Our 8 Step Diagnostics
The question we get asked the most is: "Isn't it just a matter of plugging in the car to one of your machines?". Simply no! There are many steps that need to be taken to get to the bottom of the issue. Here is a step by step of how we get to the bottom of some issues.
Below are our steps to coming up with a diagnosis.
Step 1: Gathering as much information as possible.
When you drop your car off to us at the EV Car Centre, we will ask you for as much information as you can give us into what problems you are experiencing with your car. The more information we can gather at this point helps us to come up with a diagnosis for your vehicle. The details we gather here about what is going on, generally speaking, lead to a quicker and less expensive fault finding process.
Step 2: Road Test
Next we need to experience what your are experiencing. We will either go out with you or before we look at the vehicle before we get too far into looking at your car. This allows us to get a complete understanding of what is going on. Sometimes our expert qualified diagnostic technicians can isolate faults or get a good indication where to begin investigating simply from driving.
Step 3: Fault code read
This is where it is commonly misunderstood to “just plugging it into a machine”. It is however a much more complex process than just that. The best way to think of it is like a doctors appointment where your car is the patient and our technicians are the doctors. When you visit the doctors with a problem they don't just throw a diagnosis at you, they try to rule things out and then test to ensure the correct diagnosis is given.
We approach your vehicle in the same way, in a logical order to keep costs down. We plug our machines into your car which allows us to talk to it and let that give us an indication where the faults may lie.
Step 4: Visual Inspection
Once an area to investigate has been identified, we will get the car in the workshop up on a ramp and visually inspect the components. If we don't find anything obvious we will look at the following steps.
Step 5: Vehicle Serial Data
The car has a control module, which is like the brain. We can check the data/readings from this module which might highlight anything outside of the norm.
Step 6: Technical Service Bulletins
As cars are mass produced, when problems arise, it is normally through a range on the production line. We check Technical Service Bulletins for any known faults to save us time and equally money.
Step 7: Basic System Checks
With our diagnostic machines we are able to initialise and activate certain components within the car. This allows us to ensure all components are working correctly and rule out other potential issues.
Step 8: Second Road Test
Once we have found, diagnosed and repaired your vehicle, we re-road test it to ensure the fault has been rectified and to generally check how your car drives.