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

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With best regards

Al

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!



-J

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1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
2014 Cadillac ELR
2013 Fiat 500E.

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?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

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.

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With best regards

Al

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...

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1987 560SL
85,000 miles

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

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

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

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.



vs.

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1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
2014 Cadillac ELR
2013 Fiat 500E.

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

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

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.

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1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

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