Choosing an Automotive Scan Tool -EricTheCarGuy

greetings viewers Aerith car guy here back again with my special guest Paul also known as a scanner dinner and we're sizing my first names I'd say his name is not Dan it's not Dave it's not Danny Danner is my last Danner's his last name but Paul is his first name that works scanner Danner you know my students gave me that name years ago it's stuck so what did they give you that new obvious reasons right well what moment is playing with a scanner okay which brings me to the point of this video and the point of this video is I get asked all the time they're like hey are at the car guy I'm thinking about buying a scanner what should I get or what should I look for and I thought who better to ask then yeah this guy here whose namesake happens to be scanner Danner so what we have is he's brought some of his like really great nice high-end type scanners that he uses with professional diagnosis and I have some of my scan tools that are definitely not on that level but things that are more affordable for the consumer so we're going to take those things talk about what those capabilities are and and how they might apply to your particular situation now by no means is this an endorsement of any particular type of scanner all we're intent on doing here is talking about some of the capabilities and you can decide for yourself whether those capabilities are worth the extra money that you might spend on more high-end scanner sounds good so while we go over the bench and get a look at what we've got we'll take it from there all right Paul you've brought us some like professional-grade wonderful scanners here that do all kinds of things that really the consumer doesn't mean but I wanted you to bring these in for the reason of so that you can make a comparison to find out what the professional has available to them and compare it to what's available in the consumer market that's the only reason we have these I know I know we have some like really expensive great scanners here but at the same time you don't necessarily need this this is just what's out there this is what Paul is used and we're just going to talk about that then compare it to what we have on the consumer level cool sounds good fair enough you so let's start with this guy here well this is the snap-on varus and I think the first thing to talk about with this tool is this is more than just a scanner this is a scanner scope and a touchscreen laptop all combined in one so that's really why it's so expensive so it's more like a tablet computer than more than anything else I mean it's it's above and beyond what you would normally see as far as just a regular scan yeah for sure and I mean a tablet computer would be right and they if you look at the top you can see all these all these ports you know that this would be your scope function so it is really a full functional scope and a full functional scanner and maybe I think one of the things we could talk about maybe would be the difference between the two but yeah yeah you know a scan for the scope part would be you know more of a glorified voltmeter you know one where you're actually doing measurements of voltage say under the hood and a scanner would be when you're connecting to the data link connector under the dash so completely separate tools you also have like all these fancy attachments here this wonderful blow molded case and all these little keys here that well the keys this part would be for the scan soul so this is the scan tool part of the tool and I think really that's where we're going to focus most of these other cables that you see in here would be for the scope and we're not really doing that we're focusing on the scan tool so this these keys they call these personality keys and every manufacturer has a different way of doing that but what these will do is they configure the 16 pin data link connector to communicate and talk on the correct pins for the for the car that you're working on so this would be something more specific beyond like say a global scanner for sure yeah this is this is something that I can really communicate with maybe 60 different car lines and not just in a generic format I can actually read the same information that say a factory scan tool could read but there there certainly is a lot of hardware here to go with this and I'm sure you know like you said this has lab scope capabilities beyond just being a regular scan tool so this this tool here how much how much would like this like retail for I think the retail on the varus is some somewhere around $10,000 that's really stinking expected it is isn't it and I'm gonna get all kinds of crap for even saying that number but hey I didn't make up the number this this is through school and that kind of thing for sure there's no question about that I mean the reason I have this tool in front of me is my boss owns this tool so yeah you know I mean let's be honest you know we have 10 of these at Rosedale and uh you know so maybe a plug for my boss for letting me bring this is hey we got 10 of these at our school so you know well and this would be something we'd find at I would say many independent shops because as you mentioned earlier you've got those keys that make it specific to manufacture now with this tool I'm assuming you can do a lot so in addition like I said the scope capability is about up beyond the scan tool part of it but would you also be able to like say do ABS codes and SRS would that be based a lot