hello how did it work out for you
Regarding the Astra's VVT pulleys. We decided to do nothing about them as he was going to buy a new(er) vehicle, probably a van for his business. But his business income is very variable and he had a bit of a lean time for a while so neither repaired the car or bought a new vehicle. The Astra went on merrily clacking away! Then, about a year ago, it failed it's MOT on emissions!
I "fiddled" with it for a while trying to diagnose the problem with the generic scanner embedded in my VCDS program but was unable to identify a component which was obviously giving a poor or out of range reading - very frustrating. Then he landed a job doing fancy graphics on a large recreational vehicle which belongs to his local wee garage and the owner told him to bring the car in and he'd have a look at it. He diagnosed the worn VVT pulleys being the cause. I was very dubious about this but he said he'd seen it before and it's the drift in valve timing which causes the problem - I remained very sceptical but my son asked him for a quote to fix it. The parts were a considerable cost but they agreed to come to an "arrangement" over the labour by offsetting it against the graphics work on the RV. At home that night I remembered about Autovaux from when I had my Astra SRI estate so looked up the parts cost on their site and the saving was massive so I immediately rang the chap up and asked if I could supply the parts. He doubted if I could buy them more cheaply but when I told him the price he was amazed and said "fine, just you go ahead". In the end the whole job cost about £250, maybe £300, all in compared to somewhere around £800 at our local Vauxhall independent. The car passed it's MOT - much to my surprise as I was sure it was a sensor problem - and is running better than it has in years!
Then there's my experiences with
Multiecuscan (
MES). Charlie, I just love your post above, I chuckled over it for quite a while - wish I'd known about the cream! It was the "fear" that I would need to do Phonic Wheel Relearns on both our Panda and my boy's Punto after replacing their cam belts and that I couldn't do a Service Reminder Reset on the Fiats by pushing dashboard buttons, coupled to the fact that I'd had VCDS (called Vag-Com when I bought it) for my VAG vehicles (SEAT and Skoda) for a few years so knew how handy a manufacturer specific scanner could be. The VCDS program came to me (from Ilexa) on a disc which I just had to stick into my laptop drive and run it. There was no complicated setup and it worked as soon as I plugged the interface cable into the car's diagnostic port. So
MES was a bit of a shock as it had to be downloaded from the internet (I'm very poor with "computery stuff").
I spent quite a while deciding which interface package to go with and contacted Gendan (Their Grant is wonderfully helpful and very patient with "silly old codgers" like me) for advice more than once. After agonizing for some time I went with the Multiplex version mainly because it's very similar to the concept behind my VCDS where you just plug in one interface and then have access to all controllers. It was expensive, but I now know that, for me, it was the right decision.
Although downloading the program from the internet had "frightened" me, I actually managed it without any dramas at all and, as Charlie - and others - suggested at the time, I played around with the Simulate function whilst waiting for the interface to arrive from Gendan. Anyone considering buying
MES should just download the program (it's free) and play around with the simulate function.
When the interface arrived I thought I could just plug it in and use it - like the VCDS. Silly me! The computer has to be "taught" to "speak" to the interface! There are quite clear instructions as to how to do this included - assigning com port and Baud rates etc - but I was too thick to properly understand them or know how to access the settings on my computer where the changes needed to be made. I blundered around, on and off, for a couple of days, getting more and more frustrated and depressed, before I got it all set up right. Many many many thanks to all on here and Grant at Gendan who helped! In fact it wasn't very difficult, it was just my complete ignorance about computers which was the problem!
So here we are nearly 3 years later and how has it worked out? Well, First thing to say is that I'm so glad I bought from Gendan. The quality of the kit they supplied is first class and their Grant has been so helpful. Although I'd had my VCDS for a few years before buying the
MES I'd not really had any serious fault finding to do on any of the VAG stuff in the family so only used it for service resets and other very simple stuff. Consequently There was very little by way of "transferable skills" I could employ with the
MES - I was pretty much starting out from a very low point in terms of knowledge. However I've been interested in diagnostics for many years and have a number of deeply - maybe too deeply technical? - books on the subject so probably know enough to be "dangerous".
In my opinion
MES is a wonderful and powerful tool. It gives you enough access to do most of the stuff a competent home mechanic might aspire to be doing without being "dangerous" like the VCDS which gives options that can land you in very deep doo doo indeed if you don't know exactly what you are doing. I can see now why what I was proposing at the top of this thread is not really practical because the options available differ greatly depending on the vehicle spec and controllers fitted to that specific vehicle. Much better I think to make specific requests for advice/help with your problem in the "TECH" section when and as you have need? Or try You Tube where there is a great deal of good, but also misleading, stuff to ponder over.
3 years ago firing up
MES was like opening Pandora's box - full of wonderful stuff but all a complete mystery to me! Now I'm quite at ease using it to scan our cars before a service to look for stored fault codes (always do this, then, if anything shows up wrong after you've been working on the vehicle you know it was something you did that caused it!) Being able to activate components is also very useful and I'm a particular fan of graphing sensor outputs when looking for faults. You can often find something which is "misbehaving" but not throwing a code by doing this. I have an ongoing conversation going with Grant at Gendan. At present we are discussing how
MES presents Fuel trims for the Marelli controllers. Unlike the Bosch stuff Marelli don't seem to call them "Fuel Trims"? I'm also getting into testing MAP sensors. 3 years ago I wouldn't have known a fuel trim from a jam tart!
I never, so far, have had to use the Phonic Wheel Relearn! If you're interested you can read a lot more on this in the posts I did on Becky's Timing Belt. - enter Becky's timing belt in the search bar - but I've done a whole mass of other stuff with it all assisted by advice from folk on our forum and with the help boxes in the program itself. The only thing which would "frighten" me is the Proxy alignment because it warns you to record your present settings before proceeding. With VCDS when a recommendation like this is made it's like a secret warning that if you do it wrong you're going to be in very deep doo doo. So, just play around with it and, especially, take a look at the graphed outputs from the sensors whilst it's all running well. Then, if she's not running so good, you can do some comparing and often see, pretty quickly, that something is not giving the expected output. Oh, and don't buy bargain or "universal fitting" electronic components. Always buy big names from reliable sources and remember there's a very big market in counterfeit parts these days so be careful about on line purchases.
I'm very friendly with a number of my local small garages and from advice I've gleaned from them I think it's worth mentioning that actual ECUs seem to be pretty robust unless you do something really silly to them so suspecting that an ECU is faulty should be your last stop (there are a number of concerns who will check it out for you quite cheaply and repair if needed, often substituting uprated more robust components for known weak ones) But by far one of the most common things you will come across is either a break in a wire - can be an absolute sod to track down - or a poor or damaged connection in a plug connector. So don't assume that if you're getting a fault code for, say, an oxygen sensor all you need to do is fit a new one! (I picked this example because it's not unusual to find a broken wire to it's heater circuit) Always look, very carefully, at the male and female halves of the connector for physical damage and corrosion and I also like to give them a light coating of dielectric grease - I use Contalube 770 - when reassembling.
I'll stop at that, could go on and on and on though. If you're inclined to get
MES and can afford it, then I can thoroughly recommend it. You then need to "play" with it until you understand what you are doing. The more you play the more you'll learn and with
MES it's very difficult to do anything which will ruin anything - might be possible if you try very hard though!
I'd be very interested indeed to hear of other people's experience and opinion of
MES so please do post if you can be bothered.
