I have been preparing to take the MECP certification test, have any of you taken the test? Have any tips for me?
I bought the study guide from CEA and it says it fully preps you for the test, I was just wondering if any of you had tips or pointers for the test.

 

I've taken it. Read ALL the study guide. Concentrate more on the notes that is in the margin of the pages. Make sure you understand all the ohms law and all the other formulas. There will be several questions in reference to those formulas. Make sure you learn all the colors on the resisters. You will have a couple questions that will give you the color of 4 bands on a resister and you will have to give the value of the resister and the tolerance and all that. You need to learn the colors in order and learn all the numbers and tolerance that goes with the number. If you don't remember the colors in order then I got a way that I remembered them. Just e-mail me and I'll let you know. If you do all that and learn everything in the margin of the pages then you should do ok. Read the whole study guide first. Then go back and study all the other stuff. It's broken down into 3 sections. The majority of the first section is things dealing with ohms law and all the other formulas. So if your not familar with that then you'll be screwed. Let me know how things go. Good luck man.

 

Im 1st Class. Didnt read but 2 pages of the book. My attention span is 0%. I was fortunate enough to go to www.mobiledynamics.com .

 

Ah, you went to the school?? If you did then I'm sure I didn't tell you that you didn't already know. I didn't go to any school. I just got "on job training". Are you working in car audio yet?? For 1st class you got to have a min of 1 year expereiance.

 

I don't have any professional experience, I was hoping to get a job after certification.

I'm glad you told me about the resisters because I was just going to remember a few basics on them and a couple of colors. I don't really understand how to use the color code system though, its not very clear in the book. Its not even in color. Can you explain it to me a little better?

 

Because I was at the school, they allowed me to take the 1st Class Test. They wont send the Certificate till you get one year exp. I just recently completed that, and am awaiting my 1st Class Cert.

When I get home later, Ill dig up the info on resistors I have.

 

The restistor are confusing until you get them figured out. I'll try to help you out on them. Here is the way that I learned the colors. When you take the test you they allow you to have some scap paper for the math of the fomulas and stuff. As soon as you get the paper write down the formulas and the resistor colors. Make up something that you can remember the first letter of the color then go back and write the color itself by the word that you had to represent that color. Remember that you must have all these in the correct order. Here's what I used to remember them.

(B)lack Black 0 1 +-20
(B)oys Brown 1 10 +-1
(R)ape Red 2 100 +-2
(O)ur Orange 3 1000 +-3
(Y)oung Yellow 4 10000 +-4
(G)irls Green 5 100000
(B)ut Blue 6 1000000
(V)iolet Violet 7 10000000
(G)ives Grey 8 100000000
(W)illingly White 9 1000000000

Gold .1 +-5
Silver .01 +-10

Remember that the first two colors is the first two numbers. The third color is how many you multilply the first two by. The fouth number is the tolerance. For example, if you have a resistor that the colors are... yellow, blue, red, brown.

You know that the value of the resistor is 4600 Ohms with 1% tolerance.

I know this is a little lenthy hope it's not too much. The main thing is that I wanted to let you know about the first letter thing to help you remember what order.

Black boys rape our young girls but violet gives willingly.

Hope this helps man.

 

Remeber that from school. Thanks, now I dont have to look it up.

 

The PC way of putting it would be....

Bad boys rape our......

RE: the resistor colors
It's easier to remember that the 3rd color is the number of zeroes after the first 2 numbers. So if you have a resistor that has orange-red-yellow, the value would be
orange = 3
red = 2
yellow = 4 zeroes

320,000 ohms or 320k ohms.

If you had red-red-black you would have...
red = 2
red = 2
black = NO zeroes

So red-red-black would be 22 ohms