Can someone teach me about oscilloscopes?
 

I see them advertized used for next to nothing and i Know that they can be used to diagnose ignition problems. Do these scopes need to be set up for automotive use or can any scope work?

How do you use them?


With best regards

Easy! You blow the resistor to ground and it quits working. Happens every time.

If you want to look at the actual high voltage output I'd think you would need a special scope... or at least a special probe.

I've used mine when working on the car... very handy!

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...6-22.50.32.jpg

-J

Al.....

Today is 23-Apr-2012. If you visit a site called shopgoodwill.com - Welcome and search for Heath you will find that they are offering an old Heathkit ignition analyzer. This is a scope that is built for car ignitions and it will really tell you where your problems are.

This is an auction site and you don't really know if the thing works, but you can sometimes pick up some really good stuff there cheap.

Good Luck!

Then replace the RC circuit to ground. If it's used, it's blown.

How do they work on my diesels?

Thanks I'll take a look! I don't think that they work on diesel as they are used to diagnose ignition problems. But that said, I could be completely wrong.

Flawlessly. Even the broken ones.

I've used them when doing fine grinding of inside diameters on jig grinders. It shows when the wheel is cutting or not.

I've never used one on a car...

They would give about the same indications, wouldn't they.

Well, you might be able to use it to:

1. Check the injection timing signal on an OM603. This would probably take more work than it is worth, particularly to get the required TDC reference, but theoretically ...

2. Check voltage waveform to tell you if the rectifier bridge has one or more 'open' diodes, giving weak performance without shorting out the battery.

3. Using a long, slow trace, and with enough screen persistence, you could check the duty cycle of the heater's monovalve.

I'm just sayin'.

It can also make a cool workbench display :D

You can also use it to check ABS sensors. That's what I was doing in the picture I posted. Made an annoying job easy.

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...6-22.48.22.jpg

vs.

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...6-22.45.46.jpg

How about reading the glow plugs as a measure of combustion efficiency?

You could definitely measure the output from a glow plug but whether that would be a measure of combustion efficiency that's another discussion / argument! The main trouble with measuring glow plugs is that you have 4, 5, or 6 of them on our older Mercedes diesels - most scopes only have 2 channels.

Uh-huh. Neat thing about a single-point. Everything gets the same answer. Not unlike political party fanatics.