Organization of Snapon Verus and accessories

Hey. I was wondering about people's ideas and experiences for organizing scantools/labscopes and all their accessories.


<Beginning of rant>

I'm in a 5 bay shop that's rather spread out. We don't have set bays either. We also can get pulled off a job and sent to the other side of the shop at a moments notice. My shop very much has the parts swappin mentality. They have very short attention spans when it comes to diagnosing. They're used to doing lots of little tests where each test takes a very short amount of time. Then onto the next test. Diagnostic Whac-A-Mole if you will. By the time it takes me to grab my stuff, set up the Verus, hook up a few channels and start capturing some waveforms they're already getting anxious and twitching. They just want to get in there and start ripping crap out. That stuff just drives me nuts. I like to disturb as little as possible until I have a good baseline of the issue. I also don't ever get a block of time to diagnose something undisturbed. They constantly come over with a "do this...", "do that...", "what about this?". It's bad enough that you're trying to diagnose something but I'm also always trying to prove that my methods work and that quality of tests is more important than quantity of tests....

<End of Rant>


I have a first gen Verus so it has keys and the two cables depending on the set of keys. Also my batteries aren't terrific so if I expect to be there for a while I have to grab the charger as well. Then there's the amp clamps, all the test leads and jumpers, backprobers, etc. I tried a laptop bag but that was a bit of a pain. Maybe it's because I tried putting too much in it? I guess I could use that for just the scantool part. Just the Verus, the two cables, charger and keys. That could work alright for that I guess. But when I tried using it for more the test leads would just get tangled with the amp clamps, backprobbers would fall out of pockets, etc. Especially once I took it to a vehicle and started using it it all just fell together into a giant mess.

So ya, just wondering people's tips and tricks that they've developed along the way for being mobile and efficient with their diagnostic equipment.

They just want to get in there and start ripping crap out. That stuff just drives me nuts. I like to disturb as little as possible until I have a good baseline of the issue. I also don't ever get a block of time to diagnose something undisturbed. They constantly come over with a "do this...", "do that...", "what about this?". It's bad enough that you're trying to diagnose something but I'm also always trying to prove that my methods work and that quality of tests is more important than quantity of tests....

I've been fighting that battle for quite some time myself!

I have a first gen Verus so it has keys and the two cables depending on the set of keys. Also my batteries aren't terrific so if I expect to be there for a while I have to grab the charger as well. Then there's the amp clamps, all the test leads and jumpers, backprobers, etc. I tried a laptop bag but that was a bit of a pain. Maybe it's because I tried putting too much in it? I guess I could use that for just the scantool part. Just the Verus, the two cables, charger and keys. That could work alright for that I guess. But when I tried using it for more the test leads would just get tangled with the amp clamps, backprobbers would fall out of pockets, etc. Especially once I took it to a vehicle and started using it it all just fell together into a giant mess.

And I've been fighting that one too!

I settled on two hard clasping cases for my Verus, Vantage, amp clamp and other various accessories. I'll take some pics to show you the lay out, but I'm sure it's not any more efficient than what you're using!
The back of my Navigator is stuffed with boxes of diag tools and books!

The larger case has the Verus, Vantage, Verus test leads, home made 20ft leads, load pro, back probes, DLC cable, domestic adapter and keys, euro adapter and keys, and charger.





The smaller case has the rest of the pre OBD 2 connectors, the amp clamp, spare batteries, a potentiometer, cylinder leak down tester and some other odds and ends.

Hey, that's pretty cool. I like the larger case for sure. I definitely would prefer a hard case where you can just open it up to everything instead of rooting through different pockets for stuff in something like a soft laptop bag. I'm kinda tossing up the idea of a plastic roll cart. Something like:

12 Drawer Roll Cart

It'd be awesome because it would give me lots of space to store things in an organized fashion without being forced to cram things together. Plus there'd be room for future expansion. I just don't know if I'd be pushing it for furniture as I already have my stationary box and a toolcart.

Oh ya, and something you might want to consider if you haven't already. The Verus is cool and all but Snapon likes to give you archaic hardware for your huge dollars. Something I constantly bug my rep about... But ya, I put a solid state drive in my Verus and it made a HUGE difference. I also got a stick of ram for it that finally showed up. Will be putting that in too this weekend. It really helps stretch out that horribly slow 600MHZ Celeron processor...

