Is it now getting to the point in time where vehicle manufacturers are using serial diagnostics that the technician can register directly to and let the manufacturer do the diagnostic tests through the phone lines?
My mate in his garage really switched on to this system, in fact he can have vehicles ECM's reprogrammed and diagnostics completed without him having to ever look for a scope, voltmeter or back pinning probes. Seems a good way forward to me.
I was recently carrying out investigations to some electrics faults on a VW when the Snap On scanner was plugged in and I used the CTM to activate circuits, what I found was an automatic program operation that did not allow me to know what it was testing until it was on screen testing it, followed by automatic tests doing other systems that I had no control over to know what test was being carried out next, followed by no conclusions of what was actually working or not correctly, i.e. heated screens, mirrors, seats etc, I didn't even know the order of testing them nor given the opportunity to pause the software while I set up tools to check readings etc.
As the software is updated over the years I have just seen a gradual decline in quality of use in my opinion. I was talking to my local dealer yesterday who said he had just recently been to a meeting about their products and tried to praise the products from his social circles of snap on people, I said to him they sound like managers, accountants and sales personal, was there any science technicians there with the professional training and experience of modern vehicles?
The dealer didn't reply!
My mate in his garage really switched on to this system, in fact he can have vehicles ECM's reprogrammed and diagnostics completed without him having to ever look for a scope, voltmeter or back pinning probes. Seems a good way forward to me.
I was recently carrying out investigations to some electrics faults on a VW when the Snap On scanner was plugged in and I used the CTM to activate circuits, what I found was an automatic program operation that did not allow me to know what it was testing until it was on screen testing it, followed by automatic tests doing other systems that I had no control over to know what test was being carried out next, followed by no conclusions of what was actually working or not correctly, i.e. heated screens, mirrors, seats etc, I didn't even know the order of testing them nor given the opportunity to pause the software while I set up tools to check readings etc.
As the software is updated over the years I have just seen a gradual decline in quality of use in my opinion. I was talking to my local dealer yesterday who said he had just recently been to a meeting about their products and tried to praise the products from his social circles of snap on people, I said to him they sound like managers, accountants and sales personal, was there any science technicians there with the professional training and experience of modern vehicles?
The dealer didn't reply!
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