Yet another set of Newbie questions

[plastic vantastic]

“Plastic Vantastic” = 1995 Pontiac Trans Sport: thanks to the composite body technology it looks maybe 5 years old. Anyways, the mechanicals aren’t 5 years old and I want (need!) to be able to work with the semi-obscure OBD-I system. I have been trying the evaluation version of EFILIVE V4 to try to obtain DTCs and it would be great as well to look at real time sensor data, etc. There was a definition for that vehicle (1995 Lumina Van 3.8) but it was clearly developed for the pro version as it configures dashboard gauges I would not have (gauges with numbers 8 and up). Moreover, while I have been able to get my DTC’s by parsing the raw serial IO, I have yet to succeed in configuring the tool to show me what I want to see (DTCs and real time sensor data). I’m thinking this is because I am trying to use gauges that have been assigned somewhere else in the profile.

Questions:

1/ is there a way to clear all the existing definition’s dashboard gauge assignments without loosing all the requests that have been created? For that matter, a way to clear all output assignments (DTCs, charts)?

2/ Could somebody look at the 1995 Lumina Van 3.8 profile and check the Clear DTC request – I do not think it is correct (the A221 data stream says that the clear DTC message would be $F4,$56,$0A,$AC).

I think there may be other issues with the macros (the DTC_DATA_00 says <deleted>) but I am not sure.

3/ Can a heartbeat change from one session to the next? What’s going on if it looks like it did?

4/ If anyone out there with bags of spare time wants to take pity on a dumb hardware guy, could they painstakingly give me step by step instructions to configure EFILIVE V4 (eval version) to look at the EGR system (my DTCs indicate feedtube failure and pintle position error).

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Blacky]

1/ Each parameter defined int he Edit->Vehicle section has a setting called Dashboard. That value is the number of the dashboard gauge where the data will be displayed. You can delete the value or change it to the number of a gauge you can see with the Eval version.

2/ $F4,$56,$0A,$AC or $F4,$57,$0A,$00,$AB are valid and should work.

3/ No. The heartbeat should be chosen so that it is a message that never changes. The heartbeat can be chosen so that is is only the first few (unchanging but unique) bytes of a message.

4/ Have you downloaded the ALDLstuff.zip file from here?
ftp://ftp.diy-efi.org/pub/gmecm/
It has all the raw info you'll need to create/update any definition you want/need.

Regards
Paul

[plastic vantastic]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the reply.

I did download the aldlstuff.zip file and I have used the A221 stream definition information to manually parse the reply to the data dtc 01 request to see that I have a couple of historical egr related dtcs (406 and 484). Consistent with an egr with some blockage (carbon).

Until I did that I wasn't actually getting anywhere with the tool. Nothing seemed to happen when I ran data dtc 00 or data dtc 01. The ALDL tab said something like no aldl data available from this macro (data dtc 00). I tried to assign gauges. I tried the tps voltage as that was something I could easily manipulate with the vehicle not running. No success. I must have missed a step (or I thought some previous assignment to that same gauge somewhere in the definition was interfering with my assignment).

With the immediate "crisis" over (the egr fix seems straight forward if not inexpensive) I'll go back to the notes and start over.

That being said, as a dumb hardware engineer I learn to use software best by example. If you could give me the explicit steps I would need to take to see the tps voltage on gauge 1 that might get me on my way.

BTW are the gauges numbered left to right / top to bottom?

Thanks for the help so far,

Eric

[Blacky]

You can just right click on a gauge and assign a parameter to it - that's the easiest way.

The gauge numbering is in the doco under: Home->Reference->Requests->Attributes, towards the bottom of the page.

Regards
Paul