Hi all,

I am a DIY type of guy who maintains my camaros. Recently I have become interested buying the ALDU1 and CABL1 XtremeALDL and NewCABL1 Combo here on moates and hooking up my car to my laptop. The reason I wanted to do this was so I could start to diagnose why my car recently failed inspection (Bit higher CO emissions then is allowed). I guess my question is how difficult is it to read the software out there for someone who is normal and has only basic mechanical knowledge?

I have read about Datamaster (Which I think is over priced) and TunerPro RT. This is me thinking but the value in having software I would assume is that I can open a stock file that has all my cars specs and then look at the current specs the car is showing and essentially compare. Is this the right train of thought? I guess its just difficult since I am not seeing any tutorials on doing that task.

Any thoughts or input would greatly be appreciated btw.

 

Scanning software will give you a readout of the engines sensor information when the car is running, ie coolant temp, air temp, MAP pressure, battery voltage, Engine RPM, O2 sensor values, TPS voltage etc. It will also display some information and parameters from the ECM. Its a good way to troubleshoot problems with a EFI car, if the car isn't running well the first thing you need to do is verify that these sensors all appear to be working correctly and the ECM is not reporting errors. This is very useful for DIY car guys. For example, its possible that one of your sensors is acting up (likely are the coolant temp or O2 sensors) and caused you to fail the smog check, and the scanning info could help you find this problem.

TunerPro RT is the most cost effective way to get this capability, as long as they have available both the .xdf and .ads files you would need for your cars ECM. To figure this out, check your ECM for the part number on it and then go to the TunerPro RT and Moates.net websites to see if they have both these files available for your ECM.

Once you have the software installed its fairly straightforward to have it display and record your various sensor values and ECM parameters. With this capability you are also on the way to being able to do custom tuning of your cars.

Paul T.

 

Thanks for the insite Paul! Thats what I wanted to make sure that it was simple to read and have what the values should be already shown to me.

I am going to jump and check out that those files are available to me.

thanks!

 

"and have what the values should be already shown to me"

This part you'll need to fill in yourself, but some of its common sense (coolant and air temps for example, but remember they're in degrees C) and its not too bad to pick up on if you read through the starter threads on these forums.

Paul T.

 

Oh ok so your saying I'll have to put in what the values are suppose to be and then compare. I am going to continue looking into the forums seems most threads are discussing advanced things and no really starter info. thanks for the heads up though