remicks

Yup, I used to use them to test circuits and waveforms but I haven't used one in years. With all the nice new test equipment like spectrum analyzers and fireberds they have taken a back shelf.

Starfury

Oscilloscopes are fantastic pieces of equipment, as long as you know how to read them. They're absolutely essential for modern vehicles (although you more commonly use Digital Storage Oscilloscopes, DSO's), but are very handy for diagnosing ignition problems in non-computerized vehicles. Between an oscilloscope and a vacuum gauge, you can easily diagnose head gaskets, compression problems, broken valve springs, bad coils, bad wires/plugs, and a lot more that isn't coming to mind right now.

65rangoon

then i must be the exception .. im only 24 so im in the younger crowd but ive been around & known of o-scopes since i was about 16.

gotta love doin a lot of mechanical engineering type classes in HS and goin to a tech school for robotics &automation haha.

hell a lot of the software i use show certain aspects of a machine as a sine wave like youd see on an o-scope.

67 evil eleanor

In the day, I remember them called a "Sun" machine. They had a oscilloscope built in and some offer many other features like a gas detector, timing light, dwell meter, vacuum and so on. We used them to tune our 440 PI's. You could watch the points float out on the single point distrubitors at about 5K RPMs. The dual points was the ones to have. It seems like when the CO level was low, the more power the engine made. I'd love to fine one just to keep. Its been a while since I've seen one. I had a problem with the 428 a few months ago. I borrowed a "Snap On" hand held machine from one of my friends. It found a dead plug right off the bat and was able to fix it that afternoon. I jsut hooked it up, done a recording, took it back to my mechanic friend, he looked at and he told me which plug to change. Fixed!!!! I was impressed.

flickjo68

Wow, I love this forum. I thought at first that the OP was getting set-up by the mechanic as some of the others did lol. I've never heard of that machine until now. That's what I love about this place -learning something new.

Starfury

Sun still makes lots of auto diagnostic equipment, although they're not as dominant as they used to be. The most common Sun tools I see are charging system diagnostic carts.

The shop at the local JC still has one of the huge Sun machines with the big ignition display and all the nifty tools. It doesn't get used much, what with the availability of modern scan tools and DSO's, but it's still cool.

One of the coolest and most rare pieces of Sun equipment I've seen is the Sun distributor machine. It was designed for setting the advance curves on distributors and is still a really handy tool to have. If I ever find one for sale, I'll buy it.

67mustang302

You need to find out what kind of machine this mechanic is talking about. I've met some pretty freakin clueless "mechanics" that don't know what carburetors are and never knew cars came with computers.

And I haven't seen an oscilloscope in a shop in years....I'd be shocked to know anyone still had one around.

Carlos Pineiro

The cash register.

CP

OK j/k

kalli

that's the machine I was talking about. In Germany we abviopusly used Bosch instead of Sun though ;-)

but yes, as 67m302 says, what machine?

2+2GT

Back in the 70's my shop had a machine with a big analog meter, and simply by selecting which function switch you could check individual ignition wires, kill each cylinder to check compression, all sorts of stuff, everything an O-scope could do. It was a roller cart the size of an electronic music keyboard.