MODI – THE DIAGNOSTIC TOOL MADE FOR AUTOMOTIVE ENTHUSIASTS BY AUTOMOTIVE ENTHUSIASTS

Have you ever thought why we work certain jobs? I know I have. For example my dentist. I have known the guy for most of my life and ever since he was a child he was always checking his toys’ teeth. As if to say he was kind of destined to do that and nothing else. My doctor told me recently that she was pretty much the same, at age two she got a stethoscope and she has been running her stuffed toys through MRIs and daily health checkups ever since. Some people never get that moment of epiphany and they have to go through life without a calling. Me? Well, thankfully I had that moment when I was five. My parents took me to see “Independence day” (yes, I know, not the perfect film for a five year old but hey… Will Smith punched an alien in it and not Chris Rock, good old days). The film we saw didn’t really matter. What mattered most is that we walked back from the theater, and on the way back we passed through a hobby store and there it was – a red Dodge Viper R/T collectible which they got me as a present. Then and there I knew there was nothing else on God’s green Earth that I wanted to do more than work with cars. Ten years ago the same dentist from the beginning of the story told me of a friend of his who was looking for someone like me for their automotive diagnostic company. I was working some dead end service desk job at the time, feeling miserable, and had nothing to lose. As soon as I saw the cars parked outside the building when I went for my interview I knew I was at the right place. I was among fellow automotive enthusiasts. I was home.

Ten years on, the group of automotive enthusiasts which make Abrites what it is has grown substantially. I am happy to report our car park continues to be a demonstration of that… but. As great of a product we create in the form of AVDI and the Abrites Diagnostic Software we have to be honest. It is not a product for our fellow enthusiasts. It is a strictly professional tool, designed for advanced automotive professional customers with great experience and deep understanding of not just how vehicles operate but also people who have deep knowledge about electronic module adaptation, key programming, super experienced diagnosticians and overall experts in the field of automotive diagnostics.

We have a world renounced product, award winning, supertool but we had nothing for our own people, the enthusiasts. There are good reasons for that:

1. You can go to your parts store and get your “Generic OBD” codes read by the guy trying to sell you a crank angle sensor or whatever.

2. You can go to the smallest independent oil change garage at any village and get your car “scanned for codes”.

3. You can go on Aliexpress and get a generic OBD scanner, hook it up to your phone and get the same “generic result”.

While for some people that might be enough we knew two very important things:

1. If we were going to go down that rabbit hole we had to have something more than anyone else, we had to do it our way, the Abrites way.

2. Our product had to have the enthusiast in mind, it had to be something we want to use ourselves.

With that in mind the mission was set and after many, many mugs of coffee, sleepless nights, tests and planning we believe now is the time to introduce you to the Abrites Mobile Diagnostics (MODI).

Here is why we think MODI is the ultimate enthusiast focused automotive diagnostic tool:

- MODI is a Bluetooth device made by Abrites in our own production facility to quality standards on par with our expert level equipment. It is a bespoke, in house development and production from start to finish, has passed all tests and safety standards other devices claiming to be similar are not even subject to. MODI puts your safety and the safety of your vehicle first. To put it this way – if your life depended on a pacemaker (God forbid) would you go to an unknown and unverified company for one?

- MODI connects to any Android or Apple phone through its own app. The app itself is developed by the Abrites developers and not some random amateur coder (not to disrespect, but be they very enthusiastic, they lack the expertise). It takes inspiration from the Abrites Diagnostic Software and incorporates ONLY what the enthusiast needs.

So what do you need and why? Here are 10 Reasons why you need MODI over anything else:

1. You need module identification. Knowing the type of modules your car is equipped with, the manufacturer which created them, when they were created and what software versions they hold are all very useful bits of information for the enthusiast because you will know if anything has been tampered with. You will know if the software or hardware is known by other enthusiasts to be “problematic”, maybe experts have shared their findings on the subject. Knowing is everything.