on what you get with these keys here for sure and it's not just switching the keys you know maybe let's take a newer um maybe a newer chrysler for example would be the k 25 key i just know that from from memory maybe not all of the modules talked on this same k 25 key so just what you said I would switch keys so I could switch to a different module but basically um what we look for you know from a professional standpoint is I want to be able to communicate with every system on that car you know that I can to aid in in my diagnosis right and that's that's what would be the difference with professional grade because this this gets down to the tiny little details all the little minutiae and things like that mean it might be a power sliding door or something that you're certainly not going to have any information on with it with an a global obd2 scan tool you're not going to read like power sliding door you know inputs and outputs and codes and things like that which is which is why this this tool is so capable it's not specific to any one manufacturer it works across many different manufactures and they're constantly updating software and things like that to write this up to date and keep it relevant and let's be clear to that you know I get this a lot too is what's the best scan tool for a particular car you really can't answer that I mean really the best scan tool for a car it would be the factory scan tool right now you're not going to beat a factory scan tool for what that car can do or what the scan tool can do on that car the guy that engineered the car is the same group of guys that engineered the scan tool to talk to the car so right right so it's kind of a no-brainer as far as that goes yeah for sure but you know in the aftermarket like I you know I work in the aftermarket I work on 40 different car lines I need a good Universal tool that can communicate and talk to and give me as much information as possible on these 40 different car lines that I work on so so let's just separate that out right now the manufacturer specifically makes their own scan tools for their own software to communicate with their own vehicles and everything that goes along with it correct so that would be basically to do all end all however if you're out in the world you're working on many different types of vehicles something like this might be the way to go is there something else comparable to this verus that's out there oh yeah I'm not sure exactly about the scope scan tool and laptop combination you know I know snap one certainly does they have something that's called the modus which would be take the touchscreen take the touchscreen PC out of this and it's just a scope scan tool combo it's a little bit cheaper and then there's other manufacturers that are doing similar things but I'll be honest with you I don't know names you know really I'm exclusively snap-on well I see you also have brought its grandfather would you say I did did bring the grandfather this is uh this one's actually mine and and you could look out dusty vacations well don't you once you've got this yeah this this sort of becomes obsolete well it does because everything that is in here in the old red brick which is what this is the MT 2500 I've used that myself yeah everything that this was able to do is inside of this tool and you can see I'm pretty outdated here what am i up to my imports I'm only up to 2000 and my domestics um Wow 98 I'm ashamed we don't need to be ashamed 99 on my domestics did you have the grandchild yeah for sure but this but this was a tool that also handled Oh BDO and obd one I remember having all the different connectors in here yeah we got the same same type of smaller pile of keys yeah and I got the same you know data link connector and so that would be you know 16 pin global and then just to give you a comparison and before the days of internet and downloads yeah we had like actual cartridges the cards it's almost like you know Sega Genesis yeah it really is isn't it yeah well you know I kept this tool for such a long time because on on older systems I would still use it and I still you know I still may you know say like take an old GM 12-pin connector and plug into it and I still AM able to you know communicate with that system and access information and you know that's your pre obd2 or oh oh be do as you call it nobody oh oh be one right obd once technically california but well we won't have to I didn't know that yeah obd one had certain standards they said you had to have a check engine light you have to be able to store codes and look I mean I had a 92 Nissan that didn't even have a check engine light but it had a mass airflow and all fuel injection all the other systems truthfully not a obd one vehicle obd one was california so the same Nissan truck in 92 if it had a check engine light it was obd 1 mm-hmm yet they followed the same do you know what I mean they followed the same kind of principles obd one just had guidelines so i mean to be specific that's why I've always avoided the term obd 1 because truthfully obd ones california okay okay I do remember Nissan's of that vintage though I think he just looked underneath the passenger seat at the flashing LEDs and ryebeck guarantor but that wasn't good enough for obd 1 if it was an obd 1 vehicle it had to have a check engine light on the dash I see and so that's where kind of obd ii evolved from that you know where we had our you know to me and as long as we're on this subject obd ii came about in 