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Recently, a friend fell in love with the Ford Focus ST. It’s a neat little hatchback cranking out 250 horsepower and 275-ish ft/lbs torque.
They don’t want to buy new, and have been cruising the used markets recently. Given that I’m a shade-tree mechanic and that I have an Autel 802 scanner (bought from JBTools via ETCG site), I’ve been accompanying them.
This has let me to ask two questions:
1) What in the name of God’s left nut do the vehicle electronics actually do?!
2) Why in the name of God’s right nut would you ever consider buying a used car without a scanner?!Over the last four days, I’ve looked at five Focus ST’s. Absolutely none of them had a CEL/MIL light on. All of them drove well, pulled hard, and had nothing odd or seemingly out of the ordinary. (Three had been repaired fairly well after a front-ender, but I saw overspray. One hadn’t been repaired nearly as well… and NONE of them showed an accident on a CarFax).
When I connected the scanner to the OBD port, the electronics spoke such a tale of woe! On one, there was -42- faults in the system with errors on the aft speed sensors, the ABS sensor not being able to talk to the main bus, low battery voltage, transmission modules not communicating with the bus… a whole arseload of problems.
And not a single one caused a CEL/MIL, and not a single one seemed to cause a drivability problem. With that many errors, I would’ve expected the car to crab sideways when you hit the windshield wipers and turn itself inside-out if you were to even consider BREATHING on the accelerator let alone starting the engine.
The cars rode well, I swear. I drove them as intended.. hard, bombing around in turns, braking, you name it. You’d never know there was anything wrong with the car by driving it! what good are all these sensors and secondary computers if they can hork like that and not cause any detectable difference in the vehicle?
Looking at page after page of error codes has all but scared me off of buying a used car. With that many faults, it’s got to be the automotive equivalent of electronic leprosy : what’s going to fall off, and when?
Seriously, after this experience, I can’t in good faith recommend ANYONE buy a car without a higher-end scanner in tow, or at the very least, paying a shop to do a deeper read than a casual CEL scan.
What are everyone’s thoughts on this?
-Hinoki
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What do vehicular electronics do? They made me fall out of love with newer vehicles. Give me a carburetted vehicle without ABS, vehicle stability systems, and digitally-controlled AC any day.
I think sometimes people are biased toward electronics in cars. I get it. You can’t hit electronics with a stump in the head.
They do a lot of important things.. Just remember cars from the late 70’s and most of the 80’s when emissions controls was starting.They had to detune engines to make them meet emissions.
Just look at what they do. They’ve made cars have more gas mileage than ever before and have oodles of power and meet emissions. They’ve also made the cars faster and safer too. Also they have done more to make repair actually easier and quicker for technicians. Giving them a basis on which to diagnose issues or see issues that can’t be seen, smelled or even heard. Yes there is fault codes stored on the computer but they also serve a benefit to you too. Things that might maybe need to be looked at in the future before they become major problems. In some respects it’s made cars more reliable too! If you take off your rose tinted nostalgia glasses for a minute. People used to buy cars every 2 years and they could barely reach 100k before something major needed to be looked at. Now cars if maintained right can easily last 10+ years without no major repair issues. People dont seem to realize that during ww2 there was real concern about cars not being to last throughout the war. Due to lack of raw materials for making new ones that wasn’t be purposed for the war effort.
So there is nothing to fear. In fact in a way it empowers you to know what to look at and when to look at it.
OP, these were Fords you were looking at. You shouldn’t have needed a scanner to tell you there were multiple faults all throughout the vehicle. 😀
[quote=”Evil-i” post=163294]What do vehicular electronics do? They made me fall out of love with newer vehicles. Give me a carburetted vehicle without ABS, vehicle stability systems, and digitally-controlled AC any day.[/quote]
Actually, I feel the opposite. The electronics make everything so much better and easier.
