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ive seen these code readers on a particular site for less than £20.00....is it money well spent? as ive heard stories of car dealers/ repairers asking a whole shed load more just to find out whats wrong with your car.....thanks
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Money well spent? Definitely IMO, although maybe defer purchase until you've got a light on, then you can justify it as cheaper than a diag session at the local garage.
Are the £20 ones any good? Yeah good enough for the price but OBD only covers the engine ECU and what's the betting first fault you get turns out to be an ABS problem (seperate ecu, generic obd scanner no use).
Depends what cars you're going to use it on but for example there are £35 VAG ones which do engine ECU on most marques and also ABS, Airbag, Transmission and something else on VAG only.
Another option might be to use an owners forum to lookup people with fault readers / PC software for your marque locally. Going rate is normally a £10 pack of beer each session.
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thanks skoda...i have an abs "light always on" issue , im going to check the wiring to each sensor , then do a test on the sensors individualy then go from there...thanks mate
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You need a reader for EOBD-most cheap readers are OBD,OBD1,OBD2-most will work on EOBD but not all.OBD is US,EOBD is EU.
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would have helped if the man behind the bars said what make of car he had wouldnt it?
but hey ho ;-)
at least he might have a tiger in his tank or heaven forbid in the boot.............
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You can get a clever little box with plugs into the OBD2 port and then talks via Bluetooth to your Garmin sat nav - it then displays all the engine parameters on it's big screen and lectures you about your driving style.
Don't know if it'll extract fault codes, though. If you get it chipped, use one of the Bluefin-style tools, as they can also read and erase fault codes but on a more advanced level than the generic OBD2 readers.
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EOBD readers only read EOBD codes, not any other moduels and they do not read all engine fault codes iether. they only read emission based fault codes only !
The reason garages charge is because they kit they buy often costs thousands and cost to update can be as much again. They should also be able to add experince as well but sadly many dont even understand what they are reading !
If you have an engine fault code that is not emmsion related you will jot be able to read the code or live data or reset the light.
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and of course a code is often a reaction to another problem
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spot on bellboy.
for example high resistance spark plugs fitted in a vectra will often flag up "air flow meter fault " this is just caused by electrical noise
So actually set of plugs will cure it , when mostly and AFM gets fitted first ! just one of a few hundred I could bore you with ! that when home diagnosis gets expensive.
Another common one is Oxygen sensor or "HEGO sensor" fault when actually its triggered by an air leak !
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To be fair I think the o2 sensor one is more the person behind the tool rather than the reader.
If I remember right there's 4 codes for lambda sensors: heater circuit open, o2 sensor circuit open, o2 sensor reading too high, o2 sensor reading too low, maybe some others.
The first 2 are candidates for new sensor, but worth checking the wiring first. The last 2 have an outside chance of being the lambda sensor but youd be looking for vac leak or over fuelling/ misfire type problems first. Maybe even just an Italian tune up.
Going by the forums though, any of those 4 normally has the person buying a new sensor without any other tests.
That's where oscilloscope or even live data from a lot of the PC tools earn their crust. They can be really useful for plotting lambda values and watching it switching.
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ODB2 readers - Skoda
