Hey guys rich offered me this great idea about making a thread tracking my progress in UTI so i decided to run with it and create this. This thread is INFORMATION/QUESTION based only so any random chatter will be deleted without mercy. IM going to do my best in laying out the process and procedures of school and what im learning. Right now this layout is in its rough stages so any suggestions on how to clean it up would be appreciated in a PM.

Intro: Ok so UTI stands for Universal Technical Institute and they specialize giving people either they be back yard mechanics or seasoned techs even more opportunities in the field.

Rules and regulations: So we have a dress code which is not as bad as it sounds, mainly its because we have reps (check uti.edu to see all 20 companies) that will pop in when they are looking for new blood so we have to look professional. The school has ZERO tolerance for DUI's, drug usage, and a few others but are somewhat lenient on speeding or other traffic violations. The school also has the ability to get reports from any offenses you may receive in ANY state while attending school. They also enforce a random drug test usually preformed with a swab. You MUST sustain a 90% attendance record or will AUTOMATICALLY FAIL the phase and must retake it, also you must keep a 2.0 gpa which is C's across the board which may just let u squeak by to graduation but will not look good to see that your a C avg student on your resume.

My background: As for myself im starting out with a VERY basic knowledge of cars, ive done the current mods to my car (springs, intake, header) and only worked on Hondas OBD 0 and OBD 1 which is hands down the easiest motors to work on and due to the fact they can run on any setting weather it be tuned to perfection or just thrown together and run for another couple thousand miles. Anyway i signed up for automotive tech and Ford fact (ill explain what that program is later). This thread is mainly to keeps tabs on where im at, to answer questions you may have about what ive learned or about the school.

Course guide: In the automotive tech course there are 17 phases, each phase is 3 weeks in length and consist of 8 to 10 tests. I am also taking the Ford Fact elective program which is an additional 17 weeks, in total ill be in school for just under 1.5 years. Ford Fact is a program started by Ford (duh) that basically teaches techs how to work on other manufactures cars.

If you would like to learn more in depth among other things about what ive learned so far and other questions about UTI you can ask here or drop me a pm.

Phase 1: Basic engines

Instructor: Mr. Wolfer
Week 1: I learned about the policies of the school and what they expect from us, then proceed to learn about parts of the block in a standard 90 degree v-6.

Week 2: I learned about basic hands tools, and got more in depth with the blocks, procedures on how to measure the taper and bore of the combustion chamber, rod journals, connecting rods, main bearings, cam shaft bearing bores, oil clearances, firing order on a generic gm v-6, how to inspect all of the above and general procedures on how to correct imperfections that are not in spec, also get familiar with measuring tools and find out how much of your soul you have to sell to get a decent amount of snap-on tools. We also touched base on the cooling and lubrication system. We also got to tear down and rebuild (with the same parts) the above gm motor which turned out to be a blazer motor in horrible condition.

Week 3: Ok so Tuesday went by pretty fast and nothing was really new just had a quick refresher. Today dragged on soooooo long but we learned alot about the head mainly the valvetrain components like the different types of rocker arms, push rods, sayter rockers, tappets, how to inspect and repair badly or damaged parts, different types of compensators (lifters), how to measure cam lift and taper as well as its journals. Then we concentrated more on the valves and learned how to measure the seat, springs at free length, installed length, and at 1.7psi. Also learned how to use a leak down tool and compression leak tester.

Test scores: Test 1 90% 9/10
Test 2 100% 10/10
Test 3 100% 10/10
Test 4 80% 8/10
Test 5 90% 9/10
Test 6 90% 9/10
Test 7 90% 9/10
Test 7 90% 9/10
Test 8 100% 10/10
Final Exam: 98% 19/20

