Hi All,
Just ordered my PICO kit from Auto Nerdz and will begin to use on troubleshooting control systems for heavy equipment. We use alot of CAN-BUS, PWM and controls on modern equipment these days so I hope this tool provides an easier way to see whats going when we are troubleshooting.. Hope to share info later once I get up to speed.
BK

Welcome to the group, I'm a Transit Bus Tech myself, what do you work on?  If you work on any Cummins Engines me and Jim Davis have quite a few posts on them in the Cummins Bus forum in the Pico group area, as a few other guys as well.  Check it out.  If you have any questions more than happy to help. 

Hi Busjockey,
Sorry for the delay in replying I have been burried up with other issues and just catching up on Auto Nerdz now. I work on mobile cranes, and yes for the most part we have Cummins although we have series 90 Detroits and CAT's as well. Our machines now days have up to 6 or seven different buses running various controls so we have no shortage of CAN errors going on. Thanks for the tip, I will start to browse thru the info in the evenings and get caught up on whats available. BK

BK welcome aboard.  You should find it extremely useful and there is no shortage of helpful people on here.

Hi, Im also new to this and a heavy equipment tech - Deere construction. I have such success troubleshooting CAN with my Vantage that I want to expand with this scope stuff. The possibilities seem endless. I'm working on my boss to get a Pico paid for.

Welcome Nate, if there is anything I can help you with, let me know.  Hope you get the kit, You"ll then have acess to Cummins Bus and the Diesel Forum.  :)

One more thing Nate, if you'd like I could send some pics of stuff I have done using my scope to fix things or I could talk to your service manager and give him the run down what you can do with this scope.  The possibilities are endless.  You are only limited by your imagination :)  Let me know.

One idea I had that I'm not sure will work - We have a lot of fuel quality issues causing sticky or scored injectors. Currently I have to attempt to measure return flow from individual nozzles - the plumbing can be almost impossible - or flush the system with cleaning chemical and prescribe several fuel tank treatments to isolate the issue - customers don't like this and cannot be trusted to complete the treatment. Relative contribution, misfire and compression tests aren't helping me much as all the cylinders generally are affected. Is it possible to monitor injector coil amperage and fuel rail pressure sensor voltage with enough detail to see the pressure drop in the rail every time an injector fires? I'm thinking a scored injector will over deliver fuel and a sticky one will deliver less fuel maybe at the wrong time?

I wrote my bosses a nice paper listing some of the things I could do with a Pico. They are making decisions now. I'd almost be happier if I bought it myself so I didn't feel like I had to prove anything to them. I'll have one some day soon one way or the other.

NateLadd wrote on Sep 28^th, 2014 at 8:48am:

I wrote my bosses a nice paper listing some of the things I could do with a Pico. They are making decisions now. I'd almost be happier if I bought it myself so I didn't feel like I had to prove anything to them. I'll have one some day soon one way or the other.

I couldn't convince my bosses to purchases one either after trying for several months.  I decided to finally figure out a way to purchase one myself.  I had also just had a son, so it was a fairly easy decision to sell my motorcycle and use the money to purchase a Pico kit and a WPS kit.  I miss my motorcycle every once in a while, but I don't regret it at all.  Good Luck!

NateLadd wrote on Sep 28^th, 2014 at 8:42am:

I'm thinking a scored injector will over deliver fuel and a sticky one will deliver less fuel maybe at the wrong time

welcome aboard the nerdz site
Not an expert in diesel or heavy but You may want to ask in the diesel section.

Can you give us an idea on these control systems or point us to an web site with data?
second thing, is there any feed-back control? you must have scanner data? any injector readings?

Thanks for the welcome
I work on John Deere construction. We see a lot of Bosch common rail.
I can get good scanner data from my John Deere diagnostic tools and have good bi-direction control. I've been told that the ECU uses the rail pressure sensor as feedback to control the suction control valve (maybe that is a Deere name - it's the valve controlling pressure from the high pressure pump)  The ECU can trip a DTC for a 'Failed Nozzle' if it does not see the rail pressure drop when it fires an injector. I really just was curious if a Pico would get enough detail from the rail pressure sensor for me to see this pressure drop and compare that to the voltage or amperage wave of a particular injector. There is an example wave form on the Pico web site that doesn't show much detail - maybe it can be 'zoomed in on' or the time sweep changed? Am I saying that right? I want to find the minor nozzle trouble long before DTC is set by the ECU. In my experience, the misfire is severe before a nozzle DTC is set.
I'm working on getting everything I need to experiment with this. It has been suggested that I use crank signal instead of injector. When I have a chance, I'll try both.

Thank you all for the help already given. I new to forums and not sure how this all works yet.

ooops.  :-/ Thought the common rail pressure sensor was Bosch but the whole system in Denso. I got started with this message in the wrong place. Sorry - I'll quit now. All I meant to say was welcome to a fellow heavy equipment guy - bkhitech.