This Scan Tool Destroyed My Car and I'm Mad as Hell

rev up your engines today due to popular demand i'm going to give you a course in scan tool 101 to show things you can actually use yourself to either figure out what's wrong with your car or figure out whether you should buy a used car you're looking at or not now sure modern cars are complicated and under the hood there's all kinds of electronic computer controls that this machine can tell you about now if only you knew what all that information matt what i'm going to show you right now all motor cars have data link connectors this plugs into them in this case it's right here cause you got to do it right side up make the smiley face go that way there we go then the machine boots up and while it's booting up there's a zillion scan tools out there you don't have to buy a five thousand dollar one you can get fifty sixty dollar ones if you're really serious about working on your car analyzing stuff you can get one of those blue drivers that cost about 99 bucks goes on to your cell phone and does some real serious analytics so you don't have to spend all that much money to learn what you're going to learn right now now this particular nova is a good one it does a lot of stuff automatically you can see all those little green circles that means that everything is perfect for the obd2 monitors if there was a problem one of them would be red this means that all the mill lights are completed mill stands for malfunction indicator lamp if any of those are red means there's a problem let's say you had a problem you fixed it and you erased the code with these these will erase the code when they erase them the mills all start from zero and have to be completed and until all the drive cycle is completed some of those will not be green that tells you a lot about a car if they're all green generally in pretty good shape in order for them all to be green the computer in a car does all kinds of tests and when it decides the car is good it makes each mill totally green let's say you got a car that hasn't been worked on lately hasn't had the battery replaced and they're not all green some are what are said not ready or not complete well a mill that's not ready or not complete means that the computer hasn't satisfied itself that that part of the car is working perfectly and a lot of times you can get no man's land let's say you got a car that has a weak catalytic converter so the catalytic converter tests they don't fail because it's not really bad so it doesn't trip the code for bad catalytic inverter but the converter isn't good enough to make it past then you're in no man's land you're in a twilight zone where your mill will not complete but it won't trip a trouble call and i often see that in cars when they get older so let's say you're looking at a used car you plug in and it's got a mill that's incomplete but it doesn't trip a trouble code with a vehicle like that you'd want to drive in an hour or so and if it still stayed incomplete i wouldn't buy the car it's got a problem that isn't bad enough to trip the code but isn't good enough to pass so that's kind of a hidden problem that in my opinion i wouldn't buy a car like that there's plenty of good cars out there you wouldn't want to buy them even though the check engine light is not on the mill itself is incomplete show you what that looks like i'll turn the car off then i'll turn the key to the on position not running and i will go to erase codes okay erase codes erasing them and that's erasing them so we start the car and we check the mills see how these are flashing red that's because the catalytic converter the evap system and the oxygen system has not completed its mills so let's say you're looking at a used car it's got a problem maybe the guy just erased the code well if you plug in a scan tool and you see these mills flashing red i would not buy the car until i drove at least an hour on a highway some in the city stop and go and see if the lights would complete themselves and not be red and flashing anymore then i would also recheck it for trouble codes because a lot of times if they reset them those are flashing when they stop flashing then a trouble code pops up and then you would want to buy the car so they're very handy tools in check and they use carpet let's say you want to fix your own car the data in these things is unbelievable what you can get now let's say your check engine light is on and you have a code realize that these codes are relatively generic so let's say you got an oxygen sensor code it doesn't necessarily mean the oxygen sensor is bad you got to go a little bit further and with these machines you can easily do it if you understand what you're looking at as we'll see here we'll check out live data and you're going to get all kinds of live data what we want to look at is the oxygen sensor data if you have an oxygen sensor problem so we'll scroll down and we'll go to the graph of the oxygen sensor now you can see the oxygen sensor here is going up and down as we rev it up this is a good test you rev it up see how it goes up and down like waves in the ocean that's what they're supposed to do go up and down reaction of it going rich to lean that's how it worked you rev it up it's going to change it it's supposed to do that goes up then it goes down i fixed a honda the other day that had an oxygen sensor code when i plugged in the machine and i looked at the data for that oxygen sensor bank one sensor one which in a four cylinder engine is the one that's right on the exhaust right after the engine it flat lined the graph just stayed the same when i wrapped it up it stayed the same it didn't go up or down so i put an oxygen sensor on as soon as i started it up with a new sensor it went up and down like it should then the guy got his car inspected and didn't have any more problems that was a very simple fix it can get more complex but first thing you want to do is look at a graph of the oxygen sensor if it's not going up and down there's some kind of problem with it if it flat lines you got a pretty good idea that it's dead this is why you want a little bit better scanner a real cheap one because see the cheap ones will just show the output but these when you push graph you get an actual graph and then you can watch the graph go up and down it's a lot easier to analyze a graph than it is raw data you can see it's going up and down with the data it's kind of hard to tell so if you're serious you want a graphing scanner but there's so many of them out these days i've seen 50 dollar ones that do graphing but like i said before i do have to say the blue driver the one that used with your phone you can use it with any phone app but i find they work best with androids realize car analytics aren't that great with apple but the androids do a really good job you get a cheap android used phone for 25 50 bucks it'll work the system it's not that much memory that it uses then you get the graph ability you can get a lot more information with the graphs now the next thing you can use this to analyze is fuel trim the short-term fuel trim is what's happening right away and in this case it's adding 2.3 percent fuel and long-term it's adding 3.9 percent fuel a zero is perfect this is a 15 year old car to have it that close to perfect isn't bad at all means it's running a little bit lean and it's adding a little bit of fuel this thing