Memphis Tn in the fall of ’04. What an eye opener. These guys are true professionals in the auto service industry. There were 2 representatives from BMWNA at the meeting. Three days of training, very well organized. At that meeting I got the name of a similar group for Mercedes Benz and attended my first meeting of that group in Jan ’05. See www.livindmercedes.com. Since this time I attend their meetings yearly, plus training offered by my main parts supplier World Pac. We are always learning.

Technical Resources - The first e-mail tech group I joined was iATN, international automotive technicians network. I have been a business sponsor in this group since ’96. If we get a car with an unusual problem we search the iATN archives, no solution found we post the problem and receive suggestion from other members all over the world. When the car is fixed we post the solution. The same resource is available from BIMRS, LMVMercedes and newly formed LMVBMW. We also subscribe to All-data online which is a technical resource for repair information.

All of this; equipment, education and technical resources is very expensive, but we feel it is necessary to repair your car efficiently.