Sadly my Hawkeye diagnostic deal fell through. Would've been cheap enough at £100 but the guy has decided to keep it. So no diagnostics for me at the moment.

Since it looks as though i'm going to be buying a new one at full price, I might aswell look at all the options. I know that people would consider the BBS stuff to be the best, but which diagnostic tool is the most appropriate?

I know of 5.
Nanocom, Faultmate, Lynx, Hawkeye and EASunlock V4.

They all vary in price and capabilities and the hawkeye has the added benefit of covering all Landrover models so good from a resale point of view.

Whilst I have no issues buying a nanocom, my question is do I need it? Will I get an extra £100 of use out of it compared to the hawkeye or Lynx or will I be buying the best tool that's just filled with many functions I don't need/understand or shouldn't mess about with?

Would like a bit of non biased advice and perhaps a brief comparison or example of some of the things you can and can't do with them.

The list of functions are available on the respective websites, but are a little unclear at times for the uninitiated.

For example, the hawkeye says it can programme the BECM and the tramsmission of my 2000 4.6. In what way would the nanocom programme it differently or what additional functions would the nanocom have that I may need? Can hawkeye reset the adaptive values of the gearbox if required?

The hawkeye can't programme the EMS of a 2000 4.6 V8 but says it can do "Maintenance". What's that supposed to mean?
As I understand it, the nanocom can programme the EMS. Do I need or will I need that functionality?

If it's justifiable, i'll buy it. I just don't want to spend an extra £100 on a unit that has specialist functions that a general DIY'er should be poking around with if you know what I mean. Likewise, i'd hate to spend £300 and then find out that I should have spent the extra £100 after all.

It may appear to be a silly post but I'm pretty sure at some point, other people would find the information useful to make an informed decision as the manufacturers websites all claim that their product is the one to have.

Thanks a lot :-)

Not a silly post at all. The questions that you're asking are all valid and comparisons would be valuable. The problem is that you probably won't find anyone that has experience of all of the systems, so best you can hope for are peoples views on what they actually have and what it does.
For example, with the hand-held units, I had the earlier model of Hawkeye, and within a month put it up for sale to fund a Nano Evo. The Hawkeye's text based interface made it just a code reader on steroids. It needed extra dongles to talk to different modules and the technical support/ user manuals were non-existent.
The Nano Evo on the other hand has a much more sophisticated interface, greater capabilities (only really lacks the ability of its bigger brother to dig into the locked entrails of the BECM and do the deep techy programming etc that Marty likes to do) and pretty good tech support/ documentation.
I like the Evo's ability to record to SD card for data recording purposes.
I think the bottom line for me is, if given the opportunity to swap my Evo for any of the other self contained ones- even with cash thrown in to sweeten the deal, would I? Hell no!
EDIT- it'd take me too long to write out all of the detailed capabilities of the Evo. They're all available to read or download from BBS here . Try finding the equivalent of that for a Hawkeye...

I've only ever had experience with Nanocom, the EAS Unlock V1, and briefly, Lynx.

The EAS unlock V1 is the free one, which only does EAS stuff... It's great, and on occasion I find it easier to use than Nanocom for EAS stuff - especially calibration. But you have to have a laptop to run it on.

Lynx - Again, laptop based - seemed fairly functional, but at least when I tried it, a very clunky user interface. You had to tell it for example what live data parameters you wanted to look at before clicking 'ok' and viewing them... which on a laptop, with a big screen, I would expect everything to be displayed, and then you be able to click on an individual item to either bring it up full screen for monitoring, or record it for comparisons etc. the guy who had the Lynx that let me have a demo of it was interested in the Nanocom I had by then, and after I showed him the functionality of Nanocom, he sold the Lynx and bought Nanocom aswell.

Nanocom - it's what I went with too - good functionality coverage (best out of all the ones I researched) good support, downloadable manuals etc. Also full functionality on P38's, with one single cable. Fully integrated unit with touchscreen, powers from the vehicle OBD port, so no need for an extra laptop etc to be carried with you, if you want to have diagnostics with you wherever you are.

My vote - would be Nanocom... also given that out of the 6 owners that were a Summer Camp, 5 of us had Nanocoms, goes some way ( I think) to show that a wide range of us who use them for different things all find the same tool does the job we want!

Can any of the others squirt the EKA direct to the BECM? cos the sweet sweet clunk of the locks firing the door pins up followed by the engine starting on the button was worth £300 of anyone's money!
(My P38 was stuck in a local garage with EKA lockout and a dodgy door microswitches)

The free version of EASUnlock (which I think is now at V2) works well and, like Marty, I prefer it to the Nano Evo for EAS but that might be because I was using it long before I got the Nano. But that is all it will do. The latest, paid for, version is cheaper than everything else and claims to do everything but I noticed that although it has a tab for HEVAC, there was no mention of HEVAC in the details. I emailed Storey Wilson (the guy that makes it) and asked about the HEVAC and he said that it was a work in progress that would be added once he'd figured out how to make it work. From comments on the other site it seems that once he's got something working after a fashion he gets bored with it so it may never happen.

