I see a lot of questions asked about vehicles such as "what causes this and this to happen" or "my check engine light is on again, anyone know why??".... for less than $150 and usualy closer to $100 you can find codereaders that show you in PLAIN english what sensors are bad, what ones are failing and might not make the check engine light even trip yet.... they can show whichof your 2 (or 4) o2 sensors are bad rather than guess, and can honestly troubleshoot a LOT of problems for you as manyof them do REAL time sensorfeeds, as in Throttle position, MAP readings, tach, voltage, ETC..... the more ya spend,the nicer they are.... are they worth it???yes!!! can you take your rig to autozone and use theirs, yyeess, but, if your rig wont run to GET it there, what good is it,right?? they also reset the light for you anywayz, next time you are considering what to add to a wishlist, add an OBD2 scanner to your list if you have a 1996 or newer vehicle!!!

 

hmm...where would i find this?

 

my yoda has sensors out the wazoo, my haynes manual tells me what the ohm / voltage values should be. . .no need for OBD

my ram on the other hand, well. . .it's diesel

 

where would you find it?? well, everyone seems to sell them http://www.actron.com/ is the company that makes mine.... think i have a 9135 (the 9125 makes you have a book to look the codes up,mine, spells them right out in english,no need for deciphering) PepBoys, EBAY is agreat place to find them jsut ype in Actron or OBD2 or OBD II and see what pops up..... I think the deseil willwork tooas it is stillused as a diagnostic port for sensors

 

my truck does have the OBD crap, but for the most part one can listen to the engine and diagnose what the problem may be

 

the 9135 is good.... but the 9145 is much better. Not only does it read the codes but you can moniter all of the sensors and see exactly what voltages and reading they are putting out without actually getting under the hood and doing it. It is a bit more pricy but WAY worth it. Ive had mine for about 6 months now and love it. And it even came with all kinds of extra cables so for the older computers so you can hook those up and see what they are reading.

 

mdoffroad, you are absolutely right. I used to go the best guestimat way, but I realized on my wife's Intrigue why the Actron or something like it is the only way to go if you are doing your own mechanics. These new vehicles have sensors for their sensors, and they're too damned expensive just to go changing them--like the purge canister valve for the charchol canister, yep, it turned the light on, because the ECM can tell whether or not the solenoid actually fired by a feedback resistor that is placed across the solenoid coil of the valve to let the ECM know if the valve actually got opened--yah, I learned somehting on that one. Get a scanner!! Turns out the canister is located behind the rear wheel on the drivers side in the fender well, and the solenoid is mounted to the canister--go figure,space saving at its best, but I didn't have to run it into the shop.