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Having Diesel Problems How to Diagnose Diesel truck Issues

Created on: 2019-04-30

Check out this video where 1A Auto mechanics walk you through using a wireless OBD2 scan tool with advanced features. Get yours at 1AAuto.com

What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video I have this 2013 Ford F250. We are having a diesel issue. Something to do with the exhaust fluid. So we're going to scan it with our scan tool and check it out, see what's wrong with it.

Okay, so this is what's happening. We have 34 miles before the speed's going to be limited because of the emissions on this vehicle. The exhaust fluid--there's something wrong with that. So let's scan it and see what's going on.

I'm going to remove the wireless transmitter. We're going to hook this up to the OBD port right underneath the dash. Hook that up. I'm going to turn the scan tool on. We're in this mode. When it starts up, let's see. When it starts up a lot of times you'll be on this screen. So we want it to get to the scan tool screen. We're going to go to diagnostics and we have a Ford. We're going to do automatic search, and it's going to tell us to turn the ignition on without starting the car. Once the ignition is on and it has stabilized, then we'll hit okay. Now it's just going to read the computers in the vehicle. You want to check the VIN. Make sure the VIN's the same. You can check it on the door, and that VIN's the same which is good. So yes.

Alright so what we could do is we could do a health report. That's going to scan every module in the vehicle. But I don't want to do that. I could do a systems scan which will scan individual modules or I can just go and select the system that I want. So I'm going to go to that and then I want to go to PCM which is Powertrain Control Module. Now you could select any of these systems and scan them and see what's going on, but we'll go with PCM. It's nice that this is wireless, there's no wires. So I could actually be sitting over on my toolbox while I'm doing this if I was doing this at work. Or you can even sit at your kitchen table as long as it's close enough.

Okay so we can check a couple of other things. We want to read the fault codes. So we're going to click on that. Now there's all these tests you can do. What I want to do is retrieve CMDTCs, and these are the fault codes that I have in this vehicle. There's something wrong with the reductant system in this vehicle. So at this point the scan, this tool isn't going to tell us much more. We can look at some values and stuff but this being a complicated system for the reductant system--this is more of a dealer only type repair. What would have been nice is if it was something simple that we could fix ourselves. But unfortunately this is more complicated. Even if we had a scan tool that was a $3,000 scan tool, we still wouldn't be able to do this job. This is a dealer-only repair.

So I can back out of this part of the tool. It gives you a reminder to take that receiver out of the OBD2 connector. So there's some reset functions on this tool, and you could do a deep a DPF regen, although that's not the only problem with this vehicle. If I do the DPF regen, there is some other things that need to be reset and that's not going to fix our problem. So at this case we're going to need a Ford scan tool so it's going to have to go to the dealer unfortunately. But it is cool that you can do some of this other stuff.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com for quality auto parts shipped to your door, the place for DIY auto repair. And if you enjoyed this video please click the subscribe button.


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