I've heard of a number of people with similar experience to Marty with the Lynx. It's made by Britpart, enough said......

No experience of the Hawkeye or Faultmate but I think at least one of them is VIN locked. Fine unless you buy another car or want to plug it into someone else's.

So for me, the Nanocom Evolution was a no brainer. I've got the licence for GEMS but it will still connect to a diesel or a Thor and do everything except the engine (which you can do with a generic scanner anyway). For around 50 quid you can buy the licence for the other versions if you need. So if you change from a GEMS to a Thor (or vice versa) all you need do is buy the extra licence. It may not be cheap, but worth every penny.

Or take a run over to Morat's and take him up on his offer of plugging his Nano into your car.

We're working on that :)
There will be a trip to the Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge at some point, just trying to settle on an evening.

I think others can do the 'disarm' part of the EKA to the BECM - but again that only works on vehicles with a BECM version of 37 or later anyway - so won't even work on early ones from a Nanocom, as it wasn't implemented in the BECM.

I was seriously considering Lynx, as even though it was sold by Britpart, it's actually made by Omitech, who made the original T4 system for Land Rover... so I figured the functionality must be somewhat on par - even if it wasn't as all singing and dancing as Testbook. The thing that put me off of Lynx was that there was very little coverage information on what it actually would do, what values it would show, live data etc.. I emailed Britpart direct about it, and even actually offered to do a detailed worksheet of the functionality for P38's in depth, if they would send me a unit to evaluate...

They declined and said they had their own P38 that they could try it on etc... and when I pressed for when they would actually release some information of any use (like even half way on par with the nanocom manuals) I got no definite answer, and shelved the idea. Playing with one from another owner for an afternoon just put the nail in the coffin for Lynx for me, as it is just not that user friendly either - and I figured if they couldn't even tell me what the coverage was actually like on P38's then who knows what their after sales support would be like (probably non-existent!)

By then I'd bought the Nanocom aswell, and was very happy with the purchase.

Faultmate is the one that is VIN locked - unless you get the MSV unit, which is multiple vehicle - and a lot more expensive... these days the Nanocom does pretty much the same as a MSV faultmate, but without the price tag.

Hawkeye from memory used to be licenced per vehicle type, but as others have said - is very text based, and not as 'interactive' as the Nanocom. I'm also not sure what it's extent of capabilities are with regards to live data logging etc. There is apparently a new 'Hawkeye Total' which does pretty much every LR vehicle at a reasonable price - but I don't know what the trade-off is in functionality though...

I also had the Lynx - for all of one day before returning it.

Another cat hater here.

Went for a Lynx because it could also be unlocked for an early L322 should her ladyship get real problems with hers. The "made by Omitec who did test book" billing seemed re-assuring despite the Britpart label and implied that promises of function upgrades down the line would be met. Both brain cells resting hard at purchase time. Had I thought I'd have realised that no way would Omitec be allowed to use Land Rover Testbook code or data so underneath its just another reverse engineered hack. Turns out that Omitec now isn't, in real terms, owt to do with Omitec then.

As Marty says interface is crap. It does do what it says it does but ofttimes thats rather less than you expected. One or two gotchas that can really have you thinking before you figure the way out. One crash landing too. Using the transport height setting to help deflate the EAS is not safe as it can lock the car into transport setting so it won't come back up. Found out that the hard way and had to make up a lead for the free EASUnlock to get it unlocked.

No technical help available. Britpart won't answer, Marty must have upset them, and Omintec can't be got hold of. One trivial upgrade and now its abandonware. The bluetooth enabled module for tablet use is the new great thing.

I've seen the light and bought a Nanocom. Lynx will probably go for landfill eventually.

Clive

Gilbertd wrote:

I've got the licence for GEMS but it will still connect to a diesel or a Thor and do everything except the engine (which you can do with a generic scanner anyway).

So if i bought the nano for my car, it would still plug into the father-in-laws diesel tractor and give me the same access to systems except the EMS?

Yes, I've used mine on both Thors and diesels as well as the GEMS. BECM, HEVAC, EAS, SRS, Autobox and ABS all still work fine, it's only the engine functions that don't. In fact, when you tell it what car it's plugged into, the available options change to the ones that are only fitted to that model so tell it it's pluged into a GEMS and it gives an option for the early type SRS modules, tell it's plugged into a Thor and only the later SRS modules show up.