She is slow, I'd like to see how you modded yours. I don't know anything about computers sadly.

ecwurban wrote: <Beginning of rant>

I'm in a 5 bay shop that's rather spread out. We don't have set bays either. We also can get pulled off a job and sent to the other side of the shop at a moments notice. My shop very much has the parts swappin mentality. They have very short attention spans when it comes to diagnosing. They're used to doing lots of little tests where each test takes a very short amount of time. Then onto the next test. Diagnostic Whac-A-Mole if you will. By the time it takes me to grab my stuff, set up the Verus, hook up a few channels and start capturing some waveforms they're already getting anxious and twitching. They just want to get in there and start ripping crap out. That stuff just drives me nuts. I like to disturb as little as possible until I have a good baseline of the issue. I also don't ever get a block of time to diagnose something undisturbed. They constantly come over with a "do this...", "do that...", "what about this?". It's bad enough that you're trying to diagnose something but I'm also always trying to prove that my methods work and that quality of tests is more important than quantity of tests....

<End of Rant>

Oh yeah, been there done that, sadly. Worked at a chain store that paid the techs 1.5 hrs for a diag (REALLY generous), but all they'd do is spin the Identifix wheel and load up the parts shotgun Maybe look at some scan data, just to make it appear that they tried. Doing it the right way got me a ton of weird looks and flak from my bosses :lol:

As for organization, I use to have a drawer in my roll cart dedicated to scanner/scope stuff, with no real good way to organize any of it. Now that I'm in a smaller shop, I ended up buying these and sticking them to the side of my toolbox:





May or may not fit your needs, just an idea. I can get a shot of my setup next week if you want.

www.harborfreight.com/18-in-x-6-in-x-13-...0AIjoiODUzOCJ9%0D%0A
Hope the link works, this is the smaller case, I used to carry my modis, vantage and all the fixes plus notes.

Tyler wrote: Oh yeah, been there done that, sadly. Worked at a chain store that paid the techs 1.5 hrs for a diag (REALLY generous), but all they'd do is spin the Identifix wheel and load up the parts shotgun Maybe look at some scan data, just to make it appear that they tried. Doing it the right way got me a ton of weird looks and flak from my bosses :lol:.

That's funny with the Identifix wheel. Like any shop we get a lot of customers that complain about diagnosing charges. I always wanted to make one of those wheels. Put a whole bunch of sensors and parts on it. Then when they complain I could pull it out. "You can spin the Wheel of Diagnosis and we'll change that part with no diagnosing charge... or you can pay for some diagnosing time and we'll fix the ACTUAL problem!" It would be so glorious

Noah wrote: She is slow, I'd like to see how you modded yours. I don't know anything about computers sadly.

It's not too difficult to do the hard drive swap. For the hard drive you basically undo a bunch of screws, take the back off and then it's right there. Upgrading the memory is more tricky. When you take the back cover off you get access to the motherboard. Off to one side there are a couple small circuit boards stacked up on top of the motherboard in a tower configuration. The memory is on the motherboard underneath the tower. The CPU is on the middle board. The screws to remove that tower from the motherboard go in from the front. Why? Because Snapon can be douchebags like that... So ya, you're supposed to remove the front cover and the screen. Which involves removing a few delicate ribbon cables that they give you next to no slack for. Again... Douchebags! Then you can remove the screws for the tower, separate the the heatsink from the CPU, etc. I don't want to do all that so I'm going to try the crazy approach. I'm going to attempt to remove it from its hidey hole with tweezers and picks. :silly:

Upgrading the memory will help it all around be a little faster. Especially if you're doing other things like opening up a browser to order parts or look at wiring diagrams. If you're not using the Verus for anything other than the diagnostic suite then you'll be totally fine leaving the memory undisturbed. The solid state drive is a huge improvement though. Especially when scrolling through a waveform capture. When you hit the zoom button and it first renders the entire capture on the screen at max zoom it usually takes a couple seconds to display. With a solid state drive it's pretty well instant. Same for scrolling through it as well. Nice and smooth with no annoying delay. The drives are cheap too. Mine was only $60 for a 120gig drive. I won't even come close to touching that amount of storage space but that's what the cheapest drive was!

