Questions about OBD II tools.

Discussion in 'General Motoring' started by Kevin, May 14, 2005.

  1. Kevin

    Kevin Guest

    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!
     
    Kevin, May 14, 2005
    #1
  2. Kevin

    Paul Singh Guest

    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
     
    Paul Singh, May 14, 2005
    #2
  3. Kevin

    Kevin Guest

    Thanks. I will check out the url you mentioned. :)
     
    Kevin, May 17, 2005
    #3
  4. Kevin

    ncs Guest

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

    thanks,
    Nick
     
    ncs, May 18, 2005
    #4
  5. Kevin

    Paul Singh Guest

    Correct only '96 onwards.

     
    Paul Singh, May 18, 2005
    #5
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