VCI repaired...

[GiveMeABreak]

Right! Now time to go off diagnosing....

I hope you appreciate I won't be disassembling my VCI as I'm not tempting fate!

[Rhothgar]

Folks!

Replacement cable arrived today. BINGO!

Up and running Lexia again.

I've identified the optocouplers as being Fairchild. But would love to see a photo of anyone's Rev C board to see if it is possible to upgrade the components as the optocouplers on my board have two different designations.

Made up that my resoldering of the IC chip and the serial connector hasn't affected anything.

AND...

It's DOWN AGAIN!

It actually only lasted about 3 years. If you have been following my posts you will have seen that a neighbour gave me what looks to be a very early genuine Actia unit. Problem now is I have two Lexia. My old one in bits and I am trying to find a replacement main connector for it as one of the 15 pins to the PCB broke off.

The issue I am having with the neighbour's one is that I get the green light and that is nice and steady but it simply will not communicate at times with the ECU and when it does, it comes back with a full list of NO when trying to communicate.

I have bought a not so cheapo Motopower MP69040 from Amazon and await its arrival today. I am pretty sure that this will communicate fine as the ELM327 I have communicates fine but the Lexia doesn't. It's like the Lexia has forgotten which protocol it works on. Having had a brief read up last night, it seems the Lexia either works on ISO9141 and/or KWP2000.

I also noted that the network adapter needs to be enabled for it to work. That got me thinking. Some years ago our friend Jim from Easy Diagnostics spent hours remotely reinstalling the software on my laptop. I have a feeling that it was plugged in with an ethernet cable. That adapter is enabled still as is the Wi-fi adapter and a mini-Port adapter of some kind.

I couldn't remember the PSA Interface Checker programme and am not sure what that is for anymore. I have a copy somewhere so I'd better put that on the laptop and click it and see what happens. Am running 7.57. I tried to read the 2013 3008 but wasn't sure which software to use. I tried PP2000 and Diagbox. It saw the ECU's or at least provided me with a list of all the ECU's but wouldn't connect to them.

Do I need to get my hot air rework station switched on and go around some of the chips inside I wonder?

Obviously, your issue was with the data cable side. I have pondered over the last few nights whether the Lexia takes any power from the OBD socket and powers up the 'other' side of the Lexia?

[Rhothgar]

Was that one of the vacuum pump type stations or hot air? I think owing to the amount of metal in the connector and the plated through holes it might need to be worked off using hot air to keep things flowing. Also, it sometimes helps to re-solder everything with fresh 60/40 solder as the original lead-free stuff can be a pain to work with & usually desoldering works better once it's been "diluted" with the good stuff.

If you get fed up of it & in no rush you'd be welcome to post it over here & I could have a look at it. I don't have hot air (well, Emma may disagree!) but am pretty patient with fiddly soldering!

Hi mate. Could I have your thoughts on my above post when you have a moment please? I am not sure if you will get a notification of me replying to myself hence replying to one of your posts. I wish I'd have tapped you up in 2023 when it went again. The thing is I ended up messing about with the terminals in the OBD port instead of checking the forum for further advice (having cleanly forgotten about this post!) and may have done damage to some pins.

Despite that ELM327 type scanners still read.

Pin 1 is ignition power.
Pin 16 is battery power.
Pin 15 is L Line (this looks a little open)
Pin 7 is K Line (this looks a little open too)

I might try and tweak them closed a bit.

[Rhothgar]

An update on this.

The new OBD scanner clearly can communicate so the problem must lie with the Lexia or perhaps section of the ECU (after all I have been in there and done Heath Robinson repairs to keep the car alive).

I installed PSA Interface Checker V3. The screen is blank with the VCI plugged in. I click Activate and then on Version and it reports V4.3.2 which seems to correlate correctly with a post by Marc (Givemeabreak).

So this adopted Lexia is basically like the old Rev B clones. The diode at D2 has loads of soldering on it so it has clearly been repaired and must have had problems in that area. I swapped out that part of the board for the one in my old Lexia. No change on Global Test. Everything says NO.

Test by function simply tells me there is no communication with the ECU (but there must be because the OBD scanner is reading it)?

Have had a scan of both boards with a x10 jeweller's loupe and couldn't spot anything other than the D2 diode but I feel that has been ruled out with the swap unless mine has gone too? I could do a diode test I suppose to rule that out.

On installing V.7.57, does part of the process tie the software to the specific Lexia that has been plugged in I wonder? Should I try a reinstall bearing in mind that the last time I tried to do it Jim at ED ended up doing it for me. As super helpful as Jim is I cannot expect him to reinstall it again and I think he would probably not do it as he has this new interface now that he plugs instead of Lexia.