Fun with engine codes!

[bronsin]

The check engine light on my neighbors Hyundai was on so they gave me an excuse to try out my new blue driver scan tool. The blue driver is a module that plugs on the socket on the car and sends information to an iPhone or iPad. We got a code PO 301 in the blue driver told us that means misfire cylinder one. 0302 would be in cylinder two and 303 would mean cylinder three and so on.

So we swapped Cylinder one and two ignition coil’s to see if we can get a 302 code which would mean the cylinder one ignition coil we put on cylinder two is bad. Darned If that isnt what happened!:thumbsup:

So the fix only took us about an hour altogether now my neighbor thinks I’m a genius!:biggrin:

[zoidberg444]

Its a brilliant way to diagnose a bad coil by swapping them and seeing if the misfire moves. Its always best to test before throwing a part at something.

[bronsin]

Unfortunately that’s often the way shops approach the problem. :cry:Replace parts willy-nilly and charge the unsuspecting customer for unnecessary work instead of Solving the problem with the correct part. It’s often difficult to do that however this time it was easy.:headbang:

[bronsin]

I once diagnosed a faulty injector by removing The wire from each spark plug One at a time. When you do that a good injector will made the engine run noticeably roofer whereas when you find the cylinder with a bad injector nothing changes.

Before I could stop her my wife had brought the car to a shop and they ran solvent through the system hoping to flush the problem out of the injector. That cost $240 and did nothing ex sept put money in the pockets of the shop.

Would my efforts always be so successful!

[zoidberg444]

240 smackeroonies????? :eek:

I'd probably try a £4 bottle of injector cleaner snake oil and try giving all the injectors a tap once they got hot to try and free the one that was stuck first. Then go to a scrapyard and get some used ones. Probably not be out a 10th of that by the end of it.

I know someone who took his VW Polo to a garage where i used to live because the Engine management light came on. He said it was an oxygen sensor code and they put an oxygen sensor in it. Just because your car gets a code it does not mean change that part. It gives you a direction to start a diagnosis and of course now he's been back 7 times to this garage while they try and fix it throwing yet more parts at it.