x10xe EMU light on / engine near stalling on idle / no power

[jimi12369]

hi mate, ye just wanted to know what reader and software you got for your corsa, its a can of worms trying to get one, especially when, like mine its a 1ltr (3cyl t reg) breeze that you cant do the paperclip test on, plus ive heard only vauxhall can read these, and other reports telling me the cheap ones from ebay are naff, i want to buy one, but want to be clear in what im looking for. any help appreciated mate.

[dmiller]

Ah ok - I'm with you now

From what I can gather there are many different types of EMU interface, OBDII, OBDI, CAM-BUS etc.

Wiki has a very good article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics

OBDII is pretty standard across all cars from 2001 onwards - however before that cars tended to have a custom proprietary interface thats subtly different for each model in a manufactures car range and hugely different between manufactures. And the corsa-b is way before 2001. They use OBD-1 or OBD-1.5 depending on what you read.

For vauxhall corsa-b's there are actually two different OBD-I interfaces across the range - for those with the higher power engines that can do the paperclip test etc, for those with the lower power cars that you need the reader for as the pins are not wired the same.

The actual interface itself is a simply a pulse width modulated data bus - all the code reader needs to do is listen to two pins (ground and data) and be aware of the interface protocol to read the live data of the bus. All you are doing is listening into the comms from the EMU to the sensors. If you want to a bit more (read codes, reset learned settings such as ICV or O2 loop) then you need to short a third pin and the EMU will "listen" to what the code reader says and act on it.

This becomes interesting as not every car in the range uses the same pins, and certainly not the same protocol.

Therefore you need a tool that knows what pins to play with and what protocol to use - this is usually controlled in the software.

The best tool to get is therefore one that can listen to many pins (multiplex) and has the software to decode the data (VauxCheck) etc.

I bought this one:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWNX:IT

And its very good. It comes with the op-com software (looks exactly like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqrhF_6LDcQ ) and a USB to EMU connector.

It has the advantage that you can not only read and clear fault codes you can ask the EMU to re set up an ICV and re-learn the O2 loop etc.

Not only that but can you record live data - here is a link to a CSV file of me taking my corsa for a very short drive - I think I got it up to about 60mph and got the revs to 5.5k as I wanted to check how the sensors etc behaved so I have a baseline for if it breaks again... It can be downloaded from here (I have removed my vin number and immobilizer details):
http://www.sofi.org.uk/car_data.csv

I would open it in excel (or whatever you use for spread sheets).

The software I got is windows XP 32 bit only. It works fine in a virtual machine though (I use linux).

Well worth the £30.

[jimi12369]

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this, its very explanetary, it'll take me a while to absorb it all, but will buy one and give it a go, i have vista so can expect some probs, i think if people took a little time out and looked into this sort of thing they would'nt keep getting ripped of by garages who dont know the difference between a 13amp plug to an exaust backbox, ive read so many threads on tinternet about people (mainly first car owners) facing up to a £1000 garage bills, where the garage, after charging appx £40 for a readout, then swopping sensor after sensor basically guessing on the problem and sucking money from each visit.
Thanks so much.

[jimi12369]

Hello again, sorry to be a pain but forgot to ask where you got your software version 090714_EN from and is the origional software no use to me?
thanks again.

[dmiller]

Ah I got it from google - it must have been on the first page of links - I dont know what the forum rules are here so I dont think I can hot link it.