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I was working on a van that had a check engine light on. I connected my scan tool and received a code for a random misfire. As standard practice I followed the reset check engine light procedure and the code did not return on a short road test.

The driver stated that every once in a while when the vehicle was driven on long trips the engine would kick and sputter and the check engine light would come on.

I started with the usual suspects and checked the tune up items like the spark plugs and air/fuel filters. All looked good for a vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it.

The vehicle was running smooth as silk and the problem was definitely intermittent. This vehicle had a coil over plug set up that was fairly new at the time.

The other techs had no real input on this newer system. I took the next step and put an ohmmeter on each coil pack. All the coils tested good. The shop Foreman came over to look at the vehicle.

I told him since the problem was not happening now the problem could not be diagnosed now. He said your wrong it can be diagnosed. This was my first experience with the All-Data online program.

Can online auto repair manuals help you?

All-Data explained that the coil over plug system had multiple TSB's. When we dug into the bulletins themselves we discovered that the coils where failing under load when the vehicle was hot.

That’s why the coils tested good with the ohmmeter. The bulletin went on to explain that the rear coils had poor ventilation and where the most likely to fail due to the heat stress.

When I pulled the rear coils out I could see the bottom sides of both rear coils had hairline cracks in them. These coils passed the ohmmeter test but they where still bad.

With out All-Data’s auto repair help I would have most likely opted to replace all of the coils at a cost of $110.00 a coil. This online auto repair manual saved my customer $660.00 and saved me a lot of time.

Online auto repair manuals

The speedometer would get stuck at 55 mph and would not return to 0. After scanning the vehicle the auto scan tool registered the MPH correctly.

That meant the speed sensor was ok and the problem was in either the dash cluster or the wiring to the cluster. This time I went right for my online auto repair help program. I looked up TSB’s and recalls for the vehicle and then narrowed the hundreds of documents down to a couple by choosing my symptom.

It turns out that the manufacture knows about this problem and has extended the warranty for this failure. This is known as a special policy. The vehicle was not recalled because it was not considered a safety item and very few vehicles where effected.

We took the vehicle to the local dealer with the print out from our online auto repair manual (All-Data) and they replaced the cluster free of charge on a vehicle that was out of warranty.

If your still not convinced take a look a their auto repair help web site. Browse the testimonials and articles from other people this program has helped. And now for a limited time You can also have a Free Demo of the actual system before you buy it.

Hint: You may find the answers your looking for by using the sample vehicles in the demo.

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