Then lastly for upgrading there's that piece of garbage CPU fan... I'm really torn on this one. Some people have changed it to huge success. They say it's quiet and runs much cooler. It also keeps the battery cooler. They all put in slightly larger fans which involved modifying the CPU heatsink... I'm not sure if I want to do that just yet

There's a good writeup on pulling apart the Verus on Snapon's forum.

Inside the Verus

If all you're doing is changing the hard drive then you won't have to remove any of the front stuff except those external screws. You have to be a little careful when taking the back off. You need the lift the bottom of it up over the battery casing and tilt it towards the front. Then to get it out you grab one of the ports on the top and lift up. That pulls the motherboard up so that you can tilt the cover further and slide it out. You definitely need to do this to get that cover back in and under those ports. When you do get the back cover free you want to rest it against the Verus without pulling it too far away. There's that dinky postage stamp sized fan that's in the back cover. The wires for it can be kinda tight. You can unplug it if you want the extra room but I kept it plugged in and just propped the cover up and out of the way. Just make sure it can't get knocked over and pull those wires out.

Once you have the drive out you then put it into a computer along with your new solid state drive. The only part that's kinda tricky if you're not very computer savvy is you need a good program to make a copy of the hard drive. It has to be an actual clone of the drive. Not just copy the files over. The drive has three partitions on it. C: and drive and a hidden logical drive. My friend has a good program for cloning. EaseUS Todo Backup. We just had to go through all the options and then we found a box to enable what it called "sector by sector backup". This made it copy literally every byte from the drive and not just the individual files. It's actually kinda handy having a program to do this and creating backup images of your Verus drive in case anything happens to it. The Verus does have a built in restore feature but it'll restore it to some ancient version with next to no coverage. :S

The whole process took me a lot of time and a lot of drive swapping and reformatting because there were a few things I had to learn along the way. So to save you A LOT of hassle... before you take out the original drive make sure you shutdown the Verus and disable it from auto loading the Snapon software on restart.

I always use hibernate as it takes less time to get back to the scanner. But if you copy a drive when it's in hibernate state then you're asking Windows to resume itself from a new hard drive. It crashed for me. So do a full shutdown. To disable the software from auto loading you go to the start menu, programs and then startup. In that folder you want to delete anything that says Snapon. The reason you want to do this is when you take apart the Verus and swap drives it seems to always mess up the date and time. For me it always set it to like half a day ahead. If you load the scanner software with the date/time out of whack then it complains, thinks you're stealing software and then tells you "authorization required". So you need to set the date and time properly BEFORE the scanner suite loads. Then you'll be fine.

Even if at some point something messes up and you do get an "authorization required" or windows crashes or anything like that it's not the end of the world. You can just pull the drive out and re-clone it. Plus nothing alters your original drive so if you keep having problems you can always throw that back in until you figure out what's going wrong.



The things you'll need are:
1) #1 Phillips screwdriver
2) 5mm skinny deep socket and extension for those screw retainers around the scanner cable port
- I stuffed my socket with teflon tape so I could screw those buggers back in

3) pocket screwdriver
4) solid state hard drive
5) computer with drive cloning software
6) TIME! - Potentially lots of it...
7) Case of beer

Tyler wrote: As for organization, I use to have a drawer in my roll cart dedicated to scanner/scope stuff, with no real good way to organize any of it. Now that I'm in a smaller shop, I ended up buying these and sticking them to the side of my toolbox:

May or may not fit your needs, just an idea. I can get a shot of my setup next week if you want.

I did think those were neat. My rep tried selling me the top one but I know myself and I know I would not be able to keep that organized during the middle of the a job. I know I'd just end up throwing stuff back on it haphazardly until I'm done and then I'm back to having a huge mess! :oops:

I think I am leaning more and more towards some kind of clear plastic storage containers. Especially after I watched one of Eric O's videos last night where he pulled some out that looked awesome. I don't think I can be trusted with any kind of intricate rack or hanging system but throwing like things in small individual bins I think I could maintain! haha

Cool looking containers

Those are fancy with a capital E!

