Beware the ECU changers

A typical garage will go down the road of swapping an ecu when all else as failed
They rarely fail so you need a hundred percent to start issuing that idea walk away if this as been arrived at after numerous other parts swaps

vvt pulleys

be very wary of garages wanting to charge you with replacing one of these

A window into the world

Here is one of our many pico scopes

What is a car

Daft question.....no
Its the engine is misbehaving then  the entire car feels ill disiplined and out of kilter.
Doesnt change gear properly,you end up fighting it rather driving it

Airflow sensors

The amount of air entering your engine is a  mesaurable value.
This  undertaken either by a moving vane air sensor or more commonly a MAF or mass airflow unit.
The early MAFs were literally a  heated wire,the amount of air  was detected by the level of current needed to maintain the wires temperature.
All a bit hit and miss and prone to a lot of failures. Todays MAFs use thin film technology giving far quicker responses to changing air flow conditions

Graphs and information

Pulling data and information from a car is useless without being able to apply the information

The ECU isnt that smart

Your engines control unit or brain a some cal it isn't really smart.
It simply reacts to inputs and works on the basis they are correct nothing more

Full basic health check

how well is your engine running?
good bad,hard to start either hot or cold.
Starting issues are often the sign of  deeper issues developing,way before your engine  fault light appears.In  fact it may never illuminate and still the car will strand you.

A basic check is via the exhaust using a pulse sensor,and no bonnet lifting even needed 

Coil on plugs

These are way better than traditional caps and spark plug leads but,the continuous heat soak buried in the engine takes its toll on them.
Cheap ones are the worst culprits,and they can fail without warning
we recommend replacement of them all at 30 000 miles to avoid that

quick spark check

wont start  is there spark