In today’s automotive environment, state of the art diagnostic equipment is quite simply essential.

BMW Mini work very closely with control unit manufactures to produce component ECU’s that year by year are more advanced. As such these control units no longer just drive a component, they can monitor, adjust and log faults simultaneously.

When a non-specialist garage connects their universal code reader to your vehicle they have quite literally got access to one control module (DME or DDE – this is the main engine ECU). From this process they can extract something called a P-Code which was perfectly fine back in 1996, however time has moved on and a P-Code from one ECU doesn’t even skim the surface.

We use the latest Autologic tablet systems throughout our workshop. Autologic is a diagnostic tool uniquely designed to replicate and improve on the functionality of the tool used by BMW themselves.

On a modern Mini you will have no less than 10 separate control units (even on a base model) all working behind the scenes to allow the end product to work as well as it does. This is a massive step forward in the diagnostic world as each control unit can now further monitor an individual working component and store the data locally.

As an example, here is a list of separate control units from a typical early 2002 R50 Mini that our diagnostic equipment can communicate with individually (Bare in mind this is based on a older vehicle, newer vehicles are even more advanced):

All of the above control units are connected via the vehicle’s internal network (CAN). As you can see, even these early (simple) vehicles are far more complex than what initially meets the eye.

For more information please contact one of our friendly team who will be happy to help.

At Grosvenor we charge a flat rate of £74.92 + VAT for electronic diagnostics & coding.