Computer printout - what would it show?

[Weaverama]

Let's say you are looking at buying a used ski that has a computer. Now I am new at all this so this might be a dumb question. Why wouldn't the seller have on hand, a computer printout from a dealer that shows any codes that have been thrown or why don't buyers ask for one? What can you determine by hooking the ski up to a computer and seeing how the engine has performed? Never seen one myself but my dealer said they can see everthing I ahve been up to on mine.

Case in point... a buddy of mine has this wife who went out and bought a used Kaw 1200. It never ran well and was always going into limp mode. He took it to a dealer who placed it on the computer where it was deternined that the skis brain had overheated numerous times. (what he found to be a problem with these old Kaw's)

So am I oversimplifying this by asking why wouldn't the printout be a helpful selling tool? I don't see it suggested in any threads on buying used ski's.

Thanks.

 

[biggsy]

I was considering buying a pair of ex-hire jetski's advertised on ebay, this was my motivation for asking the question of how long could or should a 4 stroke engine last. I managed to find a very helpful mechanic who agreed to come with me to check out these ski's with his analyser. I've got to say it was money very well spent. Rob was extremely forthcoming on the trip out the Jetski's - they were represented as "approx 300 hours, always routinely serviced and all necessary parts replaced" .

The analyser showed 459 hours on one , but wouldnt talk to the other, there was a 3rd one there so Rob hooked that up to the analyser too - over 530 hours. The last Seadoo service was done in June 2006 - a couple of months after purchase and almost 5 years ago now. It also showed a number of fault codes that Rob wasn't too happy about. One good thing the printout showed was that the ski's had spent virtually all their lives in the low to medium rev range - nothing at the 2 highest rev bands - so I guess that was one positive. The Ski's had obviously been knocked about a fair bit and there was considerable corrosion on the alloy parts too.

As a result of the comments on my previous post and the printout and advice Rob gave me I decided to give these a miss. Apparently it was the 3rd time they had been listed on ebay and I suspect the previous purchasers may have backed out when they saw the condition of these. They have again been listed as sold - good luck to the new purchaser - I doubt they were lucky enough to have seen the printouts before purchasing.

I've just picked up a brand new GTi - can't wait to get up the river tomorrow (Australia Day) and start running it in.

 

[Sea Dood]

I have experience with looking at the info contained in hundreds of Sea Doo MPEM's and ECU's. The bottom line is that the Sea Doo ECU's don't store info that is useful from a ski purchase perspective. Even the history charts don't tell you that much; almost all skis have a profile that is low/mid weighted. The story you told about a ski "not having been serviced since 2006" is misleading. All the dealer is looking at is a service reset function, that doesn't mean anything about how the ski has been serviced. Many dealer techs don't bother to reset this, and a ski could have been serviced regularly either by an owner or independent shop who didn't have the tool to reset the service counter in the ECU. Note that the later MPEM's and ECU's (DI's and 4-tecs) have a "parts replacement" history function. The dealer tech is supposed to log parts replaced and other service items in this record. After looking at countless MPEM's and ECU's, I have NEVER seen anything logged in this section. And one more point about the service counter reset; someone could have beaten the piss out of their ski for 5 years, never even changed the oil, and take it to the dealer right before selling it to get the service counter reset. You could hook up to it and see that it had just been "serviced". What does that tell you? You are much better off having someone knowledgeable about what you are buying assist you in determining how the ski has been treated and its overall condition versus relying on data from the computer.