dfinnegan

A Hammer Party is do able.

Things are little hectic for me at the moment. Are you in any kind of a hurry?

Gary R.

Not at all, i'm concentrating on getting my track car 100% ready at the moment. Are you near CT (I hope), NY is a biiiiiig state.

dfinnegan

I'm in Warwick. Probably an hour and a half to two hours from you. I travel past your area a couple of times a month on business. I'm sure we can set something up.

PCar SBA

Dave,
I am reading your posts with great interest. Did you get the KTS300 or the KTS301?

Cheers,
Ingo

Millemiglia

Thanks Dave, great reading!

JDS also offers the JDS 928 Diagnostic Tester which they call "The Spanner" which also works for all 964 models.
One thing you cannot do with "the spanner" is bleeding the C4 PDAS, I wonder whatelse you cannot do with "the spanner" that you can do with "the hammer"?

"The spanner" is about half the price of "the hammer"

dfinnegan

Thanks for the feedback. I'm pleased that you find the post useful.

Ingo, I got the KTS301. If I recall correctly, the KTS300 is the base unit which is capable of diagnosing several different cars. When the Porsche 964 chip is intalled the unit is called a KTS301. The 301 also comes with a special cable for connecting to the 19-pin outlet in the 964's passenger foot well.

Peter, I'm not sure what the full differences are between the JDS 928 and the Hammer, as I have a C4 and wanted the bleeding capabilities. I'm sure that John at JDS Porsche would be happy to help you out. His email address is info@jdsporsche.com. Note that John is also a Rennlist member and is occasionaly seen on the 964 forum. So, you could reach him via PM here, as well. His user name is "John Speake". A simple search will find him.

Cheers,
Dave

Millemiglia

I got a discouraging reply from John at JDS Porsche to my question on the price of the JDS Porsche Diagnostic Tester for the 964:

"For various reasons the development was not carried further to cover the 964 etc. I have sold 60 or so 928 versions.

I am not intending to do more development for 964 etc.

Regards

John
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>"

Too bad since US$1800 is a bit hefty for me....

dfinnegan

I agree, the price is steep. My thinking was that these testers are no longer being manufactured, but are still needed. The price should hold, or go up, as long as the demand is there and the supply is low. I hope I'm not mistaken!

Cheers,
Dave

Marc Shaw

I would suspect that the price will hold steady as you suggested. No more are being made but many p-cars of this vintage are still on the road so there will continue to be a demand.

If you get one and ever sell you car, you'll very likely get back what you paid for it without too much trouble.

Marc

Lorenfb

"For various reasons the development was not carried further to cover the 964 etc. I have sold 60 or so 928 versions."

Just found an old post of mine in 1/2004:

"As I mentioned in an earlier thread, even if you had the input & output
electricals, i.e. the "K" and "W" commands and the DME responses,
I doubt that the market for a tester would justify the product.

I estimated a market for a Hammer replacement at about 500 to 1000 units.
Assuming a retail price of $300 to $500 per unit, that's not a great starting
point for a new business plan. The per unit direct costs would be $100 to
$150 per unit, and than doesn't leave much to recover R&D and continued
overhead."

It appears the real market was much less than my estimate.

Laurence Gibbs

There are a few people, some who post on here! that have successfully built (i can't confirm this) an interface and some pc software to interogate the ECU. The interface "should" be "fairly" easy and is simple(ish) electronics(voltage conversion, comms chip). The stumbling block for most is the software side. The ecu's heart is an 8051 offshoot made by siemens i believe. Someone familar with these could probably have a good crack at it. I have the software from one of those who has done it and a couple of interface designs but have not had the time to build a working interface(i did make an op amp design but i suspect it was'nt quick enough as it did not work). The above will be ok for C2's and reading fault memory but the bleeding routines for PDAS are something else. And may be the reason John stopped development. It's likely that only a hobbyist will ever have the time and will to put something that works together, as has been mentioned it is not viable for a proffesional programmer/electronics engineer. One day i will get back to building another interface.

Eric Kessel

The VB application that was written a while back will read codes from the engine, airbag, and climate controllers, allow reset of the errors, and do some real time data reading from the engine. The one thing for a C2 that it didn't have is the idle adjustment........

LeRoux Strydom

Dave

What exactly is a "system adaptation", and how is this different from a battery disconnect reset of the DME?

Boy, I wish I had one of these hammers.

dfinnegan

I'm not exactly sure how a "system adaptation" differs from a battery disconnect. However, there was a definite difference in the results on my car when doing one over the other. The battery disconnect did not fix my rough idle problem despite several attempts. The system adaptation, via the Hammer, cured it straight away. Note that my idle was not really that bad, but I did suffer the occasional stall at traffic lights and stop signs and felt that I needed to "nurse" the throttle in very slow turns.

I've also noted a couple of other Rennlisters voicing a similar experience. That is, that the system adaptation worked, or worked better, for them.

If you think it would help you could find a local specialist with a Hammer. You'll have to pay, but it may be worth it.

Cheers,
Dave

Lorenfb

"What exactly is a "system adaptation", and how is this different from a battery disconnect reset of the DME?"

The 964 DME ECM has two adaptations:

1. Idle Adaptation -
On the earlier 3.2 DME system the idle was set by an external jumper
(caused open-loop idle) & then the idle screw was set to "center" the
idle RPM. On the 964, the Hammer cases the DME to go open-loop
and then causes the DME to "step" to the center for 880 RPMs. This
results in the closed-loop idle being "centered" for full regulation.

2. CO adaptation -

The 964 DME ECM goes thru a CO adaptation whereby it runs open-loop
without the O2 sensor to "center" the CO setting to allow for small
variable changes, e.g. air leaks, fuel pressure, so in the closed-loop
mode the O2 system has optimal range (similar to TRA in OBDII).

Both of the adaptation values are "lost" if the constant battery voltage
(pin 18) is removed. #1 above requires use of the Hammer. #2 occurs
at initial running after battery voltage "loss".