Phase 2: Brakes

Instructor: Mr. Wolfer (again)
Week 1: Two days in and they werent kidding when they say that we are gonna be hitting the ground running. 1st day was utter bs i couldnt stay awake my teacher just droned on about stuff ive never even thought about concerning brakes. I only know that there is the rotor and caliper with pads that are hydraulically pressed against the rotor to slow/stop the car but we started off on how to service breaks using a lathe and ive never even seen something like this in my life and the whole time it was a wtf is this bs in my head, i took notes as best i can but i felt i wasent getting anywhere until we went out to the lab and i actually saw the brake lathe in action both on a off the car which showed me that it was ALOT easier to operate than the way my teacher tried explaining it. Its now Wednesday and all we did was stay in lab and work on brakes, what me and my group worked on was another students 94 Isuzu Rodeo that he just got not to long ago and we decided to use that instead of mine since im to low to get on the lifts, the truck was in decent shape but when we got around to inspecting the rotors....he about collapsed, the rotors were so f'ed up our instructor just stood and stared in amazement and what was even more scarier than that was another students civic, the inner lining from the drums literally fell out when he got the cover off so he had to get emergency deliver to the school for new shoes and whatnot (only took 30min). All this took a whole day and we only were doing pre-break job inspections.

Week 2: .....I effin hate brake systems they look so simple but its very deceiving that aside ive learned soooooooo much about them and we arent even half way done. So far my group has decided to split up the work so we can get things done alot quicker, right now ive done hydro, disk brake, and power break diagnosis as well as gotten 2 rotors and a drum serviced. I decided to do a pre-brake job inspection on my own car (we had to lift the front end up so we could get the left arms under the jack points), everything was fine the brake fluid was a little low and my front rotors are about .013 from having to be replaced since they were already serviced wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy long ago but they are working fine, i hope by the time i really need to replace them i can get some aftermarket ones.

Week 3: Nothing much to update since i had already gotten my lab work done, i had to endure the 6hr long lecture on how to troubleshoot on a brake system. Today nothing much happened except i had to make new brake lines for an old Mercury (flex lines are fun ), but before that i decided to bleed my brakes since they havent been bleed since i got the car and to my amazement the fluid is perfectly fine, we had a machine that automatically flushed and refilled the system but good ol Mazda made the fluid reservoir so that you cant stick the suction/filler in it so i was forced to do a manual bleed which was still fine. Other than that i just loafed around seeing what other classes were doing and if anyone needed an extra set of hands. I also found out that i need a right front steering knuckle along with a new mid-pipe, i thought my passenger tire was just out of alignment but its been wearing fine for a while now upon further inspection i found that pa roads are raping my suspension, the bolt that goes though the knuckle that closes it together that holds the strut up was pulled and stripped in the hole, so now i have a bolt thats stuck in the knuckle and the strut has fallen though the hole and all the pressure is on the tie rod....joy decided to measure the height diff so i can get more pissed off and found out that the passenger side is sitting a half inch lower than the driver side.....again joy. So we had a test and a final, the test was on ABS....fk em haha.

Test 1: 80%
Test 2: 90%
Test 3: 80%
Test 4: 90%
Test 5: 100%
Final: 80%



Course 3: Undercar

Instructor: Mr. B
Week 1: First day and everything is off to a good start, teacher is nice and classmates aren't THAT disruptive.....yet, same setup for lab days which is we go in lab every other day. One thing i noticed is that alot of instructors HATE imports esp Hondas and they are big on the chevys and fords none like both at the sametime it either one or the other, i have more i could say on that subject but i wont . We started to do underbody diagnosis, nobody had anything major to report so it was pretty straight forward so far, i had alot of time on my hands so i learned and mastered how to mount and balance tires and a little competition arose between a couple of students and our instructor mostly smack talk but i know the teacher can whip em all. We also learned about different types of tires and the parts that make up a wheel.

Week 2: So now im getting into suspension and steering, I know what the two types of steering systems (rack and pinion, conventional) what parts make up both these systems, i also know the many different types of suspension setups, how diagnose problems they have, identify the parts, also learned about the two types of frames.

