VCDS Alternatives?

[wolfie]

Now as much as I'd like to treat myself to VCDS, I can't really justify spending £220+ on something that may get used once in a blue moon. What, if any, alternatives are there out there that have good functionality but have a more modest budget? I'd like to be able to do some of the more routine coding changes but also adapt setting should I need to change components at some time in the future. I was thinking along the lines of maybe removing and cleaning the throttle position assembly. Or even replacing the cam chain.

Any suggestions?

[peter_dk25]

the Pro version:
https://obdeleven.com/

[ciclo]

IMHO
At present, it is hardly worth buying a car if you do not have a good diagnostic tool.

Original VCDS is worth 100% for VAG cars. It can be amortized with a single use if this is the reason for its purchase.

Other reasons:
- Free updates. Lots of people and a lot of work (time/money/knowledge) behind all this.
- Technical Support, Forum, etc.
- Widely used worldwide. This is a very important detail, 'Super important for any user'
- Ease of use, fast diagnostic tool, etc...


VW Golf = 20K-40K pounds.
VCDS = 200 pounds.


Hmm... nothing to think. Do it! (my jokes, as ever)

[Willni]

Wish I had VCDs had a member do some coding for me tonight and he said fake ones don't work always work. Plus the real ones at £200-300 you'll get the value back when you go to sell since free updates etc.

[wolfie]

IMHO
At present, it is hardly worth buying a car if you do not have a good diagnostic tool.

Original VCDS is worth 100% for VAG cars. It can be amortized with a single use if this is the reason for its purchase.

Other reasons:
- Free updates. Lots of people and a lot of work (time/money/knowledge) behind all this.
- Technical Support, Forum, etc.
- Widely used worldwide. This is a very important detail, 'Super important for any user'
- Ease of use, fast diagnostic tool, etc...


VW Golf = 20K-40K pounds.
VCDS = 200 pounds.


Hmm... nothing to think. Do it! (my jokes, as ever)

I sort of agree, VCDS is easily the best choice in view of it's functionality and support and widespread use, if cost were not an issue I wouldn't think twice. But it's not a case of buying something to use every day on 40K worth of Golf. It's a case of something to use occasionally on a 6+ year old Polo. It's an expensive purchase for something that may get used a couple of times a year at a push, or just when things start playing up. My tinkering under the bonnet every weekend days are far behind me, so it's just not justifiable to spend over £200 on something will sit in the cupboard for 95%+ of the time. Plus I'm sure many of it's feature would be beyond my ability to make use of them.

One question for you. Is it's use restricted to VAG vehicles, or will it function on any vehicle with an OBD-II port?

[iichel]

some generic OBD2 functions will on all cars, like reading DTC and readiness from engine ECU. other functions like coding and adapations are unique to VAG cars.

[wolfie]

some generic OBD2 functions will on all cars, like reading DTC and readiness from engine ECU. other functions like coding and adapations are unique to VAG cars.

Is it capable of monitoring live data from MAF, MAP, Lambda, throttle position, etc??? Something I'd be particularly interested in would be valve timing with view to checking for cam chain elongation on the Polo.

[RUM4MO]

Just one thing, quite a lot of people that currently own a VW Group car/van will go on to buy another, for me part of that reasoning is that I have a proper VW Group compliant scan tool, ie VCDS and generally speaking, allows me to be in charge of things when my car has problems!

Put it this way, if any modern VW Group car rear brake bulbs fail, the car behaves in a strange but curious way - you book it into a VW Group dealership - basic diagnostics = £100+ - problem revealed, blown brake light bulb(s)! Trust me that does happen, a friend of mine who's wife had a Golf had this happen to her car, and paid that sort of money only to discover it was a faulty brake light bulb or two, hopefully if the owner, or their husband/partner is smart enough, that will only happen once, but by then £120+ has been spent.

Another, there used to be a cheap scan tool from Gendan that covered engine+SRS+AUTO TRANS+ABS, but since VW Group improved/changed their ways of doing things, that tool ran out of life back in maybe 2006.

I have Carista for checking for problems while away from home, it is seriously limited in what it can do when compared with VCDS, but as a scan tool to assist normal revealing of faults, it is okay, your problem would be forgetting about re-coding any modules, although Carista has, for every model, a list of "most asked for" car changes, so you would still be able to do what seems to be asked for most of the time. If you do buy Carista, make sure that you buy their expensive dongle as it looks like most other cheaper ones can be problematic - unless you are very lucky.

Other option, have a chat with Gendan, ie email them - tell them what you would still like to be able to do and they will make a suggestion from their range of scan tools etc.

