We feel the pain of undiagnosable faults - Our Discovery spent around 18 months with a fault causing it to not start - the beginning of many expensive garage visits. Found eventually. We are gradually removing as many electronically controlled parts as possible (replacement of rear air suspension with springs etc !
I must say that I think the CT is pretty lenient compared to the UK. One of our cars was checked last September and the tester suggested that he had his eyes shut to pass it - kind chap ā¦ In the UK most of our cars would have ended up swiftly at the scrap yard.
Helen, I fully understand! As an independent garagiste we can pay serious money for manufacturersā diagnostic software only to find that even with the information from thus gained the cause can still be inaccurate & misleading resulting in expensive parts being replaced unneccesarily. Not too long ago I fitted a second hand engine to a Peugeot after which the car kept telling me that there was a pollution fault. There are quite a few reasons why the exhaust gases could be wrong so I took it to the main dealer. There it was diagnosed with a faulty turbo with a 1500 euro plus fitting devi. I found this difficult to believe as a reconditioned turbo was fitted when the engine was replaced & the turbo was providing some boost. It turned out to be an electric vacuum valve - 69 euros. But if I had believed the dealerā¦
I keep hearing of cars having to have injectors replaced & often my computer will diagnose an injector fault although the car starts, runs & passes emissions with no problem. If an injector is faulty then the fuel/air mix would not be correct & the car would lack power & probably emit smoke in clouds. New injectors are 300 euros plus so not something to change often. The old type injectors are cheap & serviceable but rarely go wrong - ole faithful, my 17 year old Volvo V70, has just completed 492000 kms using them. But it has the yellow engine fault light! I have a sneaking suspicion that it is caused by the sensor on the EGR valve reading a slightly different voltagethan normal. This is an extract from an information sheet - āMeasure voltage at connector
between Pin 3 and ground as well
as between Pin 3 and Pin 2
Required value: 4,5 - 5,2 V
If the required value is not reached,
continue search based on circuit
diagram of vehicle manufacturer,
control unit possibly faulty.ā
Or not! It could be a fault in the carās ECU (electronic brain) the cost of which to replace is greater than the value of the car.
The more complicated cars become the bigger the bills & with this the shorter the lifespan of the car.
This does not stop stupid āimprovementsā such as Dual mass flywheels, so useless that many manufacturers offer a conversion kit to a standard old fashioned flywheel! Electronic throttles operated by motors rather than a cable, ditto hand brakes - pull a lever which in turn tugged two cables attached to the brakes, now press a button which operates electric motors & sensors under the car, prone to dust, water, mud etc. Same with electronics on your engine - the environment under your bonnet is not the best for electrical stuff! It is hot, dirty, wet & steamy, open to dust, wire chewing mice & also gets shaken & banged about. Would you choose to carry your laptop or tablet strapped to your car engine?
I also have a 1942 GMC truck. The battery is kept topped up with a solar panel so I can leave it for months. It starts first time, every time!
I have to agree that the electronics on vehicles can be a nightmare to sort out!. we had a truck going from uk to Romania each week, half way thru the alps it would start running on 3 pots of 6ā¦ engine light came on and said injectors 4.5.6 in troubleā¦ then the engine would start running properly for the rest of the journey, we change the 3 injectors at Ā£600 each and all was fine on our testā¦ but same happened again on second trip out, we changed the injector wiring inside the cam boxā¦ all fine until another trip, same 3 injectors at faultā¦ Volvo agreed to change all the engine wiring, and this cured the faultā¦ their tests found one single gold plated contact was not gripping the terminal of the ECU properlyā¦ this actually resulted in a test kit of a test pin and weight, if the terminal held the weight, no actionā¦ this kit became invaluable with all other faultsā¦ as this terminal was used for 90% of all connections and explained and cured so many weird intermittent electrical faults, we could always see the good old Lucar terminals, the new ones are invisible in their plastic connectorsā¦
Back to the glass thing., around my locale, there are a couple of motors with very dark side windows, whereby it is not possible to see anyone in the front seatsā¦ their vision must be restricted in anything other than bright sun?
Sometimesā¦ you canāt trust the person reading the codes?.. friends with a v6 disco 4 had an engine light activate, a guy with code reader said something wrong with a manifold, 700ā¬, but thereās a kit to repairā¦ but that was on āback orderāā¦ 4 weeks later and fed up waiting, friend took disco to local garageā¦ they immediately said MAF sensorā¦ Ā£70 from uk , they even installed and cleared codes without charge, other than for initial diagnosisā¦ Iāve chased CANBUS faults around trucks for hours, brilliant while they work, nightmare to diagnoseā¦ now, I cut grass and look after poolsā¦ a little differentā¦