I'm prety sure that I know the answer to this question but I'm going to ask anyway.

My Brother-in-law gave me a Harbor Freight OBDII scan tool to use... will this work on our trucks?

CAN OBDII item #94169.

Thanks

 

Try it and let us know.

 

for sure. it would be amazing if it does!

harbor freight = $1 store of tools

 

I thought our truck were not ODBII compliant?

 

I am not sure if they are OBD II compliant or not, but I thought my mechanic checked OBD II the other day when he hooked his scanner up to my truck. Somebody will chime in that knows.

 

You will pick up some generic codes with it but not any PSD specific codes. So in a nut shell no it will not work. Sorry to be the bearer of bad new...........

 

You will be able to read anything to do with smog codes, but none of the engine specific stuff.

In the case of my truck, I have a GPCM(Cali Truck), when my UVCH was coming loose, it threw a bad glow plug 7 error as that is a smog component. Its pretty limited in out applications though, as most anything of importance will not be read by it.

 

That's prety much all I could have hoped for.

I didn't think it would work but I thought "what the heck".

I presume that it's only a reader and not going to mess with the PCM or other programing. Am I correct in this assumption?

The weirdest thing happened the other day. I was at Mc'D's and shut my truck off so they could hear me at the drive thru. When I started it up the CEL light came on for a moment and then turned off. I'm thinking that there is a stored code in the truck and I just wanted to see if this cheapo scanner would read it.

I would really like to get AE but just can fit it into the budget right now.

 

I have been looking for something I can run on my HTC Evo. I have seen alot that you can plug into your port and connect to it via bluetooth for live info and pulling codes but everything I find is for ODB II

 

The trucks are OBD II compliant. That means you can read generic OBD II information. There are three things that can be looked at on the power-train with OBD II compliant devices. MAP, RPM, & MPH. Beyond that everything else is manufacture specific and therefore falls out side of the OBD II generic realm.

Most every OBD II device will only scan and read codes that are generic, meaning across all vehicle types. The ones for the phones are no different, or at least the four or five I have looked into.

Maybe if enough people ask AE, they will make an APP for that!

 

Earlier Powerstrokes are not OBDII compliant. Look at the sticker under the hood. I know that '05s diesels were OBDII compliant.

My '01 is J1850 PWM compliant. Some of the better code readers will read these codes. The cheapest of the el-cheapos will not.

 

Well night before last I gave the el-cheapo code reader a shot.

It powered up to the OBDII port and I started the scan...

It said no codes were present but then it went through a bunch of emissions stuff... all of these fault areas said N/A... not a big suprise here.

Basically, I'm glad that I didn't have to pay anything for the el-cheapo scanner. I'm saving my $ for AE.

 

Thats what I am waiting for! Just enough to pull codes, and do live monitoring of what the PCM watches...RPM, 0 - 60 etc..the fun stuff to watch.

**waiting to hear...There's an app for that!**