On the Helpful Docs page, you’ll find answers to many courseware questions as well as links, procedures, and other resources to help you get the most out of your online courseware.

You’ll find the Helpful Docs tab at the top of this page. Just click the tab and look for the topic you’re interested in. We add and update topics as needed. Updated topics are indicated with a “Revised” note. Helpful Docs are also available in Word format for easy printing.

Of course, if you can’t find the specific topic you’re looking for, or if you still have questions, email us or call us at 1-800-669-2465 and let us know. We’ll put you in touch with the support staff member who can assist you.

There’s still time to sign up for an unbeatable deal on IML’s Auto Tech Online Courseware.

To introduce our new Auto Tech courseware, IML has offered access to all our Auto Tech online curriculum modules for the price of the four main areas plus the introductory module.

Beginning April 1, 2011, with the official release of the newly revised Module 8: Automatic Transmissions and Transaxles, IML will close the extended preview pricing for the complete online courseware package. But if you call or email before April 1, you can still purchase all nine modules for the price of the four main areas package. That’s a savings of $850 on a 1-year access package, plus four more complete modules of Auto Tech courseware. By signing up for the 3-year or 5-year package, you can save even more. Three-year accounts will save $1,786, and 5-year accounts will save $2,550.

After April 1, you can still save on multiyear accounts. Three-year accounts receive a 30% discount, and 5-year accounts receive a 40% discount.

Call 1-800-669-2465 or email now for the guaranteed best rate on IML Auto Tech Online Courseware.

It is difficult to find time to teach every student to the level of knowledge and skills needed for a successful career. Effective time management is essential. Before class starts, the instructor must be prepared with everything he or she needs. Once class begins, the instructor must use the time effectively. Giving students a reading assignment during class is not an effective use of time. Instead, give required reading assignments outside of scheduled class time. Below are additional ways to get the most out of class time.

• Schedule coursework to maintain student interest and motivation. One way to do this is by breaking up large subject areas into small, well-defined sessions. This is discussed more in this post.

 

• Make sure that all students have assignments that keep them learning all of the time they are in class. There may not be room in the lab for all students to work on a vehicle individually, or even in small groups, but it doesn’t take a lot of space for students to perform many of the tasks on the NATEF task list if they are working on vehicle components.

 

• Use online resources to expand student learning outside of the scheduled class time.

 

• Grade and return student evaluations as soon as possible. This gives both the students and the instructor much-needed data on progress and identifies areas that need improvement.

 

• Always teach to the best students. This will prevent them from becoming bored and will help move the other students along.

 

• Record classroom presentations and put them online for students to review outside of class time. This reduces the time needed to review during scheduled class time.

 

• Student apprenticeships are another way to increase the amount of time that students have to develop skills and knowledge.

It is important to communicate to the students that no one can waste time; this helps to keep them focused and motivated. It also helps everyone—instructors and students—get the most out of the time available.

By Robin Ferguson

The National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation (NATEF) recently announced that Amprobe Test Tools is donating five Amprobe DM7C digital multimeters to all NATEF accredited programs.

The multimeters will be delivered to eligible programs over the coming weeks. NATEF is now shipping multimeters and currently estimates that all programs will receive their donation by the middle of March 2011.

All NATEF accredited automotive, collision, and truck programs will receive this donation. If a school has more than one accredited program, each program will receive five multimeters. This is the largest donation in NATEF’s history and has a total value of over $500,000.

“Education has always been an important focus for Amprobe, and we’re honored to assist the efforts of NATEF with this donation,” said Amprobe General Manager Jasmine Khambatta, in a release issued by NATEF. “Amprobe supports ASE certification and NATEF accreditation and their efforts to train and certify the best automotive repair and service professionals.”

The Amprobe DM7C digital multimeter is designed for automotive, boat, and RV electrical testing and features six functions and 14 ranges, including special ranges to test batteries. Amprobe offers a wide range of quality test equipment used by professionals in automotive technology and many other fields.

