Cheers Andy E

Best regards
Frank
P.S
My Old school motto was "knowledge is strength"

Regards
Frank

Regards
Frank

The comment in your post "I'm getting a car in next week could you tell me whets wrong with it" has made me conscious about seeking advice. Is that what you meant?

Regards

Dave

Yes, Sean is correct in what he states. If you read our terms and conditions then all will be revealed

The idea of the forums is that once you have the vehicle in your workshop and you have carried out all the relevant checks and tests with the technical information and equipment you have, and you are still unable to locate the problem, then post on one of the relevant forums

These forums are not only about solving problems but learning at the same time, posting silver bullets may help the posting member, but knowing how the fix was arrived at helps us all

It does appear from some posts that members do not carryout even the the most basic of checks before posting, these will probably get little response from the more experienced members who have many years of diagnostic experience, problem solving and spent fortune on diagnostic equipment

If all the relevant information is given, and it can be seen from your post that you have done your best to solve the problem with the equipment you have, then members will probably go out of their way to help

Anyway Dave, thanks for highlighting Seans post a this does come up a couple of times a year and i think all members just need reminding that these are forums for Professional Technicians, so when posting we need as much information as possible about the vehicle in YOUR WORKSHOP (or roadside if mobile)

Peter

PS: In order to make our Technincal Archive work we need members to come back and post the FIX after they repaired the vehicle. As one member has previously pointed out, he does not belive so many members can return cars to their customers still broken, if you posted then please spare the time to return to you original post

Your reference to CAN debugging has caught my eye. I dont want to hijack this thread so I have started another, link attached.

Regards

Alan

The tool I am currently using/evaluating is a Tektronix TDS 4000,which can convert the CAN package into binary or Hex for exact interpretation. This function can then be transferred across to the trigger options, for example you can set virtually any trigger option from edge,frame or Hex code,and just sit there for our friendly error frame to pop up and do it's worse.
At the other end of the price spectrum, we are pleased to confirm that we are working closely with Pico Technologies,with a focus on triggering and in particular CAN evaluation. I was extremely impressed with the display quality and memory trigger,vital for network de-bugging.
We have just filmed the above in HD as an additional module for our e-learning package. It will be discussed at length at our first FM network conference at Mechanex at Harrogate,so I hope to see you all there.
A similar video has been filmed for Pico and I am sure they will oblige when the editing is complete

Regards
Frank

James

Regards
Tom

Thanks for the reply. Lets see if I have this right

The scope you are using can capture the packages and display them as code, in whatever format you require. Also you can set the trigger to capture just the bit of code that you want to see.

Question is how do you know what the code means in real terms. For example if you have a speed signal missing from a node, with a DTC telling you that, how can you tell which bit of code is that signal and where it comes from?`

It would be nice to be able to watch a DTC set and see the relevant signal drop off the data bus (although that raises other issues like code setting criteria and timed out signals etc) along with being able to see where the signal broke down. How close do you think we are to that?

Thanks

Alan

No disrespect to you Dave as you are a fairly new member, but we do have quite a few members that just scan the posts and soak up the information and offer nothing in return.

In order for this site to work it must be a two way flow of information, even if members do not reply to posts, they could always post about a problem you have solved, there is nothing more satisfying than fixing a fault through your own efforts, so why not share it with others, these will always get into the archives and help someone in the future

I appreciate that we all have different levels of talent, from garages that are on the way up and hardened diagnostic wizards, we are all here to help each other, but we must not expect the more knowledgeable techs to give out silver bullets all the time

Members should also not feel embarrassed about posting even if its a small problem that you are struggling with, providing you have put some time and effort into solving it, someone will help, but just asking for a quick fix will result in very little response

As mentioned in my previous post ("I have this vehicle coming in next week, have you had this problem before")will certainly get the backs up of established members.......make sure you have the vehicle in your workshop and carried out all basic checks

Many thanks for the reply Dave, it helps to get all these issues out into the open

Peter

I thought that maybe a real life example may help us all here. I have a 202 body C180 in the workshop at present. It's symptoms are that up to 3 of the windows can fail to work along with 1 or more of the following, indicators, wipers and c/l. This is a CAN fault in so far as the switch signals are missing off the network. It has can codes in EIS, door modules, sam module and PSE (c/l).

I am sure we all have our own methods to diagnose a fault like this and I will expand on mine a bit later after I get some work done Also I can post the relevant codes etc if anyone wants them.

I think it may be interesting to hear from others what way they would tackle this. In particular it would be interesting to hear from Frank what kind of data he can gather from the bus to aid an efficient diagnosis.

Regards

Alan

Thanks again for a very clear explanation of the etiquette of the forum. I have to say that as a relative new comer to Internet forums in general that it takes a bit of getting use to the very different ways in which they are run.

As you say there is a wide range of experienced technicians on board here & it is quite intimidating for a very average bloke like myself to post in such company. The contents of this thread alone would not look out of place on a NASA technical discussion board. I can only take in bits of it & after a while, a clearer picture emerges (hopefully).

I rarely if ever see a problem on here that I feel that I can contribute toward solving, if I did then I would. It’s an interesting point about posting on problems that we have solved that may be useful. It's not something that I have seen much of but it’s a good idea. I certainly don't want to get a telling off though if I post an intersting result on something that has been posted about before. I suppose it would go toward building a picture of how common a particular problem is.

The people responsible for UKAT are to be congratulated for putting together a service such as this. That it is able to attract such a high standard of professional & knowledgeable contributors speaks for itself.

Cheers for the feedback.

Regards Dave.

Regards
Steve

Best regards
Frank

Regards Tom.

Regards
Frank

Tom