A Salute to TechLink Contributor Dave Nowak

Meticulous may be the best way to describe Dave Nowak. Everything he had a hand in was detailed, thoughtfully planned out, and developed with a keen understanding of how the results would affect others. This goes for his professional work at GM as well as his personal life with his family.

Sadly, Dave passed away recently after complications from surgery. He was a longtime TechLink contributor — close to 17 years — and a Senior Project Engineer for Diagnostic Strategy with the Diagnostic Strategies and Methods Team for GM Customer Care and Aftersales in Warren, Michigan. (Fig. 7)

Fig. 7

Dave’s involvement with TechLink over the years has been invaluable. His detailed knowledge of electrical diagnosis as well as his insight of the challenges dealership technicians face each day helped shape our mission, while doing so with candor, intelligence, and some humor too.

戴夫开始了他的职业生涯在AMC经销商处转动扳手。经过十多年的服务湾，迅速增长的技术背景和对如何与他人分享该信息的敏锐的理解，作为一名教练教师的汽车电子课程。从那里开始，他在帮助GM和IBM进行了对CAM的测试（计算机化汽车维护系统） - 其在工业中使用的电气诊断的第一台机器，尽管在20世纪90年代初期加入通用汽车之前，具有独特的声誉作为具有服务技术组（STG）的先进电气服务工程师。

In his work developing electronic diagnostic procedures in the Service Information, Dave was truly hands-on. He created GM’s global service manual authoring guidelines for electrical diagnostic procedures and became a GM global subject matter expert on how to diagnose electrical problems. Maybe what made Dave so good at what he did was in how he always looked out for technicians by searching for any real-world issues that would affect diagnostics and repairs, whether that was revising component testing, determining scan tool inputs, or how to use the results of a simple resistance test. Dave was recognized for his efforts with a U.S. patent for establishing a methodology for service manual consistency.

Dave’s penchant for details was evident outside of the office too. He was an avid woodworker and built his own furniture. One year, his grandkids each got a homemade miniature log cabin, with individual, hand-stained logs, as a Christmas gift. Dave even printed directions and diagrams on how to build the cabin using all of the different logs.

当然，他的车库中的一切都处于出色状态，包括他的骑士敞篷车（也许是密歇根州的最后一次！）和他的2002年郊区。（图8）毕竟，这是一个拆开他的冰箱的男人来修改风扇，所以它会运行较冷。A testament to Dave’s passion for making things better, his daily-driver Suburban was included as part of the truck’s 75th anniversary celebration in 2011. It turned out that GM had Suburban models in its collection to represent every major model year except 2002. When a call went out to GM employees looking for a 2002 model, Dave offered up his Suburban, which was in pristine condition and fit right in with the historical collection.

Fig. 8

Dave will be missed by all of us at GM Customer Care and Aftersales. His mantra was to stick to the basics but do it well. He felt everything needed a solid foundation first before you could begin to build upon it. Our foundation here at TechLink is now a little weaker, but we wouldn’t be where we are without him. Thanks Dave.

– Thanks to the many friends and colleagues of Dave Nowak