Mark said: "The mechanic may have referred to a piece of external test
equipment as "the computer" whether it was a true computer or not."

I agree, I did not directly observe what was hooked up to what.  He did have
what appeared to be a regular desktop computer by the van, maybe he was using
that to reference the data he got from another device, or was just looking up
technical bulletins.  In retrospect, I personally can't think of where he
could have hooked into, unless he plugged straight into the ECU.

Whichever method he used, or whatever equipment he used, he saw what he
described as a series of events that had happened previously.  He also said that
there was data from the last 200 key turns in the van somewhere (not sure on the
number).  I'm not that sure, and this was 5 or more years ago, so we may all
freely suspect what was actually going on.  This was all at Vern's auto repair
in Elyria, OH.

The worst part of all this is that the problem was an intermittant ground
fault, on the left side of the engine.  The same one we all talk about
constantly.  If I had only been on the net back then......

(By the way, I am quite familiar with OBD's and fault codes.  I use my own
computer at home to diagnose/program my Tiico engine with VAG-COM software.)

Bill Marshall
85 GL Tiico "Pandora's Box"
Aurora, IL