By and large, the days of ‘bush mechanics’ are almost done and dusted. It used to be that fault-checking and diagnosis of a problem in your car or 4×4 was pretty simple, because everything was mechanically controlled. Engines for example, only needed a few basic things to run – fuel, air, compression, spark and ignition. And if it was a diesel, it was even simpler because it didn’t require spark! These days, technology has taken over just about every facet of our vehicles and it can get a lot more complex trying to diagnose faults – if you try to do it the old way.

However, if you do things the smart way, fault diagnosis on a modern car or 4×4 is actually incredibly easy – as long as you have an Engine Data Scan. This clever little ‘black box’ makes checking engine fault codes a simple 30 second job and can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in paying a mechanic to diagnose a problem – especially if it’s an intermittent issue or even a false error code.

The various systems throughout your car or 4×4 are controlled and monitored by dozens of different sensors. They’re spread right throughout your engine, your transmission, your brakes and other parts of your vehicle. Thousands of times a minute, these sensors collect various bits of data and send that info back to the vehicle’s central computer system which assesses the data. In many cases the computer then adjusts the output of a particular system to suit the data being collected. If the data is outside a given ‘safe’ range of parameters for that system, the computer senses there is something wrong and will log a fault code, resulting in the dreaded Check Engine Light.

Now, the problem with a Check Engine Light is that one little light on your dash can be lit up by any one of a hundred or more different problems. If you’re lucky, it’d be a minor fault that will need fixing by a mechanic sometime soon. If you’re unlucky, the Check Engine Light could easily result in a limp mode situation where the vehicle won’t run at more than 20km/h or so to prevent damage. With an Engine Data Scan, however, you don’t need to go to the expense and hassle of having your vehicle towed into a mechanic for them to check the fault code, because you can do it yourself with just the press of a few buttons!

Apart from working like a scan gauge tool, the EDS has the ability to log any fault codes that the engine’s computer might put out and store them. Then, with just the press of a few buttons it can display any fault codes on the LCD screen. The fault codes come in the form of a few letters and numbers like P0410, so what you do is simply punch that fault code into Google to find out what it corresponds to. Those fault codes are all standard ‘OBDII’ codes so it doesn’t matter what your vehicle is, the codes will all be the same. In the case of P0410 for instance, this is a ‘Secondary Air Injection System Malfunction’.

Okay, so you have your fault codes, what next? Make sure to write them down somewhere and then use the EDS to clear the fault codes. Drive the vehicle for a short period of time and see whether or not the fault code re-appears. If it’s a genuine problem then the code will re-appear. Sometimes however it can be a ‘one-off’ problem. We’ve personally seen fault codes for ABS sensors that were triggered when a vehicle was bogged on the beach. Because the wheels were excessively spinning while trying to get the vehicle unbogged, the ABS sensor on one wheel hub was reading excessively faster than the others, so the computer assumed there was a fault. With the EDS, we were able to clear the fault code and since it never came back up again, we saved ourselves a trip to the mechanic’s. Considering most good mechanics charge at least $70 an hour and can run up to $150 an hour or more these days, that means the Engine Data Scan has paid for itself instantly!