Week 3: Now that we got the suspension, steering and preventative maintenance down packed we had nothing but student and instructors cars in lab, the sad part is that the students cars were in better shape than the teachers. For example there was this 90's Ford exploder....yea you can see where im going with this, it started with her just not having brakes upon further inspection i found out that the rear brake lines had been completely rusted the distribution block, they just shot out brake fluid everywhere, the leaf springs brakets had major rust and holes...yes holes, the drums had heat spots on them, the pads were trash, the list just went on and on so me and 2 others were stuck on that pretty much all day. Later i learned how to alignments and my first vehicle was a 06 f-150, we rebalanced the tires and then aligned the big sob, it took us a couple of tried because we forgot to do somethings but we got it all straightened out.
Test 1: 90%
Test 2: 90%
Test 3: 70%
Test 4: 100%
Test 5: 80%
Final Pt.1: 80% (out of 20 questions)
Final Pt.2: 80% (out of 20 questions)

 

Automotive Power-trains

Instructor: Mr. Clark

Week 1: Talked about clutches, what they do and how its done, i finally figured out what a throwout bearing really is. We also learned and practiced diagnosing and fixing problems that pertained to just to the clutch and the bearings. Wednesday we talked learned how to find and calculate gear ratios.

Week 2: We started off working on transaxels either they be in front or mid-engine designs.Took apart took some measurements of a KIA trans a Honda trans then put it back together again. So not alot went on just dissembled and reassembled a 8.8 and a ford 9in rear...i felt so dirty X(. Friday was awesome my group broke into 2 out of 4 and we decided to have a little competition to see which team could reassemble a generic 3spd inline trans, me and the other guy won but it was close we had a few hang ups such as getting the c-clips off, had the gear synhros backwards (caught that in time ) and we didnt have the alignment tool because mid-way thought the race we decided to take whole clutch assembly off as well, but we improvised and ended up winning WOOT

Week 3: Haha sorry for the wait but its been kinda weird outside of class anyway for the last week we didnt have that much to do except teardown, examine, and rebuild a FWD, RWD, and 4x4 drivetrain system for our lab final and list 20 facts about each system. All that took place within 3 days Monday and Tuesday consisted of lecture and a test and on Wensday we did the lab stuff, Thursday we just chilled since we had gotten things done so quickly and studied for the written part of the final that was on Friday.


Test 1: 100%
Test 2: 100%
Test 3: 100%
Test 4: 80%
Test 5: 90%
Final: 19/20

 

Course:Professional Service Writing....wait what???

Instructor: Mr. Cheffmen

Week 1: So Monday we got see how CRAZY our teacher is, the guy is cool and all and he def keeps the class awake when hes talking which is necessary if you can imagine. Tuesday though we went over ummm....uhhh yea i cant remember right now haha its such a weird change of pace, dont expect for any pics or much info since this course pertains on knowing the different positions on the sales side of a dealership and how to talk to and deal with customers. Customer relations....yea pretty much kiss there *** when a problem comes...thats all...what did you expect more??? its freakin service writing >.>

Week 2: Yea so like i said its service writing so there is not alot to say, basically this course teaches us how to use the program on how to write up repair orders and send it to the appropriate tech, trust me its not as easy as it sounds. Pretty much all of the sections is telling us to kiss customers *** in order to get paid and not get bad reports, because believe it or not if bad reports come in on bad attitude employees, or crappy service actions are takin. O yea did i mention that we had a business plan to present.

Week 3: Just pretty much worked on the business plan, let me tell you what the scenario is; We have 500k to start out if we planned on not already having an established automotive business, the facility could one or multiple of the following; New or used car dealership, repo, car wash, audio, performance, body, paint, my groups of course was all of the above haha....except the dealership and repo, only because we had to make the numbers realistic because we had to include employee payroll, shop and tool expenses, and all the other stuff, im going to try and post my vid of my presentation, yea instead of doing a boring powerpoint (which i forgot you can do video cause i hadent used that program in ages) i used movie maker.
Test 1: 80%
Test 2: 100%
Test 3: 100%
Test 4: 100%
Test 5: 90%
Final: 19/20

 

Some inside pics of the school

 

Course: Basic Electronic

Instructor: Mr.Renner, Evans, Combes, Walden

Week1: So yea day 1 of electronics people, SO FAR its starting off with a refresher course of science class in High school, yea know talking about the parts of an atom and blah blah blah, this course is graded a little different most the tests are out of 20pts instead of 10, o yea we started to get into ohm's law, electronic theroy and how to calculate volts, ohms, and amps, while also learning how to use a Digital Muilti Meter.