1996 yeah so it's any vehicles prior to 1996 these scan tools except for this one here yeah would not even apply although there were a few 94 95 models it had this g answers yeah GM said the only ones I can think of and they weren't really truly obd ii compliant yet you know they didn't have all the hardware but they were like get ready for ders right well I yeah it seemed that GM was was the one that's sort of set the standard as far as the connector and everything as far as that I can remember yes I remember before that it was the Wild West not forward I think that I think I remember seeing a few fours it had a obd2 connector but I just remember this is a cord here isn't it now that's the multi one that's for like Mitsubishi ins okay but I just I just remembered there's a Ford oh there it is I just remembered during that time they had several different types of connectors before there was the universal yes obd2 which is what a lot of the cables really in both boxes I do look at this one I kept a lot you know these are all these are all tree obd2 connectors to you know so I can really still work on the older cars with this newer tool and I mean ob2 really the standardization was awesome I don't like the government stepping in and telling me way things are either but this is one of the situations where man it were really because it was Wild West before that because as you can see you had to have all these different connectors right he had to have all the different software to talk to all those things it was a lot more difficult back then well before obd2 came along it was a lot more difficult than it is now so yeah these standards really did help a great deal in that sense now what's beyond obd2 I don't think I can answer that truth I might have heard of Hobie t3 and I don't even know what what's involved there but I know what's happening now is like they're getting rid of this stuff like on the newer the newer verus that's the verus Pro or actually all of the snap on line they've gotten rid of the keys and they're using a wireless box that you know you're going to plug this into the data link connector and it has a big box here they just sit on the dash and then you can just do everything wirelessly so that's so you can have that sitting in your toolbox you never have to bring that into the view yeah although to me that maybe there's not a great selling point because I'll end up leaving the connector on the car and then the car leaves and now you're screwed for the rest of the day you know but still you could lose these keys just as easily that's true these are the high-end scanners this this is grandpa and there's there's the grand kid over there but what I have here is my AK Tron scanner that I've used now this this was something I actually it's I think it was seekers like a long time ago but it was an obd2 just basic scanner and it just it just gave me basic information but what I like so much about this one is it actually gave me live data and that was what was important to me I wanted to be able to look and see what what the computer was seeing particularly the one thing that comes to mind is speed sensors whenever I've got a speed sensor or a speedometer that's not working on the dash I would plug this in take it for a drive if I had a good speed reading on the scanner I knew that the problem was in the - but if the speed reading on the scanner was freaking out like the speedometer was then I could condemn the speed since a good direction tool for sure yeah so so that's that's always really using it for to start with now recently I've come across this one which sort of speaks more to what you were saying about your snap-on scanner the wireless the wireless technology and that's what this has so this is something that's also quite affordable that's available to the consumer and actually I'm going to do a review on this but I just brought this out to show that that they have come a long way from what they were just a few short years ago and then also what we see there yeah so why don't we to help round this out why don't we go over to a vehicle plug it in look at what the different capabilities are and you know find out what we would be looking for if we were to purchase a scan - okay cool all right now we've taken the varus and we've hooked it up to my o for element I'm going to need to talk to it yep and the whole purpose of this is to basically show what a high-end scan tool is capable of and then when you do your search for whatever tool that you decide to buy you can say well it has these features or doesn't have these features so we'll start with a varus and then we'll plug in my scanner and see what that does and just do a kind of comparison to see how you know what the difference in price actually means and you realize we're condensing like a 16 hour class into like a 10 minute video exactly you know all we're doing it all we're doing is a general overview because it is 16 hours when I do the virus training for my class it's 16 hours well I love that have no doubt you know we don't have that kind no we don't well I think the first thing to point out on this is the main screen would be there's two modes here there's scanner and then there's obd direct this obd direct mode would be basically what you're getting when you buy an aftermarket global obd to scan tool when you say global what do you mean when you say that well global is a obd ii standard that they've they've standardized globally uh the communication protocols and