2. You most definitely need clear, understandable reading and displaying of the trouble codes your car has stored in it. With as many details as possible. I feel like I do not need to explain why but most tools will give you something generic, because they are not indeed designed to work with specific brands, they say they do but they do not, they use generic OBD information and not specific manufacturer codes which sometimes leads not just to confusion but to worsening of the state of the car. We do not do that – in fact the diagnostics MODI provides you for each brand was developed for that brand in particular and will show you accurate information in regards to your car.

3. You need to be able to clear the codes you have. Why, well sometimes you have multiple error codes and the reasons for that may be just a flat battery. Then, when you replace the battery you have to able to clear these fault codes. Since diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) can be permanent (those which really need your attention) and temporary (those which in most cases mark an event in the vehicle’s life) you need to be able to tell the difference between the two – you can save all the errors for further analysis and move to clear them – the permanent DTCs will return immediately of shortly after and will thus tell you that you need to focus on them.

4. Actuator testing is another feature you need. Imagine this – the electric windows in your car do not go up or down. This may be caused by not too many things but actuating the motor of the window to operate will point you in the right direction – activate the window and see what happens – if the window goes down – your problem is probably the button, if it does not – it is probably the motor. This is the technique used by the automotive professionals to diagnose issues with electrical equipment, same for wipers, mirrors, headlights, horns, all electrical equipment.

5. Coding – You may think you do not need that, but you do. Coding, as described in our BMW blog series is a term used to define the ability to “unlock” features which are already available for a certain car, to enable them for the user of the vehicle. We all want to have such features. For example I immediately disabled the automatic start/ stop of my car because I don’t like it. There are thousands of fast coding features you can lock and unlock via the coding menu, again all of them have been tested to be safe, they are reversible at any time and require no hardware changes. These are features your car already has but just need to be unlocked. We can do that for you with a single click. This allows for you to have full control over your car without worries.

6. Live values monitoring – As an automotive enthusiast you need to monitor the values from your car and be sure that what you are looking at is correct, image this: A tuner tuned your car, you like the way the way it goes but there is no way of being sure if this tuner has set any fail safes, just turn on the Lambda live data and watch what happens – does your car run extremely lean?
The same happens when diagnosing cooling issues – how do you know when the thermostat of your engine opens? Using the Live data from it. This is just scratching the surface, voltage issues, alternator issues, all things that cost at least hundreds of euros in equipment to diagnose just 5-6 years ago are now in your pocket thanks to MODI. This was non- existent 10 years ago and now you have it in your pocket.

7. Pre-purchase Inspections – As automotive enthusiasts we often buy cars on impulse – I love it, this is the greatest car ever, I don’t care what is wrong with it, I will fix it up, all adding up to the now famous Elon Musk quote about “How much more did the project cost as opposed to what you thought it was going to cost?”
- Probably twice as much…
Yes, always do a pre-purchase Inspections, never turn it into a “Post Purchase Inspection”. Have your MODI at hand and let it scan the car. Look at what it says, check it and analyze before even taking it to a shop to do a professional PPI.

8. Actual support – MODI is very similar to AVDI in many ways, one of them is support, our dedicated support team will be available to assist you with issues you may face.

9. Ever evolving, never still. There will be a lot more to come, as with AVDI, MODI will continue to develop at a rapid pace and new features will be available with constant over the air updates for the people with the MODI APP installed on their phones.

10. Who created MODI.
Yes, we are enthusiasts but we are the most well known aftermarket diagnostic software development company. We have our reputation which says a lot about us. It is one thing for mobile app developers to make a diagnostic tool and a completely different thing when an automotive software company makes a mobile solution.

All that in mind the choice in a crowded marketplace is yours. But if you choose to be objective and trust the diagnostic company for your diagnostic needs you will get more than promised for sure.
We believe we have made a great product and we hope you like it as much as we do.

Alek