Day 179 / 2016 - The Boys Toys

 Now to get the disclaimers out of the way, firstly I am not a qualified mechanic so any comment I make about mechanical things just comes from experience and is my view alone.  Secondly I don't advocate that all service centre are there to rip you off they are a business with running costs and need to make money to survive like the rest of us. Thirdly I don't promote or recommend any particular brand just the concept of the tool and use the one I bought as an example. Now thats out the way lets get into the good bits.

A topics that comes up in conversation at happy hour (not often but enough times to notice) is about the engine management system the car computer thingy that syncronise all the functions of the engine to make it go. The first time someone knows that it exists is when the little check engine light on the dash comes on and the car goes into limp home mode. Limp home mode is proberbly okay when you are only a few Km from home or in the middle of a city and have some sort of motor assist like NRMA or RAC. When you are at Devils Marbles or half way between Boulia and Birdsville towing a caravan well not so much fun and creates a good deal more anxiety.

So after you have limped at 20km/h into mobile range you contact a towing service which costs you an arm, leg and half of you body organs to be towed to Tennant Creek. They deliver you and your car and caravan if your lucky to a mechanic shop where he plugs in the computer reader thingy and see that a fault code has been generated "Fuel Timing Error" resets the code runs the car for a while to see if it comes back, charges a $100.00 then sends you on your way.

Now the problem with fault codes is sometimes they can trigger because the planets have some weird alignment and may not show up again till the next weird planet alignment. This makes fault finding difficuilt meaning you have an intermittent fault which is caused by an intermittent problem. The other side of the coin is not all fault codes are detrimental to your engine but still put your car into limp home mode. The drivers manual does state if check engine light comes on stop driving as this could damage your vehicle then contact the nearest dealer. When the check engine light is on it doesn't describe what the problem is just there is a problem. Wouldn't it be nice if you could look at the code yourself, determine how serious it is, reset it and drive on.

There have been engine data scanners on the market since electronic engine management has been in vehicles but have been very expensive and mainly the domain of the well equiped service centre. Recently data scanning tools are coming onto the market at a price the consumer can afford. Advertised in Caravan and Motorhome Magazine was a Scan tool for $199.00 which I though was affordable so this peaked my interest. I did some research and found to use the tool your vehicle engine management system needed to be OBD2 compliant which most modern vehicles are. Doing more research about OBD2 compliant data scanners I found quite a number of different varieties of scanners out there with just as varied a price.

More searching on the internet I came across an ODB2 compliant dongle which plugs into the Engine Port under the dash and then communicates wirelessly engine information to an IOS iPad, iPhone,..etc or Android type tablet. You download and install an app onto your tablet which links via WiFi or Blutooth to the dongle and in real time read data from the Engine Management Computer. It  shows any fault codes that may have generated and stored and you can also monitor engine health from the various sensor readings such as temperature, Rev's, speed, MAS air flow, etc...

I purchase the xTool iOBD2 Mini WiFi/Bluetooth Dongle from ebay for about $30.00 delivered and the iPad software was free to download. I tested it on our Nissan Patrol and it worked as promoted. I had read some articles about the Bluetooth component not communicating and the alternative was to use WiFi mine worked okay with Bluetooth configured. There are a number of pre-configured dashboards with sensor readouts as well as a custom dashboard which you can configure to suit you. You can leave the iPad connected while you are driving and it will record data as you drive along for reviewing later. I was a bit disapointed with some of the availablity of sensor data as two I wanted were EGT temp and Turbo boost which I couldn't find. Don't really know if the xtool app isn't programed with them or the cars Engine Management System doesn't output the data in real time.

 The software is easy to configure you just need to select the easy definable setup parameters for the car type and communication protocol, plug in the dongle don't forget to turn the car on and it should just work. On error codes you really need to use common sense and read the code before reseting. Blindly clearing a code without some analyst could be fatal to your engine. If an overtemp code is generated and you see steam coming out of the engine or low engine oil is generated and you check the dipstick and there is no oil then best not just reset the code and keep driving.

 This ODB2 mini and accompaning software seems to be a useful tool especially out in the never never where you could at least get some idea of whats affecting your engine but I am hoping like insurance this is one tool I will never have to use.