For technicians

It gives you an answer, not homework.

You are on a clock, on a car somebody needs back today. A list of nine possible causes is not help. It is the same problem, retyped.

AceDxReading from Autel MaxiSys
RO-4471
2019 Silverado 5.3L · 128,442 mi
Best call
87PERCENT
Ignition coil, cylinder 1
Swap and retest before you touch the plugs.
Part D513CLabor 0.6 hr
Evidence
DTC P0301DTC P0300Cyl-1 misfires 2,914Freeze frame 1,842 rpm
Not confirmed: compression on cyl 1 untested. Call does not rest on it.
Amber · awaiting retest
How it treats you

Built by people who assume you already know what you’re doing.

Both of these are answers to the same car. Only one of them is a decision you can act on.

Same car, same question2019 Silverado 5.3L. P0301 and P0300, rough at idle, smooths out at 2,000.
A chat assistant
A P0301 code indicates a misfire detected in cylinder 1, while P0300 indicates random or multiple cylinder misfires. There are several possible causes you may want to investigate. The ignition coil for that cylinder is a common culprit, as is a worn or fouled spark plug. You should also consider the fuel injector, which may be clogged or electrically failed. Compression loss from a burned valve, worn ring, or head gasket is another possibility worth ruling out. Additionally, wiring or connector faults on the coil or injector circuit can produce these symptoms, and a vacuum leak local to that runner may also be responsible. I would recommend starting with a visual inspection and then testing each component systematically to narrow down the cause.
123 words. Now you decide which part of it to act on.
AceDx
87%Ignition coil, cylinder 1
Swap and retest before you touch the plugs.
DTC P0301DTC P03002,914 cyl-1 misfiresFreeze framePart D513CLabor 0.6 hr
12 words. Then you are turning a wrench.
Illustrative of the two formats, not a screenshot of either product.
The clock

Where the time actually goes.

Flat rate doesn’t pay for the forty minutes you spent deciding what to test first.

A driveability job, start to finish
Working it from a code
Deciding where to start
Testing
Repair
Working it from a verdict
~13 sec
Testing
Repair
Same scale, same job. Flat rate never paid for the first block anyway.
Illustrative. The testing and the repair don't get shorter. The part where you decide what to test does.
Before
Pull codes, look up the code, read three forum threads and a TSB, form a theory, start testing.
With AceDx
Pull codes. ~13 seconds later you have a call, a confidence number, and the one test that would prove it wrong.
The difference
The tool does the part that is reading, not the part that is judgment. You still make the call. You just start from a real starting point instead of a blank page.
The record

The log works for you too.

Everything AceDx writes to the repair order is a record of what you were told and what you decided. That cuts both ways, and mostly it cuts your way.

What gets written down

  • +What the tool called, and how sure it was
  • +What evidence that call was standing on
  • +What you actually did, including overruling it
  • +Whether the fault stayed gone on retest

Why that’s on your side

When a car comes back and somebody asks what happened, “I made a judgment call” is a weak position. “Here is what the data said, here is what I did, and here is why” is not.

And when you overrule the tool and you’re right, that’s in the record too.

Fair questions

What techs ask us first.

Is this here to replace me?

No, and not as a reassurance. It is a description of what it does. It reads data and weighs evidence. It doesn’t drive the car, feel the miss, hear the noise, put hands on a connector, or decide what to tell a customer. Every one of those is the job.

What it replaces is the twenty minutes you spend at the start of a driveability job deciding where to begin.

What if it’s wrong?

Overrule it. It takes one tap, and the evidence it used is right there so you can see where it went off. The retest catches it too, and the call never goes green.

We’d rather it be catchably wrong than confidently wrong, which is the failure mode of every tool that just talks.

Do I have to learn a new scan tool?

No. It reads what your existing tool already pulls. Nothing changes about the box on your cart or how you use it.

Does my boss see when I disagree with it?

The disagreement is logged, and we think that’s right. A tool that’s consistently wrong on your platforms is something the shop needs to know. It’s a record of a decision, not a demerit.

Try to catch it being wrong.

Genuinely. That's what the pilot is for. If it can't hold up on the cars in your bay, we need to know that before anybody pays for it.