This is your own personal experience Mike....do other independents use same or MDs?
It may be my own personal experience, but I tend to be quite boring and just use the factory equipment rather than anything aftermarket. It's more than adequate to get to the bottom of most problems.
SD2 and SD3 just talk to the ECUs and let you know what the ECU thinks the problem is and tells you what the ECUs think a particular sensor signal is. But, sometimes, you need to go to the horse's mouth and see what the actual signal looks like.
For instance, I had a particularly tricky problem recently, where my SD2 machine was giving me a smoothed out moving average value for a sensor output as reported by the ECU. I knew there was a possible problem with the sensor that the ECU and my SD2 wasn't picking up, so I used one of the FIAT Group Technomotor interfaces to look at the signal that was coming from the sensor directly, and there were circumstances were the signal degraded in an unusual way that I could only see by looking at a graphical representation of the signal output. The problem was confirmed, the part was changed, the car was cured.
So, whilst SD2 or SD3 is a vital tool that all independent Maserati specialists and Main Dealers have, it's also handy to have the other diagnostic equipment that compliments it like the FIAT Group Technomotor interface set when it comes to a trickier problem. However, I'm not sure that all independents have the full FIAT Group Technomotor set. Why not ask them? I'm always happy to show anyone my equipment - I've got some very obscure gear going back to the year dot, all of it factory or main dealer. Does anyone else have the unique Lancia Thema 8.32 diagnostics machine (the one with the Ferrari/Ducati V8)? I do
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Mike.
