Frequently Asked Questions

The original 2010 app was $0.99 US. It cost between $500-$1000 per year to update the app and maintain a developer account. With about 2,000 downloads over 12 years, this was not sustainable. The original app only worked on North American heavy trucks. The new app will give a limited decode on any VIN, and now also has EDR information on busses and RVs.

Cummins ISX 07 engines with ECM codes that start with "AT", "AV", or "AU" are reporting (1 Hz) at the 5 Hz sampling interval in the Sudden Deceleration Records. This means that even thought the Sudden Deceleration Record says the readings are 1 second apart, they are actually 0.2 seconds apart. An easy way to check for this is to see where the Sudden Decel was set (i.e. no 9 mph/s change near 0 time), and the calculated deceleration for an emergency brake application won't make sense. This includes similar PACCAR  PX engines.

It will decode any CFR compliant VIN, but for now it is still focused on medium and heavy trucks for the purpose of crash reconstruction.

It will decode the VINs and I hope in the near future it will incorporate EDR support for them.

The app pulls manufacturer supplied data from the NHTSA database. We wrote the app look in both the engine manufacturer and engine model fields for information. 

There are only 30 unique characters for the year of a vehicle which is the 10th digit. Year codes are now starting to repeat. For passenger cars (GVWR <10,000 pounds), if position 7 is numeric, position 10 of the VIN refers to a year in the range 1980–2009.  If position 7 is alphabetic, position 10 of the VIN refers to a year in the range 2010–2039. Heavy trucks do not do this. The algorithm is written such that the newest year model possibility returns unless there is an error in the VIN. Heavy trucks cannot use the 7th character like cars, because the 7th character in a heavy truck VIN is usually part of the engine identification. Try changing the last character of the VIN. That will return a VIN error, but the year should be correct.