Another Nano here. Given that ringing various suppliers/manufacturers wasn't really a viable option, I had to go with what was on their websites and what I'd read on forums.

BBS gave me the most info and, given that my nearest independent Testbook owner is around 70 miles away and I wouldn't trust land Rover Manila to empty the ashtray, I wanted the one with the most bang for buck. Especially as I was buying a vehicle with zero service history, a whole library of faults showing on the message centre and I'm not exactly surrounded by fellow p38 with diagnostics owners..

So for me, it was money well spent and it's done everything I've asked of it. Given the comments above, I may look at downloading EAS Unlock as well. Just to have something else in the armory.

I don't own any of the products mentioned but I'll throw in a vote for the Nanocom as well. I've had my Thor looked at by Gilbertd's Nanocom a few times and it's a very. very impressive bit of kit. It was very compact and looked a doddle to use.

I believe it's what Marty used to bring my BECM out of complete hibernation as well, albeit with an additional module. Without that, I was stuck with a 2 tonne paperweight. If I had the cash to buy a diagnostics machine of my own I'd try my hardest to stretch to a Nanocom.

Marty has a Faultmate MSV-2 with the BECM module to fix very unhappy BECMs - that's something beyond the Nanocom or any other diagnostic device. It isn't a plug and play device either, requiring some internal tinkering to get at the logic board.

The Nanocom will as others have said let you enter the EKA (assuming its not an early BECM) directly, and change various settings in the BECM, but if it gets into an alarmed state where it won't even accept the EKA by any means, it'll need a visit to Marty's workbench.

I Have just sold a Hawkeye used on my thor 4.6 vogue 2000 I had version 7 on it you cant really do anything to the becm .
and as all ready said you need to buy all the dongles for it i.e. dongle for eas and another for climate control and another for airbags etc
you could fault read and go into the security disable the alarm and codes for key fobs eka code
and you could test all electrical functions i.e. headlights etc. and all so turn on and off most things
it would tell you which blender was faulty.
running it would misfires/idle speed set parameters like calibrate fuel gauge and temperature gauge
I had a gearbox fault and it didn't really tell me what the fault was I got the fault remedy of this site
but I found it very basic and the cost? but I have not tried the others just seem to me not worth the money but that's my opinion

I just used to pay Gilbert a visit :-) I didn't have a clue.

and as your car now belongs to one of my neighbours, it'll still get plugged in round here if anything starts playing up. We're doing quite well in this village for P38's. Obviously there's my 3 (and a Disco outside at the moment too), your old one about 100 yards away, an HSE just around the corner and further into the village a guy with a DSE. That's 6 all living within half a mile of each other.

I think most of my problems where diagnosed by gilbertd on my p38

Hiyas all.

I really enjoy reading such posts as this and have to say I very rarely see a post as informative, honest, knowlegable, appreciative and deeply understanding comments about the many various aspects of the different equipment options available.

Many thanks for those that have chimed in on this post with comments of support for our Nanocom, however I do not wish to add some biased opinon to this great thread and so will not even mention some unmentioned Nanocom benefits.

All I would like to say is that I think that In this thread, things like hidden costs of additional leads and actual capability being not properly explained, support, documentation , false claims of having insider knowledge, that only an MSV-2 can deal with the worst case locked out BeCM's, that you can't add L322 before 2010 onto a Nanocom, ease of use, SD card benefits and much more have IMHO been uniquely and accurately detailed here and are a true credit to the posting members.

Before I hit send, and at the risk of seeming sleezy, salesy or opportunistic, I would like to point out that just as I have on many other forums, except the great unwashed one of course, I would be happy to host a group buy on this Forum for it's Members if anyone is interested.

The rules for eligability would be quite simple.
You would need to have already been a member before Today.
Members would need to sign up to a non committal list of being interested in participating.

Thereafter I would post up a unique Promo code to use during on line purchase that would give you a huge 20% discount.

After ordering you would need to PM me your order Reference number for approval.

Warmest regards and best wishes to all.

Colin

Can't say fairer than that even though a lot of us on here have already got one. As Colin is based in Cyprus (don't blame you, the climate is somewhat better than here) the prices are in Euros and I bought mine when the Pound/Euro rate was much stronger meaning it was a few pence over £300. Still not cheap but it has probably paid for itself on my own car compared with paying my local Indy to plug his Testbook in. Add to that the convenience of having it with me and being able to plug in to a number of other cars it's worth every penny. I went down to my mates in France a couple of weekends ago and going through the list of things I needed to bring with me he asked if I could bring the Nano. Not that there was anything wrong with his car, he just wanted me to plug it in and check for any irregularities.