Teen Mechanics Win Skills Competition

The headlights aren’t working right. It’s making a kind of clunking noise.

Those cryptic, common customer complaints and a vast knowledge of cars were all the North Hollywood duo of Robert Pugh and Roberto Carlos had to work from Friday morning at the 1996 Ford/AAA Student Auto Skills National Quality Care Challenge, held at the Fairplex in Pomona.

In one hour, 17 minutes and 37 seconds, the two high school seniors had located and fixed some 11 bugs--from fuel injection problems to a headlight that wouldn’t glow--in the Ford they were working on. It was enough to earn them fifth place in the statewide competition, conducted simultaneously in the Bay Area and the Southland, and a shot at 10 scholarships to trade schools.

North Hollywood High, in fact, was the highest ranking Los Angeles-area team in the competition that pitted youngsters in a race against time and each other. The winning team was a female pair from Ramona High School near San Francisco, who finished in 37 minutes and 51 seconds.

When the 15 Southern California teams set foot on the Fairplex racing track, they approached identical Fords, said Jeffrey Spring of the Automobile Club of Southern California, one of the event’s sponsors.

“It was just like working in a shop,” Spring explained. “There was a sheet of paper on the dashboard, just like a work order form. The ‘customers’ gave symptoms of the car’s problems, and the students worked back from those symptoms. They really had to know the car and how it functions.”

The contest’s purpose is to encourage students with an aptitude for automotive repair to continue their studies, Spring said. The winning team from Ramona will represent California in the nationals in Washington, D.C., on June 17.