Week2: This class was a little hard getting adjusted to being that we had a diff teacher almost everyday, the work i managed to get done and understand was build and draw a working schematic on a board that contained headlights, taillights, turn signals, switches, backup signal, and neon license plate bracket, understand all the tests and different types of batteries.

Week3: Monday we had off i took that day to study.....NOT. Tuesday we got prep on battery testing (im not gonna lie the technical way to do tests is NOT the way ANY dealership does it, there is sooooo much involved not a very small amount of people know about its amazing) Wednesday we took our lab final, it was random choise on what test we took i got to do a parastic drain test, load test using a VAT, build a series circuit on a lightboard, and take the proper measurements. O yea i got a solder a operating jumper wire ^^.

Test1: 19/20
Test2: 18/20
Test3: 9/10
Test4: 17/20
Test5: 19/20
Test6: 9/10
Final: 17/20

Full working front and rear lighting (had it all lit up but i didnt have my phone that week)


Course material


My first series circuit


Just got done wiring up a parallel circuit


Inside of a battery

 

Course: Advanced Electronics
Instructor: Mr.Evans

Week1: So we get right into it with a quick refresher on some parts of Basic Electronics like doing voltage drops and charging system draw, we learned how to read and understand AC,DC, Digital, and Analog wavelengths (like a EKG machine that monitors your heartbeat) plus know how to calculate the duty cycle and frequency. I also learned that scan tools are not the same as code readers in fact they couldn't be any more further apart.

Week2: Ok so we got to take apart an alternator and learn about all the parts that make it up, learned how to test the necessary parts that effect the charging system, starter, and more battery tests., midway and last half of the week we started on engine mangement and took a test firday. Also i concentrated on using the oscilloscope and scan tool since i knew it was gonna be apart of the lab final.

Week3: Body electrical...umm wow, so many computers to control different parts that pertain to driver info and comfort....seriously people do you really need a seat that can adjust, width, height, lumber, have heating and cooling....ffs just buy a dam lazyboy. Wednesday we took our lab final which was pretty easy (had a 20min limit) thursday we did some wiring to refresh our memory and reviewed for fridays written final.

Test1: 9/10
Test2: 10/10
Test3: 18/20
Test4: 18/20
Test5: 18/20
Final: 17/20

Opened up alternator


Signal rectifier




Done ^^

 

Course: Climate Control
Instructor: Mr.Kelly
Mr. Molloy
Mr. Mok
Week1: SO climate control....day 3 right now and i already had my first test in basics and just like in electronics i have no fkin clue alot of this stuff stands for (for now ), anyway so far we just learned about the different types of heat transfers, the parts that make up the climate system, and how each part works.

Week2: Bit of an awkward week so far, we went to lab all day and did some a/c component test and diag, tues we started and finished refrigerant and oils section and took a test then went to lab right after. First period on Wednesday the school had a little fare that was a pretty nice turnout, and there was also some pretty entertaining competition to see who can replace spark plugs the fastest, who could change a tire on a nascar the fastest and who could disassemble and reassemble drum brakes the fastest, after that we had a little lecture and went back to lab to continue a/c work.

Week3:This week we took the time to get 100% familiar with the two A/C machines, and as a added bonus we got to take the heater core out of an old clip car, after that was said and done we learned about the electrical side of the A/C, after the test we got to the final section of climate control which was the diag, its a good thing our instructor decided to change the way the order the sections was taught because it made things alot more easier to understand (you may ask yourself well if its was easier then why didnt i get a 100% on the tests) well ill tell you why...the questions, im not the one to just quickly skim through a question and guess the answer, as much as i can say all the good things about UTI's training as far as climate control some (~60%) are just grammatically incorrect making them a little harder to understand.