Haha ya. I actually found them at Walmart when today! The exact ones too. They come in three packs. Two that are full size and the top one has six-way dividers in it. You can buy multiples and stack them all together. I bought two and quickly realized I'm going to need to go back and pick up more!

Alright then.
I Reckon imma hafta swing on up to tha Wal-Marts.
Mmmhmmm.

I stopped by the shop to test these bins out. They are freakin perfect! I fit three amp clamps in one bin! I went back to Walmart and grabbed three more of them. I never imagined I'd find something that would so perfectly match what I was looking for. Especially so quickly...

Bins

Here's a shot of what my drawer ended up becoming... This is even after I took out all the stuff from the first pic

Unruly mess

Those are really good. I'm definitely going to get some.

ecwurban wrote: I did think those were neat. My rep tried selling me the top one but I know myself and I know I would not be able to keep that organized during the middle of the a job. I know I'd just end up throwing stuff back on it haphazardly until I'm done and then I'm back to having a huge mess! :oops:

I think I am leaning more and more towards some kind of clear plastic storage containers. Especially after I watched one of Eric O's videos last night where he pulled some out that looked awesome. I don't think I can be trusted with any kind of intricate rack or hanging system but throwing like things in small individual bins I think I could maintain! haha

Cool looking containers

Yeah, I'm not always very responsible about putting stuff back, either :blush: But, I do like not having to sift through drawers and stuff to get what I'm looking for. Just lazy like that :lol:



Also, I saw that SMA video series! Kinda disappointed that Eric didn't get an in-cylinder capture, but still fun to watch.

Organising gear drives me crazy I tried flight cases I tried plastic tubs currently I am using plastic orgainsers sold in art and stationary shops, the main compartment is deigned around the size of a 500 sheet pack of A4 paper and the largest side compartment easily takes test lights.

Tyler wrote: Yeah, I'm not always very responsible about putting stuff back, either :blush: But, I do like not having to sift through drawers and stuff to get what I'm looking for. Just lazy like that :lol:

That is pretty cool looking. Definitely way better than when I had everything just crammed in a drawer. I would dig having everything right there and just being able to grab something. But I'm not sure if that'd work for me being sent all over the place. Plus I always like collecting and making new leads and attachments. Some of it takes up a bunch of space. Like the PowerProbe stuff I scored recently. I don't like logic probes so I didn't want a PowerProbe but I was always jealous of its long cable to the battery. I talked to my Snapon rep and, sure enough, he had warrantied a few of the PowerProbes so he had a bunch of that stuff just lying around and gave me some clamps and cables for free. They're awesome, I use them all the time. This way when I'm doing testing I know I always have access to a good clean ground and power. Plus they're banana jack ends so I can just directly plug leads into them then to my multimeter or scope. The only problem with them is each one is 20 feet long so even wrapped up they're each the size of a large burger... heh

But ya, I like how I can set these up on a per job basis. One stack of three can hold everything I use for basic electrical diag. Multimeter, test light, attachments and backprobes and all those power probe cables. Another for general engine performance. One for vacuum/pressure tests.

Another stack I can set up for wire repair. Soldering iron, butane, solder, flux paste, cutters, strippers, crimpers, wire holder, shrink tube, brush on electrical tape and regular electrical tape, etc. This one particularly has me stoked. I always hated trying to grab all of that junk just for a quick repair. Depending on the wire and where it is you very easily can spend more time going back and forth grabbing and putting away stuff than you do on the actual repair! My Snapon guy sold me a wicked wire holder btw. You can hold two wires at a time plus it doesn't mangle insulation. I found alligator clips always chewed through insulation once it got hot and soft from the soldering.

Wire Soldering Clamp

Andy.MacFadyen wrote: Organising gear drives me crazy I tried flight cases I tried plastic tubs currently I am using plastic orgainsers sold in art and stationary shops, the main compartment is deigned around the size of a 500 sheet pack of A4 paper and the largest side compartment easily takes test lights.

I tried using containers like that. I just find I don't ever have enough to put in the side compartments. So I either have to leave them empty and have wasted space or put dissimilar objects in them. Both of which cause my OCD to twitch... :silly: Plus I find they tend not to have enough height to them.