Identifix, Inc., an industry provider of vehicle diagnostics and repair for over 25 years, has once again made substantial enhancements to Direct-Hit, the company’s online automotive service tool. This latest round of improvements makes Direct-Hit’s information database even more comprehensive, allowing independent repair shops and dealership service departments the ability to perform critical, everyday functions with a single tool, helping to increase shop productivity, profitability and customer care.
The upgrades are:
- Links to the International Automotive Technicans Network (iATN) from Direct-Hit’s vehicle home page, pairing the real-world fix database of Direct-Hit with the automotive professional community of iATN – all in one seamless user experience. iATN, Identifix’s sister company, complements Direct-Hit’s information with TechHelp, which is a community of technicians posting questions on vehicle issues and exchanging helpful suggestions and solutions. iATN also offers more than 20 discussion forums, training resources and a waveform file library to help technicians advance their automotive knowledge. iATN is the largest network of automotive repair professionals in the world, with over 81,000 members in 168 countries. An iATN Basic Membership is free; go to join.iatn.net for more information.
- Fully interactive color wiring diagrams*, standardized across all OEMs and available for the majority of vehicles for model years 1985—2015.This highly anticipated upgrade elevates the utility of Direct-Hit by providing the level of diagram quality and clarity required by technicians as they work on vehicles with increasing complexity. New diagrams are detailed with location and number descriptions, circuit tracing and partial- or full-diagram printing, in addition to displaying a multitude of information in a single view* (see the next page for a screenshot example from Direct-Hit).
- Vintage service and repair data from Chilton dating back to 1960.Users can access service manual information and Technical Service Bulletins from Direct-Hit’s diagnostic Hotline Archives, or from the Vehicle Home Page. With coverage for domestic and import models, this brings Direct-Hit’s total vehicle coverage to over 98 percent of all U.S. vehicles on the road today.
“These new enhancements are much more than simply adding data to our existing online tool. They’re part of our greater mission to provide automotive repair professionals with the tools they need to keep up with the complexity of the vehicles they service, without compromising the efficiency and accuracy that their customers demand,” said Jeanette Dorazio, vice president of product management for Identifix. “This isn’t the first time we’ve expanded our offerings beyond our signature real-world diagnostics, and we’re going to continue evolving our products with the singular objective of delivering high value and return-on-investment to our customers.”
These upgrades come at a time of significant growth for the company, which recently marked its 50,000th online subscriber with a contest called the 50K Giveaway. Identifix will award five $10,000 prizes at random to Direct-Hit subscribers who submit a Hotline Archive Confirmed Fix by October 4. Identifix celebrated 30,000 subscribers in 2011, increasing Direct-Hit’s subscriber base by 67 percent in four years.
