What are all the things an OB2 can do in do in a Ferrari? What additional things can an SD2 or SD3 do? I have just followed a Ferrari factory technical service department modification, whereby an extra earth pin is installed into the OB2 plug in a Ferrari 360. This is to make the plug compliant with the European regulations requiring a certain standard OB2 specification for all European cars. Why isn't the OB2 system enough for diagnosis and resetting of modern car electronics?
OBD2 is about emissions related engine performance parameters and is pretty much a universal standard across modern cars - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics SD2 / SD3 is the Ferrari specific system that can can read all the engine parameters but other things as well that are not part of the OBD2 spec, for instance F1 gearbox, ABS brakes, suspension ecu etc etc. The SD2/SD3 provides much more detailed model specific interrogation of the electronics than OBD2 can and can also modify some settings - eg point of initial slippage ( PIS ) for F1 transmission equipped cars. M
OBD is a mandated protocol for access to emmissions related areas to protect trees and polar bears. It does not cover anything outside of this. Access to everything else is via a factory or factory level scanner. Some are available which can read airbag and ABS systems in addition to the OBD. Same with the information made available on the so called Tech Info sites, only a limited type of data is actually found there.
If you read up more on OBDII you will learn that was never it's intent. As previously stated, it was mainly to servce emission related issues.
The SD2 / SD3 is a computer system the can interface directly with each ECU in your car. Each ECU has it's own pig tail to connect to. Once connected the SD2/3 system reads and interacts with that ECU. You can see details from you engine, transmission, HVAC, ABS, shocks, etc. The SD2/3 can also report stored errors codes specific to that ECU and reset them to factory parameters if things have gotten out of specification. The OBDII is a universal standard for reading error codes in the emissions system. It has its own connection type & location and reads primarily the emission error codes from the Motronic box. A high quality OBDII scanner can be bought at Pep Boys for $250 or less. An SD2/3 system can only be purchased from Ferrari with special training and approvals and has a price of around $40,000 or more.
