Ten questions about facts you already know — what it is, what it does, when it started, what has already been replaced. At the end it names the two or three circuits that would be tested first and says why, with the hours and the published rate against each. It never names a fault, because nothing that has not seen the vehicle can.
Nothing is sent until you press send
No fault is ever named
Resumable, and the link carries your answers
Nothing has been measured yet. This is an indicative scope, not a quotation and not a diagnosis. It reads a description of what the machine is doing and names the circuits that would be tested first — it has not seen the vehicle, it cannot know what is wrong with it, and no fault named from a questionnaire is a fault anybody has found.
Answer what the vehicle actually does rather than
what you think it means — the second one is a guess and the first one is evidence. If two
answers fit, pick the one you would say first on the telephone. You can leave and come back:
your answers stay in this browser and the address bar carries them, so the link can be sent to
whoever actually drives it.
Before you start, if you would rather know
Everything this can tell you, printed in advance
There is no hidden list and no algorithm worth protecting. These are the
seven lines of investigation a result can name, in the words it
uses, with the piece of work each one maps to. A questionnaire whose outputs you cannot read
before you answer it is asking for three minutes on trust — and reading them in advance
is also the fastest way to see that not one of them names a part.
The starting circuit
What reaches the starter, before the starter itself.
What you have described puts the first measurements on the circuit that turns the engine over rather than on the starter motor. That means the battery's state of charge and its behaviour under a real load, then the voltage lost along the main feed and along the ground path while somebody holds the key. Those two tests separate a battery from a cable from a connection from the motor, and they are why a starter is not the first thing anybody should be buying.
Where the first hour would go
Starting circuit diagnosisone to two hours$145 to $290
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround same day
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet. Done where the vehicle stands rather than here, the same hours are at the on-site hour, $185.
Whether it is not being filled, or is being emptied.
A battery that will not hold is either not being charged properly or is being discharged by something while nothing is switched on, and those are two different jobs. The first is a charging test: output at the alternator, output at the battery, the difference between them, and the ripple on it. The second is a drain test, which is slow because the vehicle has to sit long enough for its modules to go to sleep before the number means anything.
Where the first hour would go
Starting and charging system testone to two hours$145 to $290
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround same day
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet. Done where the vehicle stands rather than here, the same hours are at the on-site hour, $185.
What the signal is actually doing, not what the code calls it.
A stored code names a circuit and a symptom — it does not name a component, and the difference is most of what this trade is for. The work would be live data while the fault is present, then a scope on the signals the data disagrees with, and a check of the supply and ground reaching each one. A sensor reading nonsense and a sensor whose supply is sagging produce the same code and look nothing alike on a trace.
Where the first hour would go
Running-fault circuit diagnosistwo to four hours$290 to $580
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround one to two days
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet.
The faults that are mechanical wearing an electrical coat.
Answers with heat, vibration, water or movement in them point at the harness rather than at anything on the end of it. The work would be a voltage drop test under load along the suspected run, an inspection of the connector bodies and the pins inside them, and the ground points, which are the single most common thing nobody looks at. A conductor broken inside intact insulation is invisible and reads as continuous on a meter.
Where the first hour would go
Harness and connector repairone to four hours$145 to $580
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround same day
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet. Done where the vehicle stands rather than here, the same hours are at the on-site hour, $185.
Before a control unit is opened or condemned, every supply and every ground that reaches it is measured at its own connector, because a unit that appears dead is very often a unit that is not being powered. Only if those are correct does the unit itself come to the bench, where it is run under the conditions that produced the fault. That order is the whole job: it is what stops a working module being replaced at several hundred dollars.
Where the first hour would go
Bench assessment of a control unitone hour$125
At the published bench hour$125 an hourturnaround two to four days
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet.
A screen full of warning lights, modules that will not answer a diagnostic tool, or a tool that cannot reach half the vehicle are the signature of a communication problem rather than of many simultaneous failures. The work would be the network's termination resistance measured with everything off, then each line watched on a scope to see whether it is being shorted, pulled down or simply not driven — and then which branch that is happening on.
Where the first hour would go
CAN and LIN network diagnosistwo to five hours$290 to $725
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround one to three days
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet.
The fault arrived with somebody else's installation.
When a fault starts after something was fitted, the first work is to find every point at which that installation touches the vehicle — supplies, grounds, and anything spliced into a line that carries data rather than power. An accessory on an unfused feed, a ground on a painted panel, or a device that keeps the vehicle awake will each produce symptoms that read as a fault in the vehicle itself. That is not a criticism of the equipment; it is where to look.
Where the first hour would go
Fault-finding on equipment somebody else fittedone to four hours$145 to $580
At the published workshop hour$145 an hourturnaround same day
That figure is the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours, and nothing else. It is what that first piece of work costs — not an estimate for putting your vehicle right, because nobody has seen it yet.
It reads ten answers about a symptom. That is a starting point for a conversation, not a diagnosis, and it is not a survey of the vehicle.
It never names a fault. Everything it produces is a list of what would be MEASURED and in what order, because a fault named from a description is a guess wearing a result screen.
There is no dataset behind it. It does not know what usually goes wrong on your make and model, because we have not measured a population of them and would not present it as evidence if we had.
It does not score, rank, grade or rate. A number would read as a measurement and there is nothing here to measure against.
The figures it prints are the published hourly rate multiplied by a range of hours for a named piece of work. That is what that first piece of work costs, not an estimate for putting right a vehicle nobody has seen.
Two of the twelve questions are chosen from your earlier answers, so two people will not necessarily see the same ten.
Nowhere, until you press a button. The questions are answered in your own browser and the
summary is worked out on your own machine. Your answers are kept in this browser so you can
leave and come back, and they are put in the address bar so the link can be shared — which
means anybody you send it to can see your answers, and that is worth knowing before you send
it.
If you choose to send the summary at the end, what leaves your browser is your answers, the two
or three lines of investigation they pointed at, and the contact details you typed. It is
written to a file on the server and e-mailed to the workshop, and to you as well if you tick
the box.
This is a demonstration website. Woodside Auto & Ag Electric is not a real business, an enquiry sent from this site reaches only a demonstration mailbox, not a workshop, and the telephone number is a placeholder. It was built to show what a small specialist workshop gets for a fixed price.
