Every number can be traced back to a page.
The useful thing about Cogged is not that it knows a lot. It is that it can tell you where it got each figure, and that it stops when it has nothing.
Four steps, and no shortcuts between them
This is enforced below the application, in the database itself. A figure whose source is not a manufacturer manual or a licensed feed is rejected on insert — not filtered out later, not flagged for review. It cannot be stored, so it cannot be spoken.
Not all sources are allowed to do the same job
Cogged uses four kinds of source, and each is trusted for different things. Government data knows whose car it is and whether it is taxed; it has no opinion on how tight your head bolts should be, and is never asked for one.
| Tier | What it is | What it may be used for |
|---|---|---|
| OEM | The manufacturer's own workshop manual | Torque, capacities, clearances, sequences — anything you tighten or fill |
| Licensed | A commercial technical data feed, itself licensed from manufacturers | The same, at wider coverage than we can read by hand |
| Government | DVLA, DVSA, NHTSA | Identity, tax and MOT status, test history, mileage, recalls. Never a technical figure — they do not publish one |
| Community | Contributed by people | Tips and job notes only. The database physically refuses to let it back a safety-critical figure |
Every stored figure also carries the name of the person who checked it and the date they did. Not a team, not an import job — a person, because that is the entire basis on which the number is allowed to exist.
What happens when we haven’t got it
It stops. There is no estimate, no figure from a similar engine in the same family, and no cached approximation standing in for the real one.
What you will actually hear: “I don’t have a verified figure for that on your car. Don’t guess it — check the manual before you tighten anything.”
That is a worse experience than an answer, and it is the correct one. A general assistant asked for a head bolt torque will give you a number in the same confident voice whether it knows or not, and you will not be able to tell the two apart. The point of Cogged is that you can.
Where this stands today
Everything above describes how Cogged is built, and the rules are already enforced in the software. What we are still doing is the slow part: putting real data behind them.
Licensed technical data is a commercial agreement, not an API key you sign up for, and those conversations take as long as they take. In the meantime procedures are entered by hand from manufacturer workshop manuals, one at a time, with the section number recorded for each figure.
It is why there is no download link on this site yet. We would rather launch with a narrow set of jobs you can rely on completely than a wide set you have to second-guess — and a product whose entire claim is “the numbers are real” does not get to cut that particular corner to reach a launch date.