Quote:- ciclo wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2017 8:02 pm
IMHO At present, it is hardly worth buying a car if you do not have a good diagnostic tool.

When my wife received a survey from VW after buying her Polo, I filled it in for her and in the section roughly described by "what was the main reason that you bought a VW Polo?" I smugly wrote, on her behalf, "because my husband owns VCDS scan tool!"

[pipsyp]

Carista is good and relatively inexpensive. You just buy a cheap ELM327 bluetooth dongle, download the app then its £8.99 for a weeks access I believe to carry out changes.

I used it on my Polo to add anti-hijack, turn off convenience opening, increase the Coming Home lighting to 90 secs and also turn off the annoying ignition on bleep. You can also request to become a BETA tester, whereby you get access to the service FOC in return for testing some of their new coding. It never breaks anything, just either works or doesnt do anything.

[ciclo]

...
When my wife received a survey from VW after buying her Polo, I filled it in for her and in the section roughly described by "what was the main reason that you bought a VW Polo?" I smugly wrote, on her behalf, "because my husband owns VCDS scan tool!"

Haha! Great, I think my wife also wrote something similar.
The good thing is that VW facilitates these surveys so we can tell the first thing that comes out to our mind at those times.

[ag69]

Good one ciclo.
Absolutely agree!!

[wolfie]

Having never seen VCDS in the flesh so to speak, just exactly what type of things can it do? Most of the post I've seen, appear to be related to fairly trivial coding changes in the BCM, to modify how this, that or the other works. But can it read, plot and store data in real-time as an aid to fault finding? Is there a list of it's functions/capabilities anywhere?

[RUM4MO]

VCDS can do all that - in fact VCDS would have initially have been reversed engineered from the dealer level diagnostic tool, so reading data is what it will have been made to do and it comes with VAG SCOPE, I think it is called, so you can select a few signals from a smart controller and log them with time.

Being able to use it to change things is just an offshoot of being able to read and talk to all these smart controllers.

Edit:- I don't think that anyone has written a complete "dummies guide to VCDS" that covers each and every model and each variation of each model. It is a bit like buying a socket set, what you do with it will normally only be limited by your own ability - that does not take anything away from the fact that most of us only investigate certain areas of its use and would find a comprehensive dummies guide quite handy!

[wolfie]

I did have a little peek at the Ross-Tech site to see if they had any guides or "How-to's." But as you say it's a tool, the complexity of what can be done is probably more limited by the users abilities and knowledge than the tool itself. If I'm honest I really didn't need any winning over, it appears to be the most comprehensive diagnostic tool at the money on the market; the go-to tool for any VAG owner wants to do their own maintenance/repairs. In the great scheme of things a couple of hundred quid spread over a few years of ownership won't break the bank. For the moment I just don't have the spare cash, so for the time being, moving it to the top of the "wish-list" will have to suffice.

One thing I did notice on RossTech site is that the price appears to vary depending on usage. Not quite sure how that works, it would appear that the software becomes tied to a vehicles VIN number in some way. But as I've never seen it used, I'm just guessing.

https://store.ross-tech.com/shop/vchv2_ent/

As you say, most folk tend to only use these tools for a single fix or fault, and are possibly put off from using them more by their complexity. I think a "dummies guide" guide would be a great idea and also offer some insight into what can be done for the potential buyer/user.

Cheers

[RUM4MO]

I think that the way that VCDS is being sold has changed a bit, it has been priced in different ways to allow a single or single household user to be able to do everything that VCDS can do to something like say 3 cars, but it will always also as a normal scan tool for diagnostics work for more cars.

I bought VAG-COM maybe 15 years ago and as things moved on I upgraded to VCDS HEX-CAN (I think) by handing my VAG-COM cable back to my original supplier and buying the newer version from them. Now I see that that version will eventually become redundant, ie will lose support/updates in the next few years, so once again I will need to stuff more money into having this tool, but now with some VIN limitations as you pointed out - that will just mean that any friends that want my help will need to cover these extra charges if they want any adaption carried out, if/when I buy our next cars, I will also need to buy some extra VIN coverage, but that is the way things go.

As pointed out in an earlier posting, buying a modern car and not having a good compatible diagnostic tool really does leave you in the hands of the money grabbers.

If you intend to "stay" in the VW Group "family", your best plan will be to buy the latest VCDS HEX-V2 USB with either the basic " 3 car/VIN" or "10 car/VIN" which costs £74 extra, remember the upgrade at a later date once you have run out of VINs is currently £169 - so quite a jump, pity it is presently not possible to delete VINs once you sell the car on as you would still be only able to use it fully on 3 cars/VINs.