Method and apparatus for diagnosing engine and/or vehicle system faults based on vehicle operating or drive symptoms

A diagnostic system for the analysis of motor vehicle operating problems, said system comprising:

• a memory for storing data representative of a plurality of motor vehicles to be serviced using said system, said data including a data point directory containing information identifying data access points for obtaining vehicle operating data representative of the operation of a plurality of systems within each of said plurality of motor vehicles, said data access points corresponding to pins of multipin connectors within motor vehicles to be serviced;
• a drive symptom parameter/pin identification computer for accessing said data point directory stored in said memory in response to motor vehicle identification data to retrieve relevant data identifying pins of a multipin connector for the identified motor vehicle through which specific data for the identified motor vehicle can be retrieved, said drive symptom parameter/pin identification computer further accessing said retrieved relevant data for the identified motor vehicle in response to motor vehicle driveability symptoms indicative of said operating problems to retrieve vehicle specific information identifying appropriate ones of said pins of said multipin connector for the identified motor vehicle to be monitored for collecting vehicle operating data for analysis of one or more systems most likely responsible for said vehicle driveability symptoms;
• a diagnostic data collection computer responsive to said vehicle specific information for collecting data only from pins of said multipin connector for the identified motor vehicle;
• and
• a data analysis computer responsive to the data collected by said diagnostic data collection computer for identifying one or more faults of one or more of said plurality of systems of the motor vehicle identified by said motor vehicle identification data.