Questions about OBD II tools.

Hi guys,

I have several questions on the OBD II and the tools for it.
My car is Dodge Intrepid 1997 and I noticed it has an OBD II connector.
Since I am thinking of buying a scanner for it, my question is:

1) From where do you guys suggest me to buy a OBD II scanner so that I
can know what are the problems of my car (suppose there are problems)?

2) I googled a while, and I find there are two kinds of scanners: one
is a independent tool, another (seems cheaper?) is a special cable plus
a software, which connects to a PC. I am thinking which one is good?
The later usually is much cheaper: is that reliable? Does it run on
WinXP?

3) Do these scanners work on different cars? My car is Intrepid 1997,
my brother's car is a Ford Taurus 1999. It would be nice if the
scanner can work for both.

4) How much more information can such a scanner tell us than the
standard key on and off computer codes? Can I say that the OBD II can
tell us the maximal information and is the final resort in terms of
locating the problems of a car?


I appreciate some detailed answers or URLs, I am newbie for these
stuffs.

Thanks a lot and have a great day!

 

Try http://obddiagnostics.com

You can see the screen shots of the software as well.

I bought this and it works great for my lexus and honda. The software works
great on winxp. This software can monitor lot more sensor data than a
handheld cheap scanners can. I can plug it in, log the data, drive around
then come home and replay all of it to see how different sensors reacted
during this trip. This is a nice gadget to play with.

There are many things you can do with scanner tools of this type which you
can't otherwise. For example if your intake pressure is low, you know that
your filter is clogged or throttle body needs cleaning or something like
that. No code is generated for this condition. You can adjust your timing
better than the timing light as obd II tells you exacly what it sees than
guessing with the timing light so on and so forth.

-Paul

 

Thanks. I will check out the url you mentioned.

 

I'm guessing this will not work on a 1993 3.3 Grand Caravan. Is there any
'like' software that does ?

thanks,
Nick

 

Correct only '96 onwards.