A fine balance: meeting the car technicians blending old skills with new

“To find out what’s wrong, sometimes you have to sit down with the customer to understand exactly what they’re experiencing, rather like a doctor with their patient. You have to tease out the precise nature of the problem: when it occurred, what the car was doing, what systems were running and so on.” 

The P1800 is from Volvo’s heritage collection. I’m surprised to learn that the first ones were produced not in Gothenburg but in West Bromwich, by Jensen. Not only that, but the shells were fabricated by Pressed Steel in Linwood, Glasgow. Unfortunately, though, quality wasn’t up to scratch, and in 1963 Volvo brought production of the model in-house, renaming it the 1800S in the process. 

I suspect the quality of this restored 1800 is rather better than it was first time around. Kershaw raises its unblemished bonnet and marvels at the accessibility of the engine’s brilliantly polished air cleaners. 

“They were so easy to get at,” he says. “You took them off and then you could dismantle the carbs.” He points to the distributor. 

“Then, when you’d balanced the carbs and cleaned the filters, you checked the timing, which you could advance or retard by simply taking the cap off the distributor and adjusting its base plate.” 

Ratcliffe is impressed. 

“Even with something vastly more sophisticated, such as the XC40,” he says, “a tech of John’s generation can spot when it’s playing up. All the ECU is doing is managing the situation.” 

In contrast to the 1800’s engine bay, the XC40’s acres of plastic shroud may as well bear a sign saying ‘Do not enter’. Even if you did, you’d have a job getting to anything, all the while running the risk of inadvertently disturbing some vital connection. 

I ask Ratcliffe where the reward is in working on a modern engine like this that can all but change its own oil. 

“For me, it’s in diagnosing a fault that has not only got the customer in a head spin but which has also confounded other techs,” he replies. “Intermittent faults take the longest. Sometimes they’re caused by the owner misusing the car or not understanding it, but I’ve also had to deal with situations such as discovering that stray hairs from a cat that had been sleeping under the bonnet had unplugged a connector. On another occasion, a rodent had partly chewed through an electrical cable, creating a short circuit.” 

With the XC40’s engine stripped of its plastic shrouds, I’ve no doubt that it and the 1800’s motor would look vaguely similar. So, the former’s ECU, injection system and turbocharger aside, what do the two master techs believe is the single biggest thing separating the XC40’s engine from that of the P1800? 

“Its sensors,” says Ratcliffe, without hesitation. “They’re the XC40’s eyes and ears, just as John’s generation of mechanics were the eyes and ears of cars such as the 1800. One of the smartest sensors is the air mass sensor that measures air flow and temperature. It’s key to controlling the air/fuel ratio.” 

Kershaw agrees. “Sensors have done us out of a job!” he laughs. “Thanks to them, there’s no need for us to adjust the idle or mixture any more. Based on what they feed back to the ECU, it’s done automatically.” 

Both admit that with a modern car, the average customer rarely notices any difference in the way it behaves before and after a service.

“I miss that ability to transform a dull engine,” says Kershaw. “Now, most of the time they all run sweetly.” 

Of course, for both techs the elephant in the room is a pure electric Volvo. Ratcliffe admits he’ll miss the internal combustion engine when it’s finally phased out, but he is already qualified to work on the electrical systems fitted to Volvo’s petrol-electric hybrid models. 

Kershaw, meanwhile, says whatever happens he’ll continue to get his kicks from his own classic Volvo, a 1993 850: “It was the future once, just as one day they’ll say the same about this XC40. It’s progress, and you can’t stop that.”

The 24-year-old master technician

As cars become more sophisticated, requiring skills not only in traditional engineering but also in computers, electronics and electric drive and autonomous systems, Jason Ratcliffe is exactly the kind of bright, ambitious young person the industry is keen to recruit. 

“I left school at 16 not quite sure what I wanted to do,” he says. “I was being encouraged to study for university but thought I’d like to do an engineering apprenticeship instead, which is how I came to join Volvo.”