The way things are going, being able to maintain a buggy whip won't be economically feasible or an asset to any mainstream company. Technology changes, evolves, and rarely results in something being simpler and easier to fix. I do like repairing at the component level, but just don't have time for it right now. But as Tony mentioned, it is a puzzle, and the MINDSET that allows troubleshooting is just not something everyone has. One of my favorite examples was back when I was doing field maintenance, I got a call from a customer who couldn't get their machine to work. So I flew down to take a look, was picked up by the plant manager, and taken to the machine. While he went to get the tech, I looked at it and had it working in a couple of minutes later when they returned. The problem was strictly mechanical (an air cylinder shaft had come unscrewed from the piston), and they had *assumed* it was an electrical problem. And most of us (at least those of us do/did troubleshooting as a job) have had the experience of troubleshooting equipment where the problem turned out to be the switch needed to be turned on, or the unit plugged in. Developing a mental picture (I think in terms of block diagrams) of how something works is crucial to being able to troubleshoot it.