A few months back I had a problem with the car over revving, I did an ECU test and it came back as lamdba fault which could have been anything. I took the car to my backstreet mechanic expecting him not to be able to find a cure.
A few hours later he called to say he had fixed it for now, he had plugged into the computer and realised the MAF sensor was sending incorrect signals so cleaned it and it cured the problem but he told me fit a new one next time it plays up.
2000 miles later its still fine. The total cost including labour? £10
So why then I do keep hearing stories of garages charging £50-£100 for a simple ECU scan?
Should the government be stopping this rip off practice?
I realise £10 was very cheap, but he knows he gets a lot of business from me so he always knocks a bit off, I just can't see how garages can charge more than £30 for this work unless ECU fault codes are extremely complicated.
|
|
It depends on the complexity of the car. A fiesta may need no more than a 100-200 pound scanner while a BMW for instance may need a scanner that costs 1000-2000 pound. They are just passing/offsetting the cost to the customer. That my thinking of it.
|
|
The car in question is a freinds Skoda Fabia, he was charged £60 fo the ECU test, to diagnose that the alternator was faulty. Surely this can be done without an ECU scan in the first place? I've seen countless VAG reset tools ebay for £5, I just don't get it.
|
|
I once had a problem with the boot release on a mondeo. I could "tell" it was a relay, but the garage want to "plug it in". Lukly it was under warranty but they always seem to "plug it in" for anything these days!
|
Fortunately, for VAG cars there are 3rd party diagnostics available (the best known being VAG-COM) which do pretty much everything a VW original setup does (better in some cases) for about £200.
For many other manufacturers that is not the case and the systems which can read full diagnostics (not just stuff like basic OBD II codes) still cost thousands in equipment and training.
|
My brothers 2005 MINI is currently residing at the dealers with a starting problem, they were bleating on to my dad yesterday saying that they were stumped as the computer didn't have an answer!
He did suggest to them that the details of this common fault are all over the MINI forum if they would care to take a look but apparently they aren't allowed to use the internet, I'm a little bit sceptical about this. The next thing they tried was saying that the warranty was expired, yes, it is, but the fault was reported before it ran out and they reckoned that they couldn't find it until their valeter drove it when it suddenly manifested itself! Argh!! I'm so pleased I have two old cars that don't need to go near them and have no expensive common rail systems to go wrong!
|
I remember a stalling fault with a 306 I once had that defeated the dealer's "computer" on many occasions. When I lucked in and had a technician look at it who actually knew something about fault diagnosis, he found, removed, cleaned and refitted the sticking stepper motor in less than 15 minutes.
On each previous occasion, my employer was charged £50 to have the car returned with "no fault found". No attempt was ever made to look beyond the computer diagnostics and actually start checking the mechanical components on the car.
There is no excuse whatsoever for main dealers not to be able to find and fix faults quickly. They have the manufacturer training, equipment and technical support. If my company couldn't find and fix faults on the industrial printers it manufactures and sells (with just as many moving parts as a car and even more ECUs and wiring looms), it would be sued and sent out of business. We also rely on engineers who know how the thing works, and use the diagnostic routines as an aid, not a solution.
Cheers
DP
|
DP,
Printers these days, I guess are computer controlled as well as PLC controlled, but the fault diagnosis and rectification is only as good as the diagnostic engineers capability.
Where I work, we pay some of our diagnostic engineers more than the plant manager. It may take up to 18 months trianing and an electronics degree to be able to fault find our engine controllers. They are seriously complicated things.
Cars are heading that way too. Indeed, the manufacturer writes the code and the designs the diagnostic equipment but they will restrict everything to, say, the top 100 faults. And so will the training - which is expensive. Quirky faults that are intermittent or occur only at temperature or at cold require the correct facilities to diagnose. Interference on the multiplex wiring can easily elicit nuisance faults, but you have to be able to recognize these for what they are and until a historical database of nuisance faults is created then their learning takes that much longer.
I have total sympathy with the poor guy at a dealer who is expected to diagnose electronic fault codes. Most will simply have not had the training. (And once sufficiently trained they will go and set up their own garage). The result is guesswork and remove and replace components until the problem goes away.
|
|
I had a engine light appear on my volvo, took it to the main dealer to enquire about it and they said £50 to plug in and 1 hours labour so hour £90 plus VAT!.. Looked on ebay and found a ODBII scanner for £40 thought I had nothing to loose, found the code google'd it and found the problem myself . Getting the OBDII scanner is money well spend and have used it on friends cars also and so far managed to solve / find problems everytime.
|
|
|
>>Should the government be stopping this rip off practice?
Absolutely not at all. This is a free market economy, and a man in business is free to charge what he wants. (Provided of course there is no market fixing.) The moment the Government starts setting prices for goods and services we are going down a very slippery slope. Towards communism.
|
|
|
Looking at the technical manual for one of our big models, the actual oily bits and their associated motors and sensors can generate around 600 fault codes via a plug in panel, plus there's a whole separate diagnostic process for the controller via a COM port and terminal session on the back of the unit. Of course, diagnosing a fault will often involve "crossing over" between these two units, and scoping signals being passed back and forth between engine, controller, and sensors - much like car diagnostics in fact. Plus, like a car fuel injection system, a sensor code could be a failed sensor, or it could be something further back down the line causing a sequence of events which culminate in a sensor not giving an expected reading.
The point being, that we just could not spend a day on site with a machine down, and simply hand it back still broken at the end of the day, much less accompanied by a bill. We work to strict SLAs and commitments, and would be hauled over the coals if we broke them. The point I was trying to make is that diagnosis and repair of complex systems like this is possible (but not cheap, as you say), and therefore the dealerships repeated failure to do so comes down to a business decision rather than the realms of possibility. As paying customers, do we think this is acceptable?
I have every sympathy with the poor guy himself who as you say has probably not had the required training or investment in him, but the dealership as a whole needs to take responsibility for this situation, where customers are relieved of often substantial sums of money for no worthwhile result. If a main dealer can't fix a fault, or even as a last resort have expert manufacturer backing on the end of a phone, then we're in big trouble.
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 08/05/2008 at 11:36
|
|
|
|
_COLON_no_upscale()/cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/cas/e33e245b6c78f520dbad3a16902e244e/3673ec8094fede89c304980a53330ef2.jpg)
_COLON_no_upscale()/cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/cas/d9be51de970c4109efbdaadc0b2ee9a4/4b74dca515a7a68cb159b0853bbd6d7c.jpg)
_COLON_no_upscale()/cdn.uk.prod.group-mobility-trader.com/images/cas/1d865fc9133b06c245664241957557da/89ea8b976d62e6bca6837c53b57f1f64.jpg)
