(this key board sucks, sorry for the punctuation and crappy capital letters)
I hope you read this, it took 2 hours to do this stupid post.


So Volvo holds a competition world wide every 2 years. There Technicians compete against each other. There is also competition between Service advisors and new this year there was a team competition (one advisor and a technician. I will point out that my service manager and foreman won as the only north american team). This was my first time EVER competing, and I ended up winning all the way to Sweden.

SO stage 1 you have regional competitions. In North america it is the same questions at each training center. So step one

I flew to Vancouver BC and spent a day in Competition. It was 4, hands on, challenges.
The night before the competition I went to my first Canucks game



2 weeks later I got a call saying I was moving onto the next challenge. I didn't have a passport and needed one because I was going to New York City/New Jersey to compete. Rushed the old passport in.

Early April I flew into New Yorks Lagaurdia airport. I met Shawn (SKLD) a turbobricker I've known for years on here/FB/BB messenger. He was kind enough to talk his wife into letting me stay with them for Saturday and Sunday nights. They and their darling of a daughter toured me all over Manhatten and Queens. I had a few things I wanted to do when I was there- Eat a slice of the best Pizza (completed), authentic NY Italian food (completed) and see the sites. The only thing I missed out on was going up Rockafeller center at night, we were seriously 3 minutes late and they wouldn't let us up.

I can't thank Shawn, wife, daughter enough. Being in the city is much different then seeing it on TV.



Monday Morning Volvo sent a limo for me and took me to Palisades New York. We stayed at a sweet convention center (Dolce Palisades). We had our intro day (Monday) and then were divided into 2 groups and had a fun day one day and our testing the other day.

The fun day was a trip to a motorcycle museum. It was interesting. We also got to talk to the engineers and programmers designing the new VIDA program- which was awesome, because they wrote down every suggestion we had. We then went up to the Orange county Choppers shop. That was neat also.

The testing was 5 problems this time, and much more challenging. We are given a time limit for each task, and we are graded like a math problem, we can get partial points even if we don't complete a task.

At the end we had a huge awards dinner and the winners were announced. My manager and foreman won in the team, and the only other Canadian was a guy from the dealer in the city south of us. His advisor also won as an individual.

We had to leave for Gothenburn for June. So we started planning our trip. We found the shortest flight was to fly into Stockholm. We had to be in Gothenburg Sunday by 3pm. So we flew into Stockholm for 1230 Saturday. I lucked out and had a stomach flu thursday night and all day friday. I slept all day friday, so I stayed awake for most of the flight Firday night. We had a 1 hour lay over in Iceland- Awesome looking place, I will be trying to make a trip out there this winter maybe (yes winter).

We got a hostel room in Stockholm in the STF Af Chapman. An old ship from the 1880s. Very cool. We did a Canal tour and then wandered around the city for the rest of the day.





Sunday we took the high speed train over to Gothenburg. We had a huge welcome dinner with a live cover band (that was pretty good). The band played almost every night and we had some swedish tv personallity as an MC/host.

After dinner we hit the bar. Too hard. Beer is expensive---- almost 55 dollars for 4 beers.

Monday we started out early. We did the Factory tour, a VIDA presentaion, a driving academy (we drove on the race track testing out high speed avoidance). We then went to the museum.


diesel electric hyprid- 102mpg





If you've been to the museum, you know it is on the water. Well they had some RIB boats meet us there- 2 500hp engines on the back. Fast, very fast (think navy seals zodiacs). We then went out to an island for dinner (I don't have the book with me but it was called muskullen I believe). We had dinner and drinks out there. Live music, we essentially had thier mid sommer festival at that point, so we could experiance it. Like singing a song and a shot of vodka, a few more lines a chunk if dried herring, and a few more lines and chug a beer. Fun times. End of the night a ferry picked us up and we went right up the inlet of Gothenburg close to our hotel (The Post Clarion hotel BTW)




The next morning we went to the Volvo Brand experiance center (very cool) and we went to a polestar presentation. We didn't get to drive it, but we got to see the first production V60 polestar.



These are all the north american techs and advisors. The lady up front was our NA host- She is the VCNA employee retainment person (I think) Coolest lady ever



After the presentations we got on busses and we headed north, way north to a town called Sunne. Beautiful place. We stayed in some spa while there. We walked into town the first night because someone wouldn't eat the delicious deer steak we had for dinner.

I saw more modified Volvo's in this town then I could count with all my appendages. Even a slammed limo 940 with rims. It was thier grad night, so everyone was out cruising.



The next morning was our team building day (wednesday). We headed another 1.5 hours north (Braille?). There we got in teams of 6 and built rafts out of logs and rop, that was it. Then proceeded to float down the river all afternoon (about 4 hours). It was relaxing, but not the most comfortable



Had an open fire BBQ of lamb for dinner that night, it was amazing. Back to the Spa, and the bar, again.

Up early the next morning back to Gothenburg, we stopped in a little town (of 8000 people) and had lunch and wandered around town for an hour. We all bought chocolate at the grocery store. and I picked up a Bilsport Magazine that has the turbocontainer project 740 in it. One guy from Cali, Juan, bought 200 bucks worth of chocolate and coffee. He was stacked to his chin in chocolate bars. It was hilarious. Yes their chocolate is better there then it is in NA. Back on the bus and to Gothenburg.