There was a very ugly gap that started in the early 70’s, and lasted until the early 90’s, really peaking in the 80’s. Vacuum hoses galore. All kinds of control boxes, sensor, and wires and most of them had no trouble codes, you have to go in and pin test, measure voltages, resistances, amps. Breakout boxes, Big SUN machines in the shops looking like something out of a mad science lab in a movie. That was the hay-day though. A time when a mechanic started becoming a skilled trade/profession and you could make a good living just changing parts and doing services like flushes, but if you were good with a gas analyzer and a ossilicope, you were made of gold. Now adays, you are expected to be made of gold just to get paid in tin.
All depending, it could be that……
Someone disabled the CEL.
Someone cleared and turned the CEL off before selling it or driving it again.
Many problems can exist (even hard failures) and will not turn the CEL on or set a code.Regarding the latter, the other day I discovered on my car that the ECT (engine coolant temp) sensor was broken at the plastic molded onto the sensor and the wire connector was dangling by a piece of plastic.
A few years ago the same car (a 1996 OBDII model) had a VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor) completely die.
On another car an IAT (Intake Air Temp) sensor had completely failed.
In none of those cases did the CEL come on or set a code for those hard failures.I do agree that taking a decent scanner along when looking at cars is a great idea though. In the name of clean air and increased fuel economy a massive amount of time, money, and fossil fuel is expended due to the use of high tech electronics though.
What’s somewhat amusing is that some cars from the old days (50s and 60s) will get better mileage than many new ones. I have a modded car (Ford 5.0 with dual 4 barrel carbs) and that car gets 21 MPG at a 70 MPH cruise. Many years ago a couple of friends had early 60s model cars that would tick off 30 MPG on a highway cruise.Back in the 80s one particular foreign branded car would easily get 40-41 MPG with an EEC carburetor. These cars became OHC with port fuel injection and 27 was the best they could do.
Well you are right one hand and wrong an another. Cause modern tech on that 5.0 mustang they are able to design the carb digitally and test it digitally to see what is the best design through simulations. Alot of those cars in the 50’s and 60’s that could do good gas mileage was the normally base engine models. In most American cases it was a Straight 6 with a single barrel carb. Some europeans used a straight 4 that would have more in common with a motorcycle motor then a car motor. The higher end models with the v8’s tended to get worse and once you got in the luxury side of things you may as well just have a tanker truck follow you.
The thing about modern cars is that you can do more with less. Not even less than 30 years ago a 4 cylinder would be been seen as something your parents econobox has wasn’t that powerful at all. Fast forward 30 years and now you have cars that can blow the doors off a big ass v8 muscle car and get better fuel economy too. Thanks to advances in electronics and turbocharging and supercharging and just better quality fuel in general.
You exactly wouldn’t call a 2015-6 mustang Ecoboost 4 cylinder amenic would ya? It’s because we figured out that displacement does not equal power. It’s kinda a of a 2nd muscle car movement in a way. Instead being bigger and badder its a race to see who can do more with less and still be an economy car by the government.
I have to disagree a bit about older cars with V-8s not getting decent mileage. A friend of mine had an early 60s Buick I think it was the aluminum V8 and that car would get 30 MPG on the highway.
I owned an early Roadrunner and Superbee with the 383 Magnums, 4 speed manuals, and they would get 17 on the road.
A late 50s Corvette I had was fitted with 4:11 rear axle gears and it would get 21 MPG at a 70 MPH cruise.That’s not shabby (especially with the Mopar big blocks) for carbureted cars with point distributors.
The car i mentioned having with a Ford 5.0 and dual quads actually use a pair of aftermarket Edelbrock 600s. It’s way overcarbed for the displacement. This entire car and engine is a collection of backyard parts with no serious engineering involved at all.
If I do remember those 60’s buicks still was using hydramatics transmissions wasn’t they? Plus they was highway geared. So it doesn’t surprise me they would get at least 20mpg+. Most the cars that like wasn’t “Luxury” or upscale cause Lincoln, Buick and Caddy, Chrylser was all the top tier brands for the big three. But your Fords, Chevys, Plymouths,Dodges was the lower end stuff. they normally didn’t have the slush o matic transmissions or highway gearing. Also depending on car/truck class. For your econobox car i consider anything less than 30 quite horrible.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/05/best-worst-fuel-economy/index.htm <– quite recent list too
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