For more information, visit the NATEF site and view the Amprobe Donation FAQs.

IML is now offering trial accounts free for 30 days. As with the earlier preview, new trial accounts will give you full access to the complete courseware package. Check out the courseware and grade book features, add your own resources, or enroll students. It’s your customizable courseware site!

Once you’ve had a chance to try the courseware out, give us a call or email us if you have any questions about getting the most from your courseware. If you think there should be an easier way to use a courseware feature—whether you’re just getting started or you’re already using an online system—there probably is. We’ll be glad to help you out.

Ready to purchase? IML has a subscription that will fit your needs and budget. Courseware is available in 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year subscriptions. You can enroll all your students for one low cost.

To sign up for a free 30-day preview or find out more, email us or call 1-800-669-2465.

Lampton, Christopher.
“How Electronic Brake Force Distribution Works”
05 October 2009. HowStuffWorks.com.

Driving safety has been a major focus of the automotive industry for many years. Car manufacturers have poured millions of dollars into researching safety and regulatory devices and the result has been an astonishing improvement in the safety of even the most inexpensive vehicles. It’s easier now than it’s ever been to find a car that will let you and your family ride in comfort and safety.

Quite a few of the new automotive safety technologies are based around computers, micro-circuitry that can sense what the car and its driver are doing and compensate for any problems that may threaten the well-being of the car and its passengers. Some of the most impressive safety improvements involve braking. The ability to stop a car in a safe manner is crucial in preventing accidents. Antilock braking systems (ABS) are now found in almost all cars, and with the addition of refinements like electronic skid control (ESC) these systems, along with an alert driver, can stop many accidents before they ever happen.

One of the most successful recent refinements to antilock braking systems has been electronic brake force distribution, or EBD. EBD is based on the principle that not every wheel needs to put forth the same effort into bringing the car to a stop.

EBD is based on the principle that the weight being supported by the wheels of your car isn’t evenly distributed. Some wheels carry a heavier load than others and will require more brake force in order to bring the car to a stop without it going out of control. Furthermore, the amount of weight being supported by a wheel shifts during the braking process, so the amount of force necessary at each wheel can change rapidly. An EBD system can not only detect how much weight is being supported by each wheel, but change the amount of braking power sent to each wheel on an instant-by-instant basis.

How have automobile manufacturers achieved this minor technological miracle? And how important is it for you to buy a car with a state-of-the-art EBD system? You’ll find the answers to these questions on the next few pages.

Deaton, Jamie Page.
“How Electronic Throttle Control Systems Work”
15 March 2010. HowStuffWorks.com.

Up until the late 1980s, most cars had a fairly straightforward throttle control. You stepped on the accelerator pedal, the throttle opened, and air flowed into the engine, where it mixed with gasoline and burned. This burning gas powered the car’s wheels, getting you down the road. If you wanted to go faster, all you had to do was step down harder — the throttle would open wider, giving the car more power.

But electronic throttle control, which is sometimes called drive-by-wire, uses electronic, instead of mechanical, signals to control the throttle. That means that when you step on your car’s gas pedal, instead of opening the throttle, you’re activating an accelerator pedal module, which converts the pressure you put on the pedal into an electric signal. That signal is then sent to an electronic control unit, which takes your inputs into account, as well as outside variables, to open the throttle for optimum efficiency and performance.

It’s a complex system, but one that has a lot of benefits for engine wear, performance and efficiency. However, like any complex system, it’s not perfect, and drivers have raised a lot of questions about them. Can outside signals interact with the ETC? What kind of failsafes are in place if such interference happens? Read on to learn the answers.

We will not be processing or shipping orders on either of these days.

IML will resume regular office hours Monday, January 3, 2011.

Our regular hours of business are 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Central Time), Monday through Friday.

Happy holidays from everyone at IML!

