Why does nobody talk about the lost art of diagnosing by ear?

Modern scanners can't replace the intuition gained from listening to an engine's subtle cues.

4 comments

4 Comments

But I gotta push back a little here. Those subtle cues can be misleading (heard a "normal" engine that was about to throw a rod once). Scanners just give you a clearer picture, plain and simple.

the_val3mo ago

I once trusted a 'smooth' idle right before a costly repair, so yeah, scanners win.

the_david3mo ago

Didn't that Popular Mechanics piece praise scanners for catching hidden problems?

bailey.miles3mo ago

Totally with you on that. A smooth idle can be a liar (my old Civic purred like a kitten right up until it dumped all its coolant on the highway). Scanners catch the stuff your ears and butt dyno miss, like a lazy O2 sensor trending rich long before the fuel trim goes fully haywire. I've seen engines with perfect compression readings on a gauge still have pending misfire codes that spelled doom for the cat converter. It's like having X-ray vision for the ECU, you know? Relying on feel alone is just gambling with very expensive dice.