Editorial policy

How a page gets made

1. Research. Compiled from OEM service literature, SAE J1939 definitions, technical service bulletins, regulatory text in the CFR, and — for cost pages — repair invoices submitted to us. Forum posts and other websites are not sources. They are sometimes a lead worth chasing to a real source.
2. Draft. Written by the in-house editorial team, who are researchers and editors, not technicians. Every claim gets a source attached as it is written, not retrofitted afterwards.
3. Technical review. A credentialed technician reads it, corrects it, and adds the parts that only come from having done the job. Their name and certifications go on the page.
4. Validation. The build checks the page against a schema. A page missing its sources, its author, or its cost data does not fail quietly — it fails the build.
5. Publication. The page enters the sitemap. Before this point it is reachable but marked noindex.

What blocks publication

These are enforced in code, in the content schema, so they cannot be waived by whoever is in a hurry that day.

• Fault code pages: either an annotation from a technician who has diagnosed that code, or at least three cited technical sources plus real parts and labor cost data. Neither of those, and the page is a draft.
• City directory pages: at least 3 phone-verified listings. Below that, the city rolls up to its state hub.
• Cause frequency rankings: at least 5 outcomes, or the component renders nothing rather than a percentage.
• Labor rate pages: a defensible per-state sample. No sample, no page.

What a draft means

A draft is a real page that has not yet been signed off by a technical reviewer. It is reachable, it is linked, and it is labelled “in technical review” wherever it appears. It is excluded from every sitemap and carries noindex. We publish drafts openly rather than hiding them because pretending the site is more finished than it is would be its own kind of dishonesty.

The no-fabrication rule

The same rule governs our own bylines. Two technical reviewer positions on this site are contracted but unfilled, and their author records read [UNFILLED] with no name and no certification number. Fabricating a credentialed expert is the single most common form of fraud in this content category, and it is the thing this policy exists to prevent us from doing under deadline pressure.

Advertising and editorial

• No advertiser sees content before it publishes.
• No advertiser, sponsor, or paid listing has any influence over what a page says or what a cost range shows.
• Paid directory listings buy presentation, never placement. Ordering rules are identical for free and paid listings.
• Every ad unit is labelled “Advertisement”.
• Ad density and placement are identical for search crawlers and for readers. We do not serve a cleaner page to Googlebot than to you.
• Affiliate relationships are disclosed on the page carrying the link, not buried in a footer.
• Ads never precede the answer. On a fault code page the verdict box renders before the first ad unit, without exception.

Safety

Some of what this site covers can kill someone if it is wrong. Brake systems, steering, fifth wheel and coupling devices, wheel ends, and anything involving a raised or supported vehicle. On those topics we describe what the fault is and what a repair involves; we do not write procedures that read as an invitation to do the work on the side of a road.

Where a code produces a derate or an out-of-service condition, we say so at the top of the page rather than at the bottom, and the “can I keep driving?” answer is written conservatively. If the honest answer is “no, and here is why”, that is the answer, whatever it does to the page's bounce rate.

Emissions equipment

We will not publish anything that facilitates tampering with emissions control equipment: no DPF, EGR, DEF, or SCR delete instructions, no tune sources, no parts links, and no shop listing for a business that advertises deletes. This is a federal violation under the Clean Air Act and a serious liability for the operator, not a grey area.

We do cover it honestly, in one place: what a delete actually costs — penalties, resale, insurance, CSA exposure — and the legal alternatives that solve the underlying problem, which is usually that aftertreatment maintenance was deferred until it became expensive.

Corrections

Corrections are an editorial priority, not a support queue. Report one through the contact form, which attaches the page automatically.

• A factual error is fixed and the page's review date is updated. A substantive change — a cost range, a diagnostic step, a legal claim — is noted on the page rather than made silently.
• A closed or wrong shop listing is corrected or removed. Removals are free and immediate, including for paid listings, and we do not ask why.
• A safety error is treated as urgent. If a diagnostic step we published could hurt someone, we take the page down first and correct it second.

Use of AI

Drafting and research assistance may involve AI tools. Nothing generated is published without a human verifying every factual claim against a cited source, and no AI output is ever presented as a technician's annotation or attributed to a named person. The technical review step is a human with certifications, and it is not skippable.

Review cadence

Cost pages are reviewed as new invoices arrive and at minimum annually. Compliance pages are reviewed when the underlying regulation changes and at minimum annually. Shop listings are re-verified by phone annually, and the listing shows the date of the most recent call, not the date it was first added — a five-year-old verification date presented as current is the core dishonesty of every scraped directory in this industry.