Rod Zimmerman
Forum Replies Created
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We are using Autotextme and It works great for our purposes. The reason we went with them is that we are using an antiquated shop management system that does not interface with any of the DVI systems and Autotextme will work as a stand alone system along side of our management system. I recently saw the Bolt on system and it appears to me that the two systems I am familiar with work almost identically. Autotextme will integrate with most of the popular management systems. Our shop management system works fine and has zero cost so I am not inclined to change for now. If anyone is having a hard time finding a stand alone DVI system, Autotextme might be worth looking into.
Each of out techs has a tablet on their tool box that they use for the DVI system. Our service writers can use their desktop PC’s. It all connects through wifi/bluetooth. I don’t know how I could say which of the many systems is best unless I used them all for a while and all I really have good knowledge of is Autotextme.
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In reading those it seems that CR really likes to try and get their readers to haggle the price down. Do they recommend doing that in other professions as well? How about a restaurant? “I see that you want $25 for that steak, Tell you what I’ll give you $18”. Seems silly when you read it doesn’t it? Part of the problem is that we of course are shooting ourselves in the foot when we give in to that treatment. I think the article said over 60% of the time at an independent a consumer could get a discount if they haggled for it, and it was a substantial discount as well!
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I am a small shop that does 5-10 alignments a month. I bought a used Hunter 611 a few years ago for $2500. from a tire store that upgraded. I used it for a couple of years and an old friend had a 411 that did not work and I bought it for $200.00 for parts for my 611 if I should need them. I had to replace the monitor but other than that it has been trouble free. Found it on Craigs list, just kept watching the adds in the tool section until it came up. This has been a great option for me. Just thought I would throw this out there. This thing rocks compared to what we had before it. I had the drive on lift with turn plates already that I had also bought used in 1985 for $600. Still works great! Someday something will break in it that I cannot fix and I will have to replace it but I will hunt for another used model at that time.
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Less Than 10% Maybe 3 or 4 a month.
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If you did, you changed from:
Old software:
Garage Keeper
New software:
Motive Pro
Why:
Garage Keeper was thier old DOS program. I had to change they were not going to support it anymore. Went to Motive Pro because I could bring all old data foward and for familiarity. Also looked at a couple of other popular others and liked what I saw in Motive Pro. I had Garage Keeper for over twenty years and it was rock solid. I only had a serious problem with it one time and Myles repaired it quickly. I am hopefull the new software is just as good.
Would you do it again?
Yes. The new program has many marketing benifits the old one did not. Also it has a feature called smart jobs that store all of the information from a job and when I go to use the job again it enters the complete job onto a new estimate. This really speeds things up. There are lots of other features that take advantage of Windows like Scoring invoices for profit, Ease of transferring data to Excel and Quickbooks. I really should have made this move long ago. I’m sure it is more than paying for it’self as I can track that too. That is one of the benifits of these new systems is that they track everything !
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When you say you want to scope sensors you are talking about two different tools in most cases. A scanner will pull codes and read data. Some like the snap on solis will graph sensors and has built in tech tips for codes and such. A Snap on Modis will scope sensors as well as it has a built in lab scope. I have a tech II in the shop for GM and a Snap on Modis. I also have a couple of code and data readers only for quick snap shots. I have found that the Modis will do about 90% of what the tech II will do short of programing. The Pico others have reccomended is a very good scope but it wont pull codes or scan anything. If I were to have one all around scanner it would be the Modis. It’s easy to use and works for about 99% of our repairs.
