Intermittent electrical faults are the bane of the auto repair business. If an electrical component has failed, or there is an open or a short in a circuit, you can usually find it fairly quickly because it isn't hiding from you. It's a persistent fault that can be isolated by a systematic process of elimination.

Not so with intermittents. Chasing intermittents is like chasing ghosts. One minute the fault appears, the next minute it vanishes into thin air. Worse yet, the problem may occur at random intervals with no apparent connection to driving conditions, temperature or humidity. And if you can't get the fault to appear long enough for you to catch it, you can't fix it.

So how do you deal with intermittent electrical faults?

One approach that's often used is to wait it out. If you've had no luck getting an intermittent problem to recur in the shop or by test-driving the vehicle, you may tell your customer to keep driving his vehicle until it happens again - or until whatever is going wrong with it eventually fails completely.

Sometimes that's all you can do. But most customers don't see that as a very good solution to their problem - especially if an intermittent has been affecting the reliability or safety of their vehicle (things like hard starting, stalling, loss of power, lights going out, etc.). The best approach to dealing with intermittent electrical faults is a logical approach that will help you find...