how the car is going to talk to you so regardless of where the car comes from if it's being sold here in the United States it has to meet these certain standards so that obd direct um we could also call that global obd ii or also known as generic obd ii well i think i think to show maybe the difference between the two because we're going to do that with your short scan tool to is i can really show you a difference here and and what we get out of these these two methods are communications go for it I'm just going to the scan so I have to identify my vehicle connect obd to adapter with the k22 key so that's that's cool I got these keys in my hand tells me which one I need do I want to load this yes I do and this is the first thing you'll see that would be different from a obd generic scan tools you see the different modules that I can talk to on this car so you can talk to my transmission my analog brakes my airbag and my SCS mo definitely we see the different modules we can talk to I would imagine we're going to spend time in the engine so yeah cuz honestly I think most of your consumer grade scanners would only read the engine and that'd be about it alright lucky to get you get a transmission code but it wouldn't be able to do anything specific with it okay so we'll click on engine and then this tells me to use the k24 key which is going to be my keys here we use the wrong key we're going to have communication problems so k 24 and from here we have a lot of different things we can do that I would imagine we're not going to see on the other cheaper scan tools you know things like functional tests you know we can turn components on and off I can make your cooling fans around your your fuel pump may be on certain cars I can make your injectors turn on and off generic functions would be my global you know some of the things that we want to get in there would be things like freeze frame data you know freeze frame data be you know when a car sets a code it takes a snapshot of what parameters the car was at when the code set that's part of global obd-ii and eight and we want that information we can grab it in there you know read your codes clear your codes things like that right and then the Troubleshooters you know really I'm not going to go on a rant with a troubleshooter here but the troubleshooter that snapped one has really to me is what makes the Snapple and tool the best tool for the aftermarket guy that works on 40 different car lines like I do I need help I don't know all the answers to all of this stuff so what you're saying is this actually comes with sort of a tutor yeah so to speak so that when you're working on a vehicle you might not necessarily be familiar with yes it can walk you through step-by-step the troubleshooting yeah for that particular vehicle or for that particular code that it pulls up yeah just real quick I went to one of my garages recently and it was on a Ford Windstar and had all these weird transmission codes and it was you know shifting weird and stalling and crazy stuff I mean I need a beginning point and I went to the troubleshooter and and it said that this vehicle is known for the windshield wiper cowl area to leak water on the engine computer and to pull the computer connector off and see if there's water in there that's exactly what I had it was all of the same you know problems that I had so that's an example of what you might find in the troubleshooter I mean that allowed me to make money in like two minutes that day when you price snap-on in the competitors in the Austin market the difference for me is in that troubleshooter and I think that's what makes the additional cost that they that they asked for worth it no question well absolutely because that saves you time it also saves you from looking to other sources for that information yeah so if you had that code like say for instance with a consumer-grade you know scan tool or what have you then you would have to go elsewhere for that information not to say that that information is not readily available on the Internet right but it's an extra step you need to take right and whenever you're a technician particularly working in the field time is money yeah so any time that you can save you don't even have to leave this driver's seat in order to get that information so that's really handy to have right there at the push of a button so that's one that you definitely won't see in a in a generic or aftermarket scan sure you know when you're talking to Narracott means that it is universal to all cars it's not vehicle specific at all so and those codes are meant to be precisely that there are manufacturer codes right that are more specific pertaining to specific systems on that vehicle right that are above and beyond what you'd normally get by some scan tools won't even read those from what I understand yeah though the p1 codes are would be the ones a p1 so that first letter is when you see a p1 that's a manufacturer code when you see a p0 that's a generic global code so a lot of the global scan tools you know if I went under generic or if I come out here and go obd direct the global scan tools will give you it'll say ah it'll say manufacturer controlled air fuel mixture or some crazy designation for that code right or exhilarating mission control fault you know and if it's as p2 or p1 there's no there's no data base in the scan tool that defines the code so they make up this kind of real long elaborate like oh that's a bad code you know whereas just a generic