Hello and welcome to this video on Pico diagnostics
This particular video is going to concentrate on how to carry out
A very quick and simple cylinder balance test using our
PicoScope and the Pico diagnostics software
Before we take a look at how to set up our software
And how to carry out the test itself
We are going to take a quick look at how to connect up our hardware
That is required in order to run this test
Therefore if you take a look at the video in the bottom right had corner of the screen
You can see that I already have my test lead connected
And that this has been connected to battery positive and also to battery ground
And this has been connected to channel A of the PicoScope
In terms of connecting up our hardware that is all that is required
A very quick and simple connection to the vehicle battery
So if we move on now and take a look at the software
In order to carry out the test we simply click on the cylinder balance icon
On the left hand side of the screen
This then opens up the cylinder balance test application within Pico diagnostics
And you can see we are instantly presented with this recently new feature
Which is our enhanced setup wizard
Now you can see from page 1 of the wizard
That we have a very brief list of instructions
That we need to carry out to ensure we get a good signal
In order for our software to test
So if we work through all of the stages together we can see that stage 1
Is telling us to connect channel A of the PicoScope to the electrical system
I have already done this direct to the vehicle battery
However you may work on an application were either the battery is not accessible
Or where the battery is positioned for example in the rear of the vehicle
Where a good signal strength can not be easily obtained
Therefore what you can do is go directly on to the back of the alternator
Now please be careful with going on the back of the alternator
Because as we know the alternator is usually driven off an auxiliary belt
So there are reciprocating moving parts there
but also on most modern applications now where engines are being made
More compact to fit into smaller engine bays
The alternator can be positioned near quite hot components
Such as the exhaust so if we are going to use the alternator as an option
Just be careful that we are not going to cause any danger to ourselves
Or that our equipment is not going to be positioned where
It could cause problems later on in the test
Now if we take a look at stage 2
You can see that it is asking me now to switch on my headlights
And stage 3 is asking me to start the engine
So I am going to turn on my headlights
And start the engine
If we take a look at stage 4
We can see that the software is doing a quick voltage check for us
And again that is streaming live
You can see that it is giving me around 13.6 to 13.8 Volts
This is a slightly higher than our normal output at engine idle
And that is because we have the headlights on
What we have tried to do there is to put a slight electrical load on the vehicle
To give us a good signal output
What we are going to do now is click on next
The next page of the wizard is where the software needs to know how many
Cylinders there are on the application we are going to test
On this particular application it is a 4 cylinder engine
And you can see that 4 was already selected for me by the software
As the default option
All I need to do now is click on the next button so we can move on in the wizard
The final part of the wizard is our signal strength meter
You can see that I have a good RPM output there of 850 RPM
Which on this particular application is perfect
But you can see by the meter itself that I have got a
Very good strong signal at approximately 90 to 95% although it is slightly fluctuating
When you come to carry out the test you may see that your signal
Could be very weak and it could be orange or it could even be a
Red very poor signal
That could be for a number of factors
Where the battery is positioned or where the connection is
But you can improve this by simply adding on extra ancillaries thus increasing
The electrical load on the engine
Now to do this you can simply turn on ancillaries such as heated windscreen
Interior heater front or rear fog lights and also taking up our dipped beam to main beam
Just enough ancillaries to get our signal strength up
As you can see mine is very good
I am going to click finish to complete the wizard
And accept all the information I have put in
All we need to now in order to carry out and run the test is simply click
On the start button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen
You can see that our software and scope are talking to each other getting our data
And you can see there we are presented on screen with a live streaming
Output of what each of our cylinders are contributing towards that engine
Now note that I have said that this is live
In previous versions this has been in recorded and presented on screen
However now a recent enhancement to the software means we can run this test live
This is very useful as if a cylinder was to drop out or was to misfire
Whilst we are running the test we would see this on the screen
Now to prove this what I am going to do is disconnect injector 3 on the engine
And what we would hope to see is that one of our cylinders is going to drop out
And then when I connect it back up we will see that come back up again
So I am going to go ahead and do that now
You can hear the engine is not very happy
You can see that our signal on cylinder C or our output I should say
Has dropped to 10% now the reason it has given a 10% reading not zero
Is that if you think of that cylinder now it is acting like an air pump
So we do still have compression taking place
Which is going to give us a resistance on our piston and con rod
And this will be seen by the alternator
Now if I plug the injector back in what we should see
Is an increase back up to 98 maybe 100%
There we go we are back up nearly at 100%
What is also very useful is you look at the bottom of the screen just under each bar
You can see that there is a counter which is increasing all the time
This is our sample count and you can see that we are already approaching 2700 samples
But if you take a look at cylinder C you will see that this has 800 counted misfires
If you look at cylinders A B and D you can see that these are very low around 100
And the reason for that is every time a misfire occurs or the software detects a misfire
It registers this as a count
So cylinder C has a very high misfire count compared to the number of samples taken
As this was the cylinder which we dropped out
You can also see that we have our RPM meter still at the bottom of the screen
And this is recording live and our signal strength meter is still there as well
This is very important as if our signal were to drop out and the results
Were to alter on the screen
We would know straight away that it was not our engine but the signal
And the we could rectify that by changing the electrical load on the engine
I hope this video has been of some assistance to you and helps you when
You come to carry out a cylinder balance test
Thank you for watching this video