It has the obd 2 port

 

Also I’ve seen clones that you can purchase with laptops that supposedly already have the softwares downloaded on them and are tested before they are sold, have you had any experience with those or do you know if they actually work or just like the rest it’s a 50/50 shot whether you recieve one that will work or not, my F550 is a service truck with a crane on it and is my only source of income at the moment, but I’m having a hard time diagnosing some of the issues it has with no way to see which injectors the truck is compensating for. Sorry for the long post but I really need to figure out which way I need to go with this ASAP before my truck leaves me stranded or better yet won’t run at all and I really will be in a bind then lol, Thanks

 

Hello, I also tried a lot until IDS was running on my computer. If it's as urgent as your case, I'd buy Autoenguinity. With it you have a software that works immediately and is sufficient to make a good diagnosis. I find AE even better than IDS in some things. You can't do a relative cylinder contribution test with AE and the injector balance test is coarser. But to keep the truck on the road it is definitely enough. Cost ~300$
I think if you open a thread about your troubled truck, you're sure to get help here.

 

Might be easer to get the ELM unit and Forscan and have the guys that use it tell how to set things up.
The sad thing about AE is the injector test can show you that a nearly dead injector is still good.

 

AE = useless, overpriced.

 

Hey guys sorry I haven’t replied in awhile I just saw these replies the notifications didn’t come through or I missed them or something but thanks for the advice Hartwig however I’ve done so many diagnostic tests on this engine in this truck that I honestly have lost track of the amount of 1 on 1 time I have spent with it however not trying to sound arrogant or conceited but I am a mechanic by trade, I make my money in heavy equipment field repair and finally got tired of the politics involved with larger grading companies and dealerships and decided to try and work for myself, I get enough work on the sides that if I fully invested in going into the business for myself that I could hopefully make something out of it, I’m only 26 so I know that I’m still green and have a lot to learn and by no means will I ever know everything about any and all diesels but I said all that hoping you’ll understand my situation alittle better and that I don’t mean this to come off rude in any way but the truck has atleast 1 if not 2 partial misses, and they are intermittent. What I mean is they are not completely dead misses so worn injectors, sometimes they will contribute fully and you can’t even tell it’s missing, it will do it hot or cold, wet or dry, uphill, downhill and any day of the week there is no rhyme or reason that I have been able to put to when or why it will only partially fire and or which cylinder or cylinders are responsible and I don’t really have the cash or time to just throw all new injectors at it and plus that’s not really my style haha but it’s so faint that when the computer compensates for it you can’t even hear it miss however you can feel the unbalanced vibration even when it sounds normal, so it’s not so much a question of what’s wrong with it as much as it is, how do I determine which cylinders, I’ve shot each individual exhaust port on the manifolds with a digital infrared thermometer and the miss is so slight sometimes there’s really no more than 10 degrees difference across all 8 and it is to close to definitively say which ones are going bad, I first suspected stiction in the engine oil so I’ve been treating it with hotshots which has improved the overall driveability but has not corrected the partial misses. I would just pull them but unless the tips are plugged or damaged somehow I can see visually then I’m not aware of any other ways besides ids to tell if they are worn or which ones are the culprit if that makes any sense at all however if you do know of another way or think of something I would gladly appreciate the help and advice, I apologize for the long response. And as far as the AE situation I had actually looked into that and was told there’s not much support for 450’s or 550’s even tho it’s the same motor in 250’s and up which I felt like my questions couldn’t be answered so I was getting the run around at that point but as far as I’m aware the ids contribution and relative balance tests are gonna be the only way I’m gonna be able to effectively figure out these injectors, the reason I need to find out is sometimes when they do miss badly the truck will stall and takes awhile to restart, new hpop and then pressure tested with air through icp, ipr and individual oil rails, no leaks, base fuel pressure is good, high and low oil pressures are fine, ipr screen is clean I mean I went through this thing like 6 times from valve covers to oil pan plug and it’s got to be the injectors are badly worn or possibly combustion is being pushed through the tips and causing this but doesn’t show all the same signs it should if that were the case and ids can once again shed some light on if that were the case or not so more or less that’s why I’m so interested in clones right now. Yahiko the reason I asked about the clones that have laptops included are because my laptop I have now has current ids, fjds, and frds on it I have a Snap-on pass through pro III that I used to reprogram the ficm and a few other modules with I wasn’t aware at the time that ids wouldn’t work with J2534 data link connectors but only fords. So if I do get a clone I’m afraid that even after uninstalling current versions of ids that there will still somehow be complications especially if trying to install older versions of it. Thanks guys.
Oh and also not 100% sure why but no codes for cylinder contribution on any cylinders also have a scan gauge that I programmed in some misfire count codes into for each individual injector and all show 0 or do not count but believe me that truck is missing because sometimes when it’s really bad you can be sitting in the cab with it idling and watch your soda or whatever is in the cup holder splash from side to side to the point it starts foaming up around the edges from the rocking of the truck it’s so out of balance. Also worth mentioning that I found a DTC count code and it will show 3 codes currently active but when I use the code scan function it will pull up only 1 and it is irrelevant to the partial miss issue that I’m having, I know why that code is showing up and just haven’t had the time to take care of it yet.

