To Decide The Intensity Of A Malfunction

When a malfunction is intermittent or has unknown status, the diagnostic trouble code's counter is very useful to decide:

• How many driving cycles that have passed since the malfunction was detected the first time as well as since the malfunction was detected.
• During how many driving cycles that the control module has detected the malfunction during a certain period, as well as how many driving cycles that the control module has not detected the malfunction. That the control module has not detected the malfunction may be due to the control module not having started the test for the malfunction, conditions to detect the malfunction are not fulfilled, or that the malfunction no longer exists.

The purpose of interpreting the counters is that it is possible to understand the malfunction's intensity, that is, show "how much" intermittent the malfunction is, as well as help in assessing if the chances to repeat the malfunction and customer symptom, and then succeed with troubleshooting.

If you read out the diagnostic trouble code information and it shows that the diagnostic trouble code test runs at least once every driving cycle (e. g., when driving), the counters' value may be very important when assessing the diagnostic trouble code's status and actions. However, if start of diagnostic trouble code test and its conditions are difficult to achieve, the counters' values should be considered to be of less importance.

Counters 1 and 3 show driving cycles. Counters 2 and 4 also show driving cycles, but then really a "share" of counters 1 and 3, respectively. In principle, counter 4 shows how many times that the customer should have detected symptoms.