A6 Electrical &
Electronic Systems
Review Answers
Reading Your Results: A6 Electrical and Electronic Systems, Test 1
A score by itself only tells you whether you passed. What follows is how to read the questions you missed on this test. A6 is the largest ASE automobile exam, and almost every question on it comes back to one idea: a circuit needs a source, a path, a load, and a return, and each of those fails in a way you can measure.
If you missed the questions about resistance in a circuit
Unwanted resistance is the most common electrical fault in the trade and the hardest to find with the wrong tool, so this test keeps coming back to it. Resistance in a circuit does not stop current, it limits it, so the symptom is a load that works poorly rather than one that does not work at all. That is the tell: a dim lamp, a slow motor, or a starter that turns but turns slowly. It also means an ohmmeter on a disconnected wire will often read fine, because the meter pushes almost no current through the connection. A voltage drop test loads the circuit and measures the voltage the resistance is consuming, which is why it finds faults a continuity check walks right past. When several accessories dim together as a big load switches on, the resistance is upstream of all of them, usually in a shared feed or ground.
If you missed the questions built on a measurement
Three questions here hand you readings and expect you to work with them rather than just compare them.
If you missed the questions where a module was involved
Modern body electrical work carries requirements that a straight circuit does not. A replacement module usually has to be programmed or configured for that specific vehicle before it will work, and losing battery power can erase learned values such as window express-up. Neither of those is a fault in anything you can measure, which is why they show up on the exam as questions about what is required after a repair rather than as diagnostics. On the network side, a single module that will not answer while every other module responds normally points at that module's power, ground, or its own branch of the bus, since a fault in the bus itself would take more than one module offline.
If you missed the EXCEPT and LEAST likely questions
Four appear on this test, and missing more than one is a reading habit rather than a knowledge gap. Work out what the three real causes share before you look for the odd one. On the rapid-flash question, three answers all reduce current in that side's turn signal circuit, and one does not change current at all. On the fusible link question, three answers all put more current through the link than it was sized for, and one reduces current instead. Naming the shared trait first turns a four-way guess into a single check, and on an exam this long that habit saves real time.