 

Maybe post all your KOEO cold and warm data. Also KOER cold and warm data. After that, someone may give you a idea. Try disturb some wires to see if it reproduce the problem. When said it misses, but then took a while to recover, it's more than miss to me, but that "prolong" miss can give you a chance to take a snapshot of your data to see what's out of ordinary.
Do you have fuel pressure gauge? That value helps also.
Could it be your ficm? Since you said the hotshots help, maybe it's your injectors. If you want to tinker, you can try to check few videos showing how to "clean up" the spool valve.
And it sounds like you don't yet have IDS. I suggest get one then.

 

Het just wanted to give a heads up, my FDVI device seems to have broken. It's seems to be a hardware issue in contacting the manufacturer. I sent them a screen shot of the error message I am getting and answered a few questions through their online chat and they said send it back the device is broken. Nit sure what happened but I am going to look into sending it back. Just have no idea how long that will take. Might just order a new one.

 

Also the LED was flashing green, that is why the manufacturer said it is defective, and told me to send it back.

 

How would i go about purchasing one of the clone units from you @Yahiko ?

 

Right now with all that is going on and the tariffs that are in place I don't have any on hand and did not plan to do any orders for a while.

 

I would be willing to pay the purchase price & the additional cost incurred for the tariffs.

 

For the ones that need to set the clock, I use this command running as Administrator
Copy and paste the contents into notepad and save it as: IDS_Date_Time.cmd
Keep it on the desktop.

@echo off
date 07-11-19
time 21:00:00

Run it and the clock will change every time IDS gets turned on.
Who has the link to v116_01_Full?

 

Update for the IDS clone: FLYOBD released v117 and it seems to be working fine. I recently received a J2534 STIC scanner and followed Ctroxtell's instructions in post #249 to a "T" to install it...a HUGE thank you to him for putting that list together. Worked flawlessly (almost, the initial setup/signin was a little jenky when choosing the dealer type). Be sure to run everything as Administrator. Watched a few YouTube videos on how to run the software and immediately jumped over to the contribution test. Sure enough, my #4 injector is weak. Pulled a fan code that I don't remember seeing before as well. I tried to run the cranking test but it would error out saying the engine would shut off during the test/crank. Could be user error as I'm still facing a steep learning curve with it.

My daughter's boyfriend came over with his Taurus so we hooked that up too...he was amazed at it and thought I was some master mechanic, lol.

It's running on an older IBM Thinkpad with 8GB and Win10 Pro. I did have to set the clock back and haven't tried the date trick listed right above yet.

 

so on step 7 do I skip that cause its crossed out?