How Vehicle Diagnostics works:

Vehicle Diagnostics means a car's self-diagnostic and reporting capability. Vehicle Diagnostics systems give us access to the status of different systems and sub-systems in your car. The amount of diagnostic information available has varied widely since the introduction in the early 1980s of on-board vehicle computers.

Early Vehicle Diagnostics simply light up a warning lamp on your dashboard - but didn't provide any detailed information regarding the problem, only that you had a problem!

Current Vehicle Diagnostics systems use a digital communications port to provide realtime information as well as diagnostic trouble codes which help us to quickly pinpoint and fix problems with you car.

Here you can see Sibot's Launch Control Vehicle Diagnostics tool connected to a car. The operator chooses the marque of vehicle and other details about the model so that the car's computer systems can decode the messages correctly.

A report can then be printed out which shows the systems or subsystems with faults and what the faults are. These faults can then be investigated and the problem(s) resolved!