gets phenomenal gas mileage so i don't care that it runs a little bit lean doesn't bother me in the least bit and another thing to watch is your ignition timing in this case it's staying at fourteen fourteen point five thirteen point five it's almost always exactly fourteen fourteen thirteen point five now you're going to get a little vacillation like that thirteen point five that doesn't mean much but i had one here the other day it would go 16 12 14 16 12. that's too much and what does that tell you of course it tells you the problem with ignition timing but in many older cars it means that your timing chain inside here or your timing belt is worn now when you accelerate your ignition timing advances and changes but just sitting there idling it should stay relatively stationary but if your timing chain is worn then the timing is going to keep changing because the chains don't allow the camshaft sensor and the crankshaft sensor to read correctly they'll give incorrect readings because the chain isn't tight it's loose and it's flopping around and then you'll see the timing changes radically like i said you might get 12 16 to move back and forth and that generally means in an older car you need a new timing belt or a new timing chain now of course with anything else these days it's never that simple you could even have a problem with your ignition coil on number one cylinder and since it wasn't firing right that's going to make the timing on the number one be odd so there are other things that can happen but at least you know what to look at you know that the timing on number one is off so what you could do in that case is a very simple thing that i've done for years you take the stupid beauty cover off you take off the number one ignition coil this is the front of the engine number one's always in the front and you put the number one ignition coil on a number three and a number three coil on a number one then you'd retest the ignition timing on the number one cylinder using the scan tool if it still was way off you'd know it's not the coil that's causing it it's the engine the timing chain or something's worn inside if then it was more stable you would know you had a bad ignition coil so all you'd have to do is buy an ignition coil these scan tools save you time money and gives you an analytical ability really can blow your mind if you start using your imagination because really i'm a professional mechanic i freeze them oscilloscopes all kinds of stuff but actually testing these coils under various parameters is a very complex thing that can take hours all you got to do swap one to the other and back and if the problem goes away you know the coil's bad and of course with good scan tools like this you can do all module scans in a very short period of time it knows what card is you push yes and then it will scan absolutely everything look abs cruise control you name it testing it would take a guy like me who's been working on cars for 53 years hours and hours and hours in this case it took just a little over a couple minutes no codes no codes no codes no codes like i said these are invaluable if you're buying a used car to check them out so fast they can't hide from the computer and when you're working on your own car you don't know what the problem is zoom these things are going to figure them out pretty fast and these machines are a lot smarter you might think watch this okay we're going to check the abs abs it's checking the abs and what does it say communication error unable to establish communication what's wrong well nothing is actually wrong because this is a toyota matrix that was made in cambridge ontario it never came with abs it's just got regular brakes which i like because old scotty knows how to drive i don't need no stinking abs the machine knew the system wasn't there it did say communication there but that's because it was trying to communicate with something that doesn't exist on the car if it did have abs it'd give you all kinds of information about it and modern good scan tools they can't even check your battery and alternator not only can they check actuators and stuff look it up battery alternator test here we go battery test parking brake is on all right now it's testing the battery it tells you to turn on the headlights turn on headlights that's testing whoa it does take 20 seconds and tells you to turn off the headlights off they go start the engine one time it shows you the battery's fun now we'll test the alternator cut on alternator test as engine needs to be running start the engine turn on your headlights start it up turn on the headlights continue then increase the engine speed above 2000 rpm easy enough to do until this countdown goes to zero it's another 20 second test some magic thing about 20 seconds here that will remain a mystery to me they're not let's off charging voltage within specification realize that modern cars everything's run by computers if you got a problem my advice is before you do anything test the alternator and the battery like i just did because i've seen people spend thousands of dollars replacing all kinds of things only to find out they had a bad battery or alternator and that was the root of all their electronic problems these scan tools can do an awful lot these days so you can actually do things yourself do you really want to pay a mechanic 140 an hour to do stuff that you could do yourself i don't think so and look what these good ones can do they can actually test the clutch relay for the ac the fuel pump ejector volume purge valves oxygen sensors modern technology to fix modern technology you gotta have this kind of stuff on modern cars and as you've seen it's a lot of stuff you can actually do yourself and let's say you get a little stumped you can always ask me on my website you can watch any of a zillion videos on youtube to pinpoint what's going on and once you learn something knowledge is power and if you like a lot of people thinking oh if i mess with the electronics in the car i could ruin something hey the scan tool what does it do it plugs in under the dash here that's the only connection you're making you're not probing electronics or shorting things out electronically all you're doing is plugging a scan tool into that part but that's set don't go and buy one of these 12 shiny scan tools some of them are made wrong and you plug this into your computer away it goes that's why i tell people if you want to spend 99 bucks get one of those blue drivers canadians design them yes they're made in china but they're made correctly i've never seen anybody have a problem plugging one into a car but they're really cheap ones 10 12 ones if they're made wrong and they short your computer out it's or you want to get a decent one you're going to pay a mechanic 140 an hour so if you get a 99 scan tool hey what a bargain so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 1,430,738

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, car advice, car destroyed, car fail, car life hacks, cheap scan tool, cheap scanner, engine destroyed, life hack, life hacks, obd2 scan tool, obd2 scanner, obd2 scanner review, scan, scan tool, scan tool review, scan tools, the best scan tool, the best scan tool for cars, tool, tool review, do not use, this scan tool destroyed my car, bad scan tools, bad scan tool

Id: mDit5YiBAGw

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021