Test1: 10/10
Test2: 9/10
Test3: 13/15
Test4: 9/10
Test5: 10/10
Test6: 13/15
Lab Final: 20/20
Written Final: 18/20

 

Course: AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS NOOOOOOOOOOOO (no worries )

Instructor: Mr. Dean

Week1: Day one was the boring stuff just blah blah blah, day two our instructor takes through the steps of completely disassembling, id, how to take measurements and tools to take out and put back in and then reassembled the trans.....holy crap. Starting from Wednesday my group already is taking apart this....magic box known as a automatic trans apart and taking measurements, i hope i will be able to take good pics and still concentrate on work....just buy a stick shift ppl. i was out friday but my group had finished the little work that had to be done and they dynoed the trans with no problems.

Week2: Went ahead with lecture on the trans we did (yea its backwards but thats how we understand it better), next day finished and took a test i should have gotten a 10 on -_-. Went on break and started on next section. The rest of the week pretty much just lecture and test.

Week3: You guessed it lecture and test then final

Test1: 9/10
Test2: 10/10
Test3: 7/10
Test4: 9/10
Test5: 8/10
Test6: 9/10
Test7: 8/10
Final:16/20

 

Course: Fuel and Ignition

Instructor: Mr.C with Mr.Yarnell

Week1: Nothing interesting to report, just finding out that a good portion of this course can relate back to what i learned in Adv. electronics. Wednesday took a quiz (not a test), thursday we took a test, and friday we went to lab, after finishing my lab work i decided to pull my car in a see what codes came up and what was stored, i come to find out that i had 3 codes but they only came on because i didnt have the second o2 sensor in. The codes that came up were; Heater o2 high input, #2 o2 sensor no input (duh), and MAF sensor high input, when i finally got my o2 sensor in and installed all the codes went away.

Week2: Study for 3 days and a test, we had thursday and friday off so i party a little for turkey day *gobble gobble*

Week3: Monday was lab day, we did fuel system tests pretty much, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we just studied. Friday was final.

Test1: 12/15
Quiz1: 15/15
Test2: 13/15
Test3: 15/15
Test4: 14/15
Lab Final: 26/30
Final: 19/20

 

Class: Driveablilty&Emissions
Instructor: Mr.Yarnell

Week1: Due to the f**k-up at the MVA i was unable to attend class on Monday since i spent the whole day trying to get my license back.Tuesday we went right to lab, i managed to grasp a decent concept of what i missed the day before. I got to use a sniffer on my car (even though they dont use them for OBDII) just to see what my output was, pretty much im running lean @ 16.5:1 ratio (optimal is 14.7:1 at idle), no idea why im running so lean. My other outputs (HC, CO, and NOX) showed that i was failing, but my CO2 was very efficient as well as O2 emissions. My cel showed that my IAT had high input reading, the only thing i can think of that would give it a reading like that is that its dirty, so imma clean it and use the sniffer again to see if anything changes.

Week2: This week was lab every other day, the other days was lecture and tests

Week3: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednsday was lab, i was finally able to figure out why my IAT was bad (could have figured it out sooner but work came first) seems that the internal connectors somehow had gotten loose, i tested it by just simply pushing the wires in more, cleared the cel with the scantool and it was gone, but as i expected as soon as the motor moved when in gear it pulled the wires out again causing the cel to come back on again. Thursday (New years eve) we had our three finals, part one was to diagnose if two cars were rich, lean or normal by reading the 5 gas analyzer (i aced that ^_^) pt2 was a test on 20 different scenarios where there was a problem with a car and we had to figure out which was the more likely cause, didnt ace it but did good. and the last part was just another 20 questions on the whole course.

Test1: 13/15
Test2: 14/15
Test3: 14/15
Test4: 13/15
Lab Final: 10/10
Final 1: 16/20
Final 2: 18/20