Scion - Toyota's younger punk brother of sorts, and since I work at a Toyota dealership - I get to work on my fair share. One came in about 2 weeks ago - and it left on a rollback - still needing to be fixed. I was not the one to work on it, but my coworker did, and he got 7 hours into it - and still did not find the root of the problem.
The owner of the car still wants his car fixed, and he asked me if I would be willing to work on it privately - and to be honest... I don't know if I could do much better at figuring this problem out - now to tell you what the car is doing... :biglaugh:
You can hit the brakes, and the dash lights up, the blinkers go crazy and all sorts of weird things. You go to turn the vehicle on, and it won't start... but if you hook a scan tool up to it, voila - the thing runs and drives! You can hit the key fob for lock and unlock, and again, the dash lights start going all whacko. My coworker went through most of the wiring - he didn't claim to find any shorts or broken wires, and my personal thought is that the car is missing a ground somewhere...
The thing of it all is, I don't know much about CAN based systems, and how the whole multiplexing stuff works yet... so I don't even know if my guess could be correct.
I haven't looked through any wiring diagrams for this beast yet, and I don't even know if I will accept the job (he just left me with his number and I am still contemplating about taking it).
I guess my question to you guys is this: Have any of you guys diagnosed electrical problems on a CAN based system? Has anyone seen this sort of problem before where the car will start with a scan tool but will not run without?
If I take on this job - the only real thing I would like to try and tackle is to get it to run without a scan tool linked to it - the lights going crazy and stuff would be easier to trace down if the car were operational.
Just looking for your thoughts!
Thanks
The owner of the car still wants his car fixed, and he asked me if I would be willing to work on it privately - and to be honest... I don't know if I could do much better at figuring this problem out - now to tell you what the car is doing... :biglaugh:
You can hit the brakes, and the dash lights up, the blinkers go crazy and all sorts of weird things. You go to turn the vehicle on, and it won't start... but if you hook a scan tool up to it, voila - the thing runs and drives! You can hit the key fob for lock and unlock, and again, the dash lights start going all whacko. My coworker went through most of the wiring - he didn't claim to find any shorts or broken wires, and my personal thought is that the car is missing a ground somewhere...
The thing of it all is, I don't know much about CAN based systems, and how the whole multiplexing stuff works yet... so I don't even know if my guess could be correct.
I haven't looked through any wiring diagrams for this beast yet, and I don't even know if I will accept the job (he just left me with his number and I am still contemplating about taking it).
I guess my question to you guys is this: Have any of you guys diagnosed electrical problems on a CAN based system? Has anyone seen this sort of problem before where the car will start with a scan tool but will not run without?
If I take on this job - the only real thing I would like to try and tackle is to get it to run without a scan tool linked to it - the lights going crazy and stuff would be easier to trace down if the car were operational.
Just looking for your thoughts!
Thanks