USB Diagnostic Tool

alanrowell

facade wrote: »

I bought a cheap bluetooth dongle, recommended by lots of people, but it doesn't work on an iphone, and I cant get it to work with the torque application on a samsung tablet.

Apple in their infinite wisdom decided not to implement full Bluetooth, so you need to get a wi-fi version of the dongle instead - which costs several times that of the bluetooth version. It's also fiddlier to set up

Lum

colino wrote: »

The great thing about the model specific, not generic ones are what you can do to the car. BMWs are great to play with as often some "extras" on the original car are simply things already fitted that can be switched on by the right unit. Prices have plummeted over the past couple of years and every motorist should have a cheapo reader in his glovebox.

This.

I had a Subaru one and used it to fix a rough idle when the aircon was on by slightly increasing the idle speed setting for aircon. Cost me £20 and used with a piece of free software.

The realtime output was useful for certain diagnostics too.

Ratboy

To contradict an earlier poster; older cars have a built in diagnosis system, when you learn the trick of how to activate them.

On an older Toyota, you shorted te1 and e1 in the fuse box to give binary codes on the dash, similar system to Vauxhall.

Older Fords had an odd system of pressing the pedals in a certain way..strange.

Basic diagnosis is all good, tell you where the fault is, but not clear the fault, more expensive clear the fault, and go mad expensive, reset the mileage, reprogram to keys; not one for the average user? Misuse it, and kill the ECU.

westwood68

My 1996 Impreza had a trick of connecting a couple of electrical block under the dash then doing a special dance on the pedals