A friend who's husband passed away has several oscilloscopes he used for HAM radio. Can these be used for anything automotive?

 

I think they can be used to analyze something in the electrical system, like if the current has a weird frequency, or some such stuff that I have no clue about.

Scott

 

A common use is to hook it up to the main dist power. You can then set the scan line to show 8 cycles ( 8 cylinders) on one line. By looking at the 8 pulses you can see if any of the images show deviations. Image looks like a heartbeat monitor at the docs office. You can see on the image where the current goes through each stage of the system i.e. dist to rotor, rotor to cap, wires, plugs, to final spark. If any image appears different than the other you can tell quickly where the failure is, or where impending failure is. Very handy tool but a lost art. For use on a c3 it can be espcially handy since pulling plugs and chasing wires is hard to do due to lack of space.

Of course, there is the alternate use. Put the lead on your kids head and tell them it is a lie detector. Scares the crap out of them and they will confess to anything. Worked for years for my dad until i saw him actually use it in the garage!

 

Can be a valuable tool for failure analysis at the breaker and transistor ignition.
You can even adjust the dwell angle.

If you have fuelinjection its also usefull there.

 

yup, we used a sun engine analyzer back in the hippie days.. you could hook it up and see lots of little electrical things such as points
bounce, high or low resistance in your plug wires/coil, bad condensers, coil ground and polarity checks, coil performance, dwell changes.. etc.

easy to find a burnt out plug wire with one of these testers.

today's cars have a separate coil per cylinder triggered by a computer generated pulse.. the engine code will tell you which cylinder you are misfiring on..

 

I'm in Ohio, sent you a PM

 

Yes, it can. I suggest you Google "Pico waveforms" to understand automotive electrical waveforms. They have waveform libraries that can help you understand what it is you're looking for and an insight on setting up the scope. There are also a lot of tutorials online that will help you understand how scopes operate and how to set them up.

It's important to understand a very basic purpose of an oscilloscope: it shows you electrical presence (volts) and measures it over time(frequency divisions). Yes, it can check battery voltage, but since a battery has no frequency, you'll see only a flat line. Hook it up to the alternator and set the right volt/div scales and you can see the actual waveform and can diagnose things like a dead diode.

I use a Tektronix 465M analog scope. You'll need some probes, like an inductive pickup calibrated for ignition secondary systems, if you're thinking of scoping the ignition system. You'll also need a variety of clamp probes.

If you are not familiar with how to set the volt/div selectors, delays, triggers, slope, frequency rejection and such, you have a very steep learning curve ahead of you.

Also, scopes calibrated for automotive use are very easy to use. Getting a viewable ignition waveform on a scope not designed for that purpose can be a very daunting experience.

Finally; the particulars of scope will dictate whether it's even worthwhile to even bother pursuing this route. A very old scope with few adjustments may not give you enough capability. The best scopes are the digital ones and if that's what you have; jackpot.

 

Thanks for the info. I will definitely take one of them off her hands.

Since my kids are 37 and 35 I don't think I'll be able to use it in that way.

 

An actual polygraph works in much the same way. The results of a polygraph cannot be used as evidence in court, but they are used by interrogators to trick people into making a confession, which can be used in court.

Scott