Attention, NW BOMBers! Group purchase of Mentor scan tool?

[Evan A. Beck]

*LOL* John, crackin' up here! #ad

 

[Archive]

Papa Joe... I just reread your post... for that six pack, I will come to your house to install the injectors! Either way is fine with me, I could use a visit with the grandparents that live in Hayden!

 

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

Well finally had a chance last night to hook up the Mentor/Genisys scan tool and take it for a test drive. Definitely a neat little gizmo. It has a large color LCD panel and is easy to use. You punch in your vehicle information then it tells you which cable to connect to the port under the dash. Real easy to hook up.

It has 2 operating modes, "OBD-II" and "OEM. " I tried the OBD-II first and was able to monitor:

--Engine RPM
--Vehicle Speed
--Throttle position
--Engine Load
and that's about it. There were no diagnostic test that worked in this mode.

Switching over to the OEM mode resulted in a lot more information:

--Engine RPM
--Battery Voltage
--Oil pressure sending unit voltage
--Coolant temperature
--Air intake temperature
--MAP sensor voltage
--MAP pressure in inches of Mercury
--Vehicle speed
--Water in fuel sensor
--Throttle position
--Calculated engine load

You can highlight and graphically display any sensor in real time. You can record and play back data. You can zoom it in or out.

There are a number of tests as well, such as manually activating the grid heaters, WTS light, deactivate each injector individually (cylinder load test), manipulate the door locks, reset throttle zero point, and a couple others.

You can look at and reset codes, the displayed code will also have a label. I had one code, along with the number it said "ECM Fault. "

A couple minor drawbacks. . . I want to share the pro and the con. . . graphing and displaying numbers is not as instantaneous as I would like, it seems a bit slow, not a real high sampling rate. I believe that can be configured in the setup mode. . . the faster the response, the less recording time you'd have though (memory limitation).

Another drawback is this unit only has the adapters through 1999, so I am going to see what it would take to get them through 2001.

Lastly on the "OEM" mode the vehicle speed was way off, at 50mph it indicated 32, so I don't know what's up with that. Also the Engine load % maxed at 39%, I attribute most of that to my boost module throwing off the calculations.

I am going to address these concerns with the Mac man and see what he has to say... or better yet contact Genysis or Mac Tool tech support for answers.

The guy wants $1800 for the unit, I think it is well worth it. Doing a quick count, it looks like we have 10 or 11 good committments already, so if we can round up a few more guys we should be able to do this!!!

Vaughn

[This message has been edited by Vaughn MacKenzie (edited 03-28-2001). ]

 

[GSchneuer]

V

Vaughn?, how did you do your amber turn signal conversion?. I also have a 01 and have the maint. manuals. I tried to figure this out, but so far I have drawn a blank.

Would you share your knowledge on this matter with me?

Thanks-Gary


Vposted by Vaughn MacKenzie:
My local Mac tool man has a demo model Mentor DRB scan tool he is willing to knock a few hundred $$ off of and I'd talked to Rob Hanson about going in together to purchase a scan tool for the NW BOMBers to use at our BOMBfests. He is bringing it by tonight for me to spec out for a couple days so I will report back impressions of it and what all it does. If it looks like a worthy investment then we could get enough guys to contribute towards it and purchase it. It retails for $2100 but may get him down to $1800, possibly lower. . . we will see. If we can get 20 of us to chip in $80 or so it would be doable, the more the better of course. We should keep it at Rob's since that is where we gather.

Give me your thoughts on this, and if anyone is familiar with the Mentor product tell us what you know.

Stay tuned!

Vaughn
[/QUOTE]



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[Vaughn MacKenzie]

Hey Gary, sorry I didn't catch your post. Evan A. Beck is the brainchild of the turn signal conversion. It is a little involved and unfortunately I don't know what all he did since he did it for me.

Go to the 2nd-Generation forum, there was a thread on this not long ago and I just bumped it to the top for you. Hope this helps.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

UPDATE on SCAN TOOL

Well I played with the unit a couple more days and became more familiar with it. The more I became familiar with it, the more its limitations became apparent, and personally I don't feel it is worth spending $1800 on.

The greatest benefit of this tool is its features displaying sensor data and graphing it. However the scan rate is slow, so if there is a problem with a sensor, it has to be a type of failure where the voltage is significantly tweaked--it won't pick up voltage spikes or erratic signals that are not sustained. It is quite slow in responding as well.

I dug further into the test modes and found there are very few that work with the Dodge/Cummins and therefore doesn't go very far in diagnosing problems. The injector test didn't work worth a hoot, the engine was very erratic so it was impossible to measure injector/cylinder output in any way. The setup procedure kept saying to disconnect the IAC motor (Idle Air Control), something our diesel trucks don't have. It just didn't seem very diesel-oriented. Even after entering information on my truck, many tests listed would give me a "Not available" prompt whenever I selected them. It wasn't sophisticated enough to only list applicable tests. Kinda annoying. Another disappointment was I'd hoped it could tie in with the injection pump or CAN-bus some way but it does not, so other than shutting off injectors in the test mode, there is no feedback whatsoever there. Useless in diagnosing a rough idle.

As far as entering data, there wasn't many specifics. . . didn't even ask you for Auto or Manual trannys. I saw nothing having to do with Automatics with regard to data or tests.

The other thing I mentioned before that bothered me was the inaccuracy of the vehicle speed indicated, which made me wonder how accurate other sensor readings were. My speedo was accurate, the scantool was WAY off.

Counting those who are interested (10 or 11) we are going to have to chip in $180 apiece to make this happen, but $180 is more than I want to chip in for this thing. I think we should check around and see if there is something else available that has more capabilities. A good scan tool could easily pay for itself for those off of warranty since it could help diagnose problems without taking the truck to the shop.

Let me know what you think. Rob I only got 1 email response from what you sent out so interest level doesn't seem that high.

Vaughn

 

[Nemies]

Has anyone been able to check out the Snap-On scanner? MT2500 with the '99 software? At least according to snap-on, it does diesel truck diag too.


------------------
Kees C.
99, 4x4, 2500, 5spd, HD, LSD, SB, QC, Sport, Forest-Green, Cab-Lights
Rhinoliner, toolbox, dual Firestiks

[This message has been edited by Nemies (edited 05-08-2001). ]

 

[Evan A. Beck]

Gary, I posted the wiring diagram in the other forum. Check it out, it is real easy to do. #ad

 

[Andy Perreault]

The more I became familiar with it, the more its limitations became apparent, and personally I don't feel it is worth spending $1800 on.

Ah, well, thanks for the effort, Vaughn. Maybe something better will come along.
Andy

 

[Dreher]

In the mean time, anyone in the Seattle area is welcome to use my scanner. It's a low-budget model, but better than nothing. I can get more info than Vaughn got in the generic OBDII mode but less than he got in the OEM mode. It is read-only, so no relay/switch/injector tests. It will read and reset a DTC code a lot cheaper than the dealer, though. Drop me a note if you need it.

Bob

 

[Brandon]

genisys= otc, right????/

otc doesnt seem very good to us in the past, we are gonna try the snapon unit this saturday from our dealer, we will see how that goes
B