here's the interpretation I don't know what this code means so here's this long or something here's something here's something to make me sound smart yes that's what it is you know there's just no definition for it right right I get it ok yeah where when you buy a scan tool you know one like this you're going to have those P ones the p2 s whatever you have access to everything and that's why we have these specific keys and everything to go along with these particular makes and models so that you can get that that information out of that vehicle correct so another piece I think that would be maybe important to talk about not maybe it would be to really show the difference if you're shopping for scan tools would be the amount of data that it gives you I know that that's unique to different scan tools let's go into into this real quick and and let me just talk about a couple of these so you guys know what terminology I'm using one you'll hear me say a lot is a data pit and you see these would as a pit you see the PID yeah you see these pieces of information that you're showing up on the screen here they're known as data pits and the pit stands parameter identification and it's just a piece of information it's a data parameter and it gives you a value next to it and and the more data pins we have the better wouldn't you agree well yeah the more information you have is great but if you don't know how to interpret it it's you're just kind of wasting your time and money I would agree with you so I think it's really important to say particularly when we're talking about this professional-grade tool and all this information that it gives you if you're unable to interpret this information it's useless to you it's just as useless as not having this tool I agree so or not having any tool at all so in addition this is only the stepping off point yeah in addition to having a tool that can read codes you have to really think about what you want to get from that tool if you're a professional in a shop working on several different makes and models this would be perfect if you're at a dealership working on one type of model well they're going to provide you with their scan tool which would be the best thing for their vehicles right so you really have to somewhere find a balance between what is it the high-end or maybe a tool that will train you when you're using it and and that's also you know it's also great is that this will do that I won't take you there now but like I don't know what the CLV CLV percentage data pit is I don't know what that means but I can go back to the troubleshooter and go under the I forget the specific name I think it's cold it's fast track data scan is what it's called and you can go under that and you can find that CLV and will tell you what that abbreviation is what it does and so I mean that's kind of a tool that teaches you you know what I mean so again you're paying money if you're paying more money for more features yeah so usually the more you pay for the tool the more features you're going to get as a result of the money like you said usually because we were just talking about that all the exact doesn't always work that doesn't always it doesn't always work that way you can sometimes spend more money and not get value for that it's really difficult to try to figure out value for money and this is a very difficult question to answer as we're finding here yes because we can start with this and talk about it all day long but does that help you solve your your search for the perfect scan tool for you right what you really have to do is sit down and figure out what your capabilities are what your needs are yes as far as what you're looking for from the scan tool and work from there yes so as far as brand anything else all that comes with basically you being able to read the spec sheet and know what you're looking at when you're searching for that tool if you can interpret the data and I like that you mentioned that I mean if you if you don't know what any of it is then why are you searching for a scan tool that will give you more data well if you've got the $10,000 to spend on this then it'll teach you yeah that is true but not in all circumstances but for sure let's compare the two and just to kind of get an eyeball of this list here we have really I'm not going to count these okay we have a big list you see that scroll bar that showed up right there so we have we got a whole bunch of data pins on this side and we have the same thing over here on this side and I'm just gonna throw a number at you maybe it's a hundred 100 hundred or so data pins that we can look at that remember where we are this is a 2004 Honda Element okay so I'm gonna I'm going to switch this now and I'm going to change vehicles so I'm going to exit out of this Honda and so now it says no active vehicle at the bottom go back to my home tab I'm going to go over you direct now so this would be more your generic scan tool and go to OBD diagnose and i'm going to start my communication just asking me if it's 12 or 24 volt no vehicle specific stuff and notice we have to pay attention what keys were using I need a K 20 key now all right so now we're doing more what what you know what a global scan tool would do nothing nothing really crazy and I just want to show you the difference in data pits how many we have between a global scan tool and you know a factory one and we'll just compare the number of pins that we had available I think this is something that