Good afternoon everyone, been a member a little while and after many hours happily digesting umpteen hugely informative posts I at last have a newbie question, and hoping forum members can offer some advice ..
The Intoduction part .. mine is a 2017 California, CXEB, BMT, 58K miles, all OEM, uses no oil or coolant and on the whole goes pretty well. But (isn’t there always one) for the past 5K its been running with a P046C fault (EGR circuit A sensor range) and thankfully there’s been no engine management light to go with it. So, nothing then to get too alarmed about … hummm, lets hope. I thought the omens might be good when I had a nosey in the EGR whilst replacing the front pipe, which I decided had to be split and wasn’t, and found the pipe and cooler bone dry with surprisingly little muck.
Out of curiosity I’m now thinking I really should find out if the EGR valve is opening and closing properly and if the code might actually indicate something that requires fixing instead of being just a blip as I’ve read can be the case. Once again several posts on the forum provide a trove of information and graphs to show what the valve does when its working and when its not. Plenty to go off.
The Question part ... okay, so, I sold the Topdon Artidiag that identified the fault because the screen was too small, real time monitoring was crap and it wouldn’t export data. Thus, I’m looking for something better to replace it with that will do the job.
So far I’ve considered three - VCDS, Carista dongle+Car Scanner App, and Carista dongle+Carista App. My head tells me VCDS and just suck up the learner curve because even though I’m unlikely to use many of the features it’s widely used and understood, but at the same time my pocket says if there’s an IOS app thats easier and does almost the same then why shell out the extra. Not sure Carista App justifies the hefty subscription tho.
What recommendations from their experience do forum members have for a reasonably intuitive diagnostic app / tablet that aside from doing all the other things enables a comparative OBD novice to delve into the operation of the EGR and reveal whether it is opening and closing properly and export the data so I can put it on a screen big enough to see.
Sorry if this droned on too much.
The Intoduction part .. mine is a 2017 California, CXEB, BMT, 58K miles, all OEM, uses no oil or coolant and on the whole goes pretty well. But (isn’t there always one) for the past 5K its been running with a P046C fault (EGR circuit A sensor range) and thankfully there’s been no engine management light to go with it. So, nothing then to get too alarmed about … hummm, lets hope. I thought the omens might be good when I had a nosey in the EGR whilst replacing the front pipe, which I decided had to be split and wasn’t, and found the pipe and cooler bone dry with surprisingly little muck.
Out of curiosity I’m now thinking I really should find out if the EGR valve is opening and closing properly and if the code might actually indicate something that requires fixing instead of being just a blip as I’ve read can be the case. Once again several posts on the forum provide a trove of information and graphs to show what the valve does when its working and when its not. Plenty to go off.
The Question part ... okay, so, I sold the Topdon Artidiag that identified the fault because the screen was too small, real time monitoring was crap and it wouldn’t export data. Thus, I’m looking for something better to replace it with that will do the job.
So far I’ve considered three - VCDS, Carista dongle+Car Scanner App, and Carista dongle+Carista App. My head tells me VCDS and just suck up the learner curve because even though I’m unlikely to use many of the features it’s widely used and understood, but at the same time my pocket says if there’s an IOS app thats easier and does almost the same then why shell out the extra. Not sure Carista App justifies the hefty subscription tho.
What recommendations from their experience do forum members have for a reasonably intuitive diagnostic app / tablet that aside from doing all the other things enables a comparative OBD novice to delve into the operation of the EGR and reveal whether it is opening and closing properly and export the data so I can put it on a screen big enough to see.
Sorry if this droned on too much.
