A day in the life: Alex Booty, Diagnostic Technician at Cleevely Motors

In the heart of Cheltenham, where the hum of electric vehicles blends with the clatter of traditional combustion engines, Booty starts his day at Cleevely Motors. As a diagnostic technician, Booty is part of a new breed of aftermarket specialists who straddle the line between mechanical know-how and software fluency, decoding faults that span from broken wires to firmware glitches.

“I’m in at 8am,” Booty says, “helping to unlock the workshop, powering up everything, lights, and the radio. Then it’s straight onto Garage Hive.” This cloud-based job management system assigns his daily workload, from repairs to long-stay diagnostic cases. The morning often begins with nuts-and-bolts servicing, but by afternoon, Booty is deep into fault-finding. His true passion.

Booty’s journey into diagnostics began with mopeds and motorcycles, evolving into an apprenticeship in maintenance and repair. From there, he cut his teeth on Land Rovers – vehicles notorious for their electrical quirks. “They’re not the most reliable,” he laughs, “but they taught me a lot about software and reprogramming.” That curiosity led him into mobile diagnostics and remapping before landing at Cleevely, where EVs are now a daily fixture.

A typical fault? “We see a lot of Renault Zoes with charging issues,” Booty explains. “They’ll throw up dozens of fault codes, so we scan, save a report, clear everything, and attempt a charge. That logs a fresh fault – the one we actually need to chase.” From there, Booty dives into AllData, a technical platform that offers confirmation procedures and troubleshooting paths. But experience often trumps flowcharts. “We’ve seen it before, it’s usually a thermistor in the charge cable that’s failed from heat stress. Renault’s replacement part costs £600. We found a workaround using a £2 component,” he says. It’s this kind of ingenuity that defines the aftermarket edge.

Booty’s toolkit includes general scan tools and remote dealer-level access via third-party platforms. “If we replace a coded module, like a BCM or ECM, we’ll have a specialist remote in and flash it. It’s expensive, but necessary.”

EVs bring new challenges. “With petrol or diesel, there’s usually something mechanical to find. With electric cars, faults are often invisible and software-based. You need enough evidence to back your theory, and sometimes it’s just a bad algorithm,” says Booty. He recalls a Jaguar I-Pace flagged for a high-voltage battery failure. The owner could be quoted £19,000 for a new battery, but the skills and knowledge of a diagnostic technician like Booty found out it was just a monitoring glitch, easily fixable with a software update.

Booty’s most satisfying fix? “A Tesla with a height sensor fault. It had been to multiple garages, parts thrown at it, software updated. I found a broken wire under the boot carpet. That’s the reward, solving what others couldn’t.”

His day isn’t confined to the workshop. Faults under specific conditions require road testing. “I had a diesel Mercedes CLA 200 losing power on the motorway. It was trying to regenerate its particulate filter, but the customer didn’t know. I drove it to Weston-Super-Mare to complete the regen. Sometimes you’ve got to feel what the car’s doing.”

Training in diagnostics is a balance between formal training and on the job knowledge growth. “It’s experience,” Booty says. “I’ve done a few day courses, but mostly it’s years of chasing faults. You learn by doing.” He’s driven by the satisfaction of resolution. “I’m reward-driven. Seeing a fault through to a fix, that’s what keeps me going.”

For the aftermarket industry, Booty represents the future: adaptable, resourceful, and fluent in both hardware and software. Whether it’s a broken wire or a firmware patch, he’s proof that the right technician doesn’t just fix cars, they decode them.