Inside this incredibly cute carrying case is a tool I think every VAG owner – VW, Audi, Skoda, Seat and plenty more – should own. It’s called VCDS, and it’s a diagnostic tool and programmer. It’s not the dealership tool, that’s called ODIS, this is a third party tool that works just as well, if not better. It’s not too expensive, but lets you do some amazing things, and can save you so, so much money. Let me get my laptop fired up and I’ll show you what I mean.
Inside the case you’ll find half of the puzzle, the cable. This is the most basic option, and has an artificial limitation of 3 VINs stored on the cable, meaning you can only use it with 3 cars before it refuses to do the advanced functions. You can pay Ross-Tech a bit more money, and make that 10, or unlimited though. It plugs into your standard OBD II port, and into your laptop with standard USB.
The other half of the puzzle is the software. That’s also where the magic happens. Once you’ve got it connected to the car, you can launch the software and you’ll see the main screen. The first option is looking at the individual modules in the car, the second Auto Scan, then SRI Reset – the service reminder, generic OBD II functions, then applications and options.
The first thing I want to show you is Auto Scan, this is the one click button to scan your entire car to find every single fault code – and not just the basic OBD II ones. Dealer level codes. Running a full auto scan can take a few minutes, but if you hit “Gateway installation list”, it’ll give you a list of all the modules in your car and if they have any stored faults. In my case, I’ve got a couple, one for the fuel door lock that glitched once, and one for the radio so those show as stored faults.
You can hit start to run the full scan. This will take a few minutes, but wow it gives you so much information. It’ll give you detailed notes on the faults stored, and the individual modules. You can also save this to a file which is really useful especially if you want to get help on the Ross Tech forum.
You can head to the individual module list to look at all the modules in your car, lets look at the ECU. In here we have two sets of options, basic and advanced. Basic options don’t count towards that VIN limit, only the advanced options do. Basic options include fault codes, should you have any, but the most interesting one is Advanced Measuring Values. This is where you can get live data on every sensor the car has. Add them in from the list and you should see the live info. You can also graph those values which is amazingly useful for diagnosing difficult to find issues.
Under the advanced section you have the really amazing stuff. I should make it clear, these advanced functions should only be run if you know what you are doing. You can seriously mess up your vehicle with these, so be very careful. There is the installation list which offers a list of all of the tests and calibrations you can run. In the gearbox controller you can have it adjust the kiss points of the clutches for example. There are some incredibly useful functions here that will allow you to DIY repair a lot of stuff you wouldn’t otherwise be able to – or at least without a trip to the dealer to reset various controllers or adaptations.
Then there is the output tests. This lets you turn individual components on. This is so powerful. You can turn on individual fuel injectors to test them, or the fuel pump, or so, so much more. It’s amazing.
Next is coding. This, and the adaptations option are the most dangerous. DO NOT MESS WITH THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Got it? Good.
So, under coding, you can hit “Long Coding Helper”, this lets you see what each of the hex values mean.
