Automobile diagnostics are a wonder of modern automotive technology. We won’t live. Diagnostics makes our job much easier, but this also saves you money in the end. Because your vehicle is basically a computer on wheels, diagnostics are an important part of your auto service and repair. Let’s talk more about automobile diagnostics below.
How Diagnostics Work
If you took your vehicle apart piece by piece, you would find a main computer chip and sensors in all of the systems. These parts communicate with each other so that the computer chip knows that the vehicle is running safely and reliably at all times. For the record, the main computer chip is called the engine control module or the engine control unit. The system sensors are called, well, the system sensors.
A classic example of how diagnostics work is to pay attention to your dashboard when you start your automobile. You will see that all of the warning lights turn on and then turn off relatively quickly and often one by one. The lights are on until the engine control module receives communication from the system sensors that everything is okay. If everything is fine with a particular system, the module turns off the dashboard warning light.
Determining the Problems
When you bring your vehicle to our shop, we may run a diagnostic test if we cannot determine right away the exact cause of the problem. For example, assume for the moment that you brought your vehicle to our shop because the check engine light turned on and will turn off. There are many reasons why the check engine light turns on, so we will run a diagnostic test to get the exact error code that was relayed to the engine control module.
This error code represents a specific problem. In other words, we will know based on the error code exactly what is wrong with your automobile. This is the beauty of automobile diagnostics. They make determining problems quick and easy. In addition, they also reveal problems that may otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. This ensures your vehicle gets all of the services and repairs that it needs.
As you can imagine, the diagnostic test will save you money because we will understand very quickly what we need to do to repair your automobile. This saves us diagnostic time and you labor fees on your auto repair bill. Give us a call today to schedule a service appointment for your vehicle if you are having problems or there is an illuminated dashboard warning light.