This is where my mind was blown. When we got to town, it was the opening night of the world cup. Castrol and Volvo teamed up and they rented the ENTIRE STADIUM in Gothenburg. They brought in 2 former world cup players from the 90s, and they brought in 3 current professional goalies. We then played games. We had a shoot out on a net, we had a penatly kick off with the pro goalies in net, a human sized game of foose ball game, and a regular game. Our groups ended up getting split up for dinner. I ate with a guy from Chicago and 3 guys from india. Interesting stuff. Then we walked back to the hotel, hit the bar, then went down town and wandered all around the bar scene.




The middle of the night in Gothenburg- As dark as it got.



Friday morning we had a choice on what to do. I picked to go to a dealer. Turns out its the second biggest in the world. Beautiful place. Sell 3500 cars a year out of it. Got to see the "personal service technician" program in use, in person. Interesting.



Friday afternoon off to do as we pleased. I slept. I was bagged.

Friday night we had our final dinner/party. Saturday morning we left on a jet plane .

Amazing experience. I forgot to mention they supplied us with a dress shirt and pants, belt, jakets, sweaters, hoodie. We added it up to roughly 1500 in clothes. Plus hotel and flight, we are pretty sure it was upwards of 15K per person on this. No details were missed, we had hosts and tour guides (good looking girls) with us every where we went when we were with Volvo. It was a 2-4 hour a night sleep at most, hang over/exhaustion every day, but I wouldn't have changed it.

Lots of interesting things coming out of Volvo. The next few years should be exciting, we got a few glimpses into the future.
I have a thousand pictures, if there is more of something you want to see, I'll see if I have it and can try posting it.
Jordan

Oh and random fact.

14550 people competed. 188 made it to Sweden

Jordan, thanks for taking the time to document and post that. That must have been an amazing experience, so jealous!!

Congrats on achieving the status to be qualified to do that trip.

Wicked, Jordan! Congrats, and way to represent!

Very cool!

That was awesome Jordan! Congrats on making it to Sweden and thanks for posting that. I had no idea Volvo did that kind of thing.

Curious though - any chance you can describe one of harder tech questions? (or are you sworn to secrecy?) No worries if you can't - I'm just curious.

Rabin

Thanks guys. I'll try to describe each question

Vancouver

1) suspension accelerometer from an R car. Given some wires, power source and a book describing it. They wanted to know which pin did what. Then hook it up and describe if it worked or not. The trick to that one is the book said it had to be sitting in a certain position for a proper reading.

2) rear window switch from a p3 car (maybe it was a front). Same idea- what pin does what, does it work? This was the most difficult one apparently only 5% o people got it all right. I don't know if I did or not.

3) the vida dice unit can be programmed to be an error frame finder on the can network. We had to program it. I know the other guy in my shop didn't complete this one and probably held them back from NYC.

4) a code sheet from a car on a USB stick pretending to be a car. What did the codes mean, what could be at fault? Was it this or that fuse? A bad pin at the module?

That was the 4 Vancouver questions. There was a 10 minute time limit for each. It surprised me how quick 10 minutes comes at you when you're testing like this.

New York there were 5.

1) the new 2.0 engine was sitting on a stand. The VVT units and timing belt were off. We had to set up the VVT units and timing belt in 20 minutes. Most people didn't catch that they had the crank shaft rotated. I had never even seen this engine in person.

2) new v60 head light didn't work. No codes, found power but no ground. Had to trace the ground back to the body. Found the ground was stuffed in the wiring harness.

3) a no start on a v60. Car would not communicate with vida. Checked network and found the high speed was shorted together. I didn't solve this but the park brake module was bad and took down the network. But I followed all steps to know what was happening just not pin pointed.

4) fuel tank pressure sensor from an 850. Test the sensor. Given the old paper book that had a diagram. Most people got screwed up because they didn't pressure test AND vacuum test.

5) convert able top always said open. Checked hall sensors and saw one sensor was not reading properly. I kept reading down and saw a secon one wasn't reading properly also. Most people just saw the 1 reading wrong. Inspected and found the 2 sensors were swapped around. I was in the middle of switching tem when I ran out of time. He asked what was wrong and I told him they were swapped around. He said I was right.

Anyways. Those were the questions. 10-20 minute time limits. Like a math question, as long as you follow the steps you'll get more points.

Only 4 people got the no start car

Jordan

Those are pretty hairy problems, good diagnosis! I can't quite believe that people didn't TDC check the crank, though...

Thanks very much for posting the questions Jordan - very cool to see what kinds of challenges you were presented with - great job doing so well on them!

I love diagnostics and troubleshooting - probably why I enjoy working on cars so much as a hobby. I was very close to making it a career years ago, but found it faded cars being fun to work on for me. (Actually working with customers was the struggle!)

Rabin

Awesome Jordan! Man, just reading those questions gets me stressed! I can imagine being under the gun and trying to figure that stuff out would be pretty intense! Very well done!

Would love to see some of the stuff you saw in Sweden at some point in my life. Also wish I could read Swedish so I could read Bilsport! That V60 looks pretty sweet too I must say.

Great job Jordan. Sounds like a fun series of problems and you've certainly earned that trip. They should have given you guys some random stupid stuff like a 240 that won't idle properly on K-Jet...wonder who would have figured it out.

Great write up man. Thanks for sharing!