Engine Diagnostics

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Engine Diagnostics

there's one book I bought very recently which stands out head and shoulders above the rest: OBD11 Diagnostics Made Easy by Stephen (Steve) Cook:https://www.amazon.com/OBDII-Diagnostics-Made-Easy-Stephen/dp/1726085546

Well jock sat here relatively happy on a sunday afternoon Wales just beat Ireland I Have finished my mock up (using a dead solar panel and Aluminium extrusions) of how I will control the angle of a tilting Solar panel (on my motor home) using gas struts. Then i found a £10 book token even better, I know what i can spend that on OBDII Diagnostics Made Easy by Stephen Cook.
Available from Amazon or a US dealer on EBay. Guess who doesn't take my book tokens. No UK book shop that i searched has it either. not that i can go out and get one anyway
wheres the flow, to go with
 
Oh yes and Scotland won their match too! My oldest boy was on the 'phone about it in a state of great excitement!

The solar panel sounds an interesting project, just the sort of thing I find interesting.

I bought my books with book tokens too but had the same problem as you with finding someone who would take them. I couldn't find how to do it on line and our local Waterstones said they couldn't get them. In the end I rang our local Blackwells here in Edinburgh who were very helpful indeed and ordered them for me (I bought Mandy Concepcion's "Automotive Scan Tool PID Diagnostics" at the same time - had 2 years worth of Christmas/birthday book tokens unused). They took payment over the 'phone using the numbers on the book token cards and shipped them directly to me so I didn't have to go into the shop to pick them up. The books came direct from America. One, the PID diagnostics, came very quickly, about 6 days if I remember. The Steve Cook book took much longer, nearly 3 weeks if I remember. In my opinion worth the wait though.
 
Jock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM3iarhSP68
fUEL TRIM info with Vagcom vcds.

Just got the Steve cook book, and wading through.
A third of the book before he even mentions OBD2.
suprisingly more riviting that the Michael Conlelly book ive also started.
 
Jock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM3iarhSP68
fUEL TRIM info with Vagcom vcds.

Just got the Steve cook book, and wading through.
A third of the book before he even mentions OBD2.
suprisingly more riviting that the Michael Conlelly book ive also started.
Thanks oneandonly. It's the Panda that I'm interested in and I was trying to use the Generic OBD11 reader embedded with the VCDS package to access this. - lower left side of opening screen - Unfortunately, although it "speaks" to my boy's Vauxhall Astra it just won't link into the Panda so I'm still trying to get there with MES. I suspect the problem revolves around the fact that the control units in the Fiat are Magnetti Marelli whereas VAG mostly uses Bosch.

Anyway I'm steadily making progress with the MES and having great fun doing it although my laptop's battery has just decided to die which means keeping it connected to the charger all the time I'm using it which is awkward. Suppose I'll just have to buy a battery for it - not cheap though are they.

Yes, Steve Cook's book takes a wee while to get down to the "Nitty Gritty" but I found there was quite a lot in those early pages where I'd only understood partly how a component was working. In fact I'm now slowly working my way page by page right from the beginning and picking up on lots of minor - and some major - detail of which I was ignorant. Hope you are enjoying it.
 
with the Ducato many of the ECU's are Bosch. This may be a peculiarity of the Sevel vans being the same but different. the Peugeot Boxer Citroen Relay and Fiat Ducato are all made in the same factory at Sevel. Some Peugeot vans come with ford engines but all other bits fiat. The Euro 6 (without adblu) fiat engine is only fiat. So how they are dealt with by MES ?
I have a OBDlink SX usb adaptor. used with MES and Alfaobd, and a BT adaptor same as recommended by alfaobd and Kapron The Vgate-iCarPro £24 from ebay. OBDwiz is windows 10 generic software from OBDlink.
MES and Alfaobd work with both adaptors but quicker responses with usb connection.
for those that need oil quality/ service reset MES and Alfa OBD do the job, now Theres another kid on the block Monitor ECU for Fiat cars By Kapron-AP
ANdroid only Currently £12 on the playstore But Bluetooth only. The Monitor ECU for Fiat cars only talks to the engine ECU but lots of fiat PIDs (4 pages) this is quite limited (but does the important oil reset)
 
with the Ducato many of the ECU's are Bosch. This may be a peculiarity of the Sevel vans being the same but different. the Peugeot Boxer Citroen Relay and Fiat Ducato are all made in the same factory at Sevel. Some Peugeot vans come with ford engines but all other bits fiat. The Euro 6 (without adblu) fiat engine is only fiat. So how they are dealt with by MES ?

Compatibility is an interesting subject isn't it. VCDS (VAG-COM as it used to be known) is compatible with all the Volkswagen group brands. It doesn't care if it's an Audi, VW, SEAT, Skoda or even a Bentley! it'll talk to it. But I remember being caught short down in Barnstaple Devon near a VW dealership with my old SEAT Cordoba. They said they couldn't undertake the repair because their diagnostic equipment would only link to a VW branded product so I had to go over to Croyde where there is a SEAT dealer.

If you explore the MES listings you'll find it can "speak" to certain models of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and, of course Lancia, which doesn't surprise me being as they are/were all part of Fiat/Chrysler, but then you see Suzuki? what's that all about I thought, but then I remembered the SX4/Sedici relationship. Brand names are almost superfluous these days aren't they and never more so in the case of tyres which seem to change almost monthly. I have a particular interest in tyres and thought I was well up to date with who owns what brand names. This morning whilst helping my neighbour with that puncture I mentioned in the "smile" thread, I was talking to the tyre fitter who was mending it and it turns out he's quite interested in speed hillclimbing as am I. We were talking about how many of the more serious faster competitors run on Avon slicks, who to the best of my knowledge are owned by the American Cooper Tyre Company. I somewhat blew my cred when I threw this little gem into the conversation only for him to come back "oh, didn't you know? Avon belongs to Good Year now" I'm actually quite pleased to hear this because it probably means an Avon branded tyre is going to continue to be a quality purchase. I just can't keep up with the rate of change in this modern world any more!
 
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