By Mike Allen for Popular Mechanics

Most people realize that all of us burn gasohol—a mixture of gasoline and alcohol—in our cars. Just about every gallon of gas pumped today contains as much as 10 percent domestically produced ethanol. Gummed-up fuel systems, damaged tanks and phase separation caused by stray moisture infiltrating fuel systems have plagued many consumers since this mixture debuted, and the problems will only get worse if government policy to increase the proportion of ethanol to gasoline is implemented. Don’t get me wrong: Gasoline diluted with ethanol is a perfectly acceptable motor fuel when it’s stored properly, dispensed promptly and burned in vehicles and power equipment designed to handle it. Which, unfortunately, is not always the case.

Moonshine It’s Not

That 90:10 mixture of gasoline and alcohol is referred to as E10, while a different blend of 15 percent gas and 85 percent alcohol is sold regionally as E85. On this scale, straight petroleum-based gasoline is referred to as E0. Most gasoline dispensed from pumps in this country is as much as 10 percent ­ethanol, distilled from corn grown in the Midwest. This alcoholic cocktail was originally mandated by the EPA as a replacement for MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), an oxygen-bearing petroleum-sourced chemical that was added to pump gasoline starting in 1979 to reduce carbon monoxide emissions in some regions that had problems meeting government air-quality standards. The oxygen in the MTBE (and ethanol) molecules can substantially reduce CO emissions in vehicles without modern closed-loop fuel-injection systems, which were introduced ­starting in the ’80s.

Soon after, MTBE started turning up in groundwater, affecting the taste and smell of drinking water, so ethanol was substituted. (Shockingly, MTBE isn’t considered toxic or even carcinogenic in the concentrations found in groundwater, but still.)

However: If the beneficial effects of oxygenated fuel have largely been bypassed by modern feedback-loop injection systems, which control the air-to-fuel ratio much more closely, why is ethanol still in your fuel? Because the second President Bush made a decision to offset some of our dependence on foreign oil with domestically produced alcohol, and the Corn Belt senators agreed. Ethanol plants have mushroomed, ramping up U.S. production from 1.77 billion gallons in 2001 to 10.75 billion gallons in 2009. Politics aside, odds are near 100 percent that there’s as much as 10 percent alcohol in the gasoline you’re pumping into your car and that 5-gallon can you use to fuel all your other gas engines.

Keeping Water Where It Belongs

The ethanol in your gas tank is uniformly dissolved in the gasoline. Alcohol tends to absorb and hold water, and in concentrations in the tank up to about 0.6 percent, any water remains in solution, presenting no problems. (Yes, there are other problems with alcohol in the fuel system, but we’ll get to them later.) How does water get into the fuel tank? It’s possible that water dripped into the tank at the gas station or ­refueling depot, or a stray raindrop or snowflake made its way into your tank or jerrycan, but most water infiltration is from condensation. As the temperature in a tank changes, air has to be vented in and out or the tank will bulge or split. Incoming air carries moisture. When the H2O in the gas gets above a critical percentage—its saturation point—all of the water and alcohol drops out and settles into the bottom of the tank. This is what chemists call phase separation; the various components of the fuel are no longer a homogeneous mixture.

But phase separation does not occur only from increased water concentration, which is actually unlikely in a modern, emissions-sealed automotive fuel system. The temperature of the fuel is a factor as well. Here’s the scenario: You fill up the car or gas can with fuel that, for a variety of reasons, is near its water-saturation point and at 60 degrees. Overnight, the temperature drops 20 degrees, and all the water and alcohol settle out even though no extra water has crept in. Guess what? The engine won’t run when the fuel pickup is sucking up the alcohol–water mix.

Worse yet, the gasoline remaining above the water has probably lost three octane points, because today’s gasoline relies heavily on the high-octane equivalence (130) of alcohol to achieve its octane rating. It’s also missing a bunch of additives that stayed in the alcohol—so the entire tankful should be drained and disposed of as hazardous waste.

