Teachaman

I've been working on cars since I was a kid, but never got beyond OBD when it comes to diagnostics. What do you folks use for diagnostics?
I looked at the YOUCANIC (On sale now for $500). Looks like a pretty good unit. Any thoughts?

Max Blast

I bought a MBStar C3 clone system on an ancient laptop PC six years ago and it’s paid for itself many times over. There are more modern implementations of the same capability in the product that Ben’s ninja offers, with the added benefit of remote assistance.

Whatever you do get developer mode enabled so that you can make program changes to the car and for that, you generally have to run a pirated takeoff of Mercedes system, not a commercially developed compatible system.

Also, check out legit streetcars on YouTube. He uses an autel system, that also has limited developer mode functionality. It seems all in one box. My system is a bit clunky with the PC power supply and Mux box with thick ungainly cables. Also limitations to the pirate approach is that you can never hook it up to the Internet of your house because the first thing this old PC will do is call home to China and download all kinds of malware.

BenzNinja

iTrader: (4)

https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...benzninja.html

eric_in_sd

What Autel is he using? I looked through the videos and after a while my eyes hurt too much to keep scrolling.

OP,
There are basically four tiers:
$10 Bluetooth dongle for your OBD port, use Torque to read basic stuff like codes and coolant temp
$200 iCaRsOfT MBII allows MB-specific queries, like Airmatic pressures
$800+ Autel MP808 or higher, allows specific commands, like opening and closing Airmatic valves, writing variant coding to ECU, etc
~$1K STAR clone

On the last two: Autel allows you to work on different vehicles, and is more compact, but the STAR systems allow you to go deeper and presumably more reliably.

Ideally I think you would get both. I carry my Autel with me in the vehicle, but I sure would like to be able to tweak stuff in developer mode.

Teachaman

Why would a person want reprogram the car's systems? I hear about people tuning their cars this way, to make it faster, but I'll assume that the engineers at MB are smarter than me.

pmercury

iTrader: (2)

reading is a good option

justin3219

One benefit of having a system with programming capabilities is that you can buy used parts and code them to work with your vehicle.
Some parts require the VIN to match etc.

Tsumi

In my case I used it to enable trailer detection and all that on my R class. I also disabled the navigation unit and enabled manually setting the clock when I removed the stock navigation system for one of those Android ones.