Done with dealership scan tools, but my cheap Bluetooth one surprised me...

I used to swear you needed a $5000 Snap-On scanner to do anything real. Then my buddy in Tucson let me borrow his $40 OBDLink dongle and app. I figured it'd just read codes and that's it. But it showed live misfire counts on a 2014 Focus and even the fuel trims that matched my suspicion of a vacuum leak. I fixed it in one shot. Still think the expensive stuff has its place for programming and ABS bleed, but for diagnosis... I'm starting to wonder if the cheap route is enough for 90% of what comes in. Anyone else flip on this or am I just cheap?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

verab282mo ago

Honestly, how many times have you actually used live data to fix something, or is it just fun to watch numbers move on a screen? I'll take a solid code and a good smoke test over a fancy graph any day, but that's just me.

5