And no, adding more alcohol, in the form of fuel-line de-icer, lacquer thinner or cheap vodka will never restore that gasoline to usefulness. You don’t want to add yet more alcohol, lest the increased concentration turns your ­carburetor float to Jell-O. The only acceptable way to attempt to save the gas in the tank is to add a large amount of gasoline that’s got a very low moisture content. Problem is, there’s no good way to tell if pump gas has a little or a lot of water on board. You stand the chance of having twice as much phase-separated, unusable gasoline as before. Better to dispose of the whole tankful.

Other Alcohol Issues

Alcohol is corrosive and can degrade plastic, rubber or even metal parts in the fuel system that weren’t engineered to use alcohol-bearing fuel. Consequently, that antique Evinrude outboard or ’60s lawn tractor you bought at the swap meet might need some upgrading to stay together on today’s gas. That means corrosion-resistant tanks, alcohol-tolerant rubber lines, seals and fuel-pump diaphragms, and plastic fuel-system parts that won’t swell up in the presence of alcohol. Vintage boats with internal fiberglass tanks often have issues with the coating inside the tank failing, ­sometimes requiring massive structural modifications. Highly tuned two-stroke engines will run leaner (and consequently hotter) on the lower Btu/gallon alcohol mix, potentially leading to melted pistons and scuffed cylinder walls. Alcohol will also scour varnish and deposits out of the fuel system that have remained in place for years, which will eventually wind up in the filter or main jet, choking off the engine’s fuel supply. Worse yet, the alcohol itself ­oxidizes in the tank and produces a tenacious brown glop that’s far more damaging to fuel systems than the ­varnish we’re used to seeing in pure petroleum fuels. In warmer weather, you can see varnish starting to form within a month of dispensing fresh fuel into a vehicle tank or storage can.

Advice

The common question I get: Where can I buy alcohol-free gasoline? You probably can’t, except at a very few stations, and odds are it’s very expensive high-octane racing fuel that’s not legal for road use.

To avoid phase separation, avoid long-term fuel storage. Trash that old 5-gallon can with the rag stuffed into the filler neck and trade up to a 2-gallon can with a decent, vented cap. I used to recommend storing outdoor power equipment, boats, ATVs and motorcycles with full tanks to prevent rusting. Now I recommend draining the tank, running the engine till it quits and then fogging the inside of the tank and the cylinder with oil to prevent corrosion. No E10 in the tank equals no water absorption and no phase separation.

We’ve always recommended using fuel-stabilizer products for gas-powered vehicles or tools that aren’t regularly used. E10 makes that advice even more compelling. We’ve tried products formulated for blended gasoline from Star Tron, Eastwood and Sta-Bil. There are others. Beware of products that claim to prevent phase separation: It’s unlikely that they can eliminate the phenomenon, although some products do claim to delay it.

And why on earth do we need E15?
It’s the Blend Wall. By passing the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Congress mandated that 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply by 2015. Last year’s U.S. production of 11 billion gallons will ramp up to 22 billion by 2012. The amount of alcohol in gas must therefore be increased. Jeff Broin, CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.–based Poet, the nation’s largest ethanol producer, says that the ethanol industry would like to increase that 15 percent to 20 percent—or more.

All of which is okay in vehicles engineered to use it, but what about those that aren’t? Broin suggests that in the future, “consumers will be able to dial up the concentration of ethanol they’d like to burn at the pump, from zero to 20 percent or more, just like they choose their octane rating today.” That’s exactly what those of us with older cars, tools or toys will need. Problem: Getting different blends to the consumer will require massive infrastructure changes. Gasstation owners will have to upgrade existing pumps to handle E15 and higher concentrations. The blending pumps Broin is suggesting will cost more than a typical $20,000 conventional unit. In addition, station owners will have to install more tanks. An energy policy that mandates more domestic production sounds like a great idea. But sneaking more ethanol into the supply stream at the expense of people who rely on their cars, boats and outdoor power equipment might better be left to the marketplace and not to bureaucrats.