you would it would be worth researching if you're going to buy a generic scan tool is what software's in it that will allow me to view as many data pins as possible I have seen some some cheaper scan tools you know less than $200 that really will give me the same data list that my my factory one will give me because they have factory information in there just an example this is it man I have no scroll this is all the pins I have on this car so you see the difference right in the amount of data parameters I can look at here under my global compared to I could under the Honda alright let's go grab your scan tool let's do it that first thing is I plugged it in and it was powered up already so that's kind of cool yeah it is this this is really designed for the consumer and a lot of well I don't know this is the one that I have and this is what I've used for many years and it's it's served my purposes there have been times where I've wanted more but at least it could give me some information so you can read code you got pending codes erase codes view data but like if you scroll down you freeze data and drive Co monitor Oh buddy to test onboard systems record data that's double it does have a record function yeah and also one of the things that you can modules present yeah I think that's what it was modules present let's let's talk about that for a second if you that's another important feature I think yeah I think so too um if the reason we want to be able to limit data pits is I always compare it to I don't know if you if you don't know if your viewers have either the old Tomb Raider game on PlayStation one where you would get into a certain room and there'd be all of this stuff going on you know there there's lava flowing and the walls are moving and you're running but you're running in super slow motion because the Refresh of the screen is just not enough and if we can limit the amount of data that we can collect we can speed up the process sure so when would that be an advantage so let's say let's say you have a TPS that has a glitch and you're doing a you know putting a pedal to the floor and you're looking for a glitch in the signal you would want to only have the TPS open and have every other data pit off because that will speed up your your communication and your chance of seeing the glitch on here will be much much higher so maybe another piece that you know your viewers would want to know would be a tool that allows you to limit the data pits yeah and I use it when I'm checking catalytic converters I look I compare the front and rear o2 sensors and have them sitting right next to each other that way there I don't have to scroll back and forth I could just look at it and at a glance I'm getting that information oh and once again we're getting back to your education and your ability to use the tool it's it's not so much the tool itself that's going to solve the problem for you you're gonna have to know how to use it in order to be effective with it yeah for so no matter what you decide to get you need to have some basic information so that you have some idea what you're looking at you can spend $10,000 on that other tool and still have no idea what you're looking at and it's completely useless whereas if you've got some idea of what you're looking at you're going to be much more effective and much more able to repair something yeah I agree hundred percent the kind of well let's take a look at this data this time I'm surprised that you have this many data parameters available to you yeah and I think this tool is $700 now have you found that to be pretty accurate at the beginning where it says 106 and there's really honor and six data I haven't counted them but I just go in find what I need and that's that I don't I don't do ya know it lied to you because there's no 106 here that's the bottom of the list right there I did it so like scrolling up this is the exact same amount of data that I had in my in my generic this is ice local stuff so it's not 106 it just it just gives you the general this is exactly what you can look for no I didn't look at all of them exactly but this is this looks exactly like the parameters that I had it does but I mean I would suggest anyone if it's for your own car or for a few cars that you work on that you look into seeing if they offer the manufacturer coverage because of the difference in the amount of data that you have and the abilities that you'll be able to but once again okay if you don't know how to interpret the data then that extra information is not going to help you right what I would say is if this had ABS capability there's been many times where I wish this could read ABS yes and then once again ABS isn't standardized right like like obd2 is ABS is all over the place just like anything else pretty much with different manufacturers so they're not going to have specific there's two ways like you look at this though - I mean wouldn't this be one of those things where you would want to have more information than you know what to do with so in case you ever need it you have it for example let's say like your fuel gauge doesn't work properly and the manufacturer offers you a data pit you can look at the fuel tank level in the scan tool you might not know what it is originally but you know two years later you now have a fuel gauge problem now you're going to go research it now you're going to go do your work on it and guess what you have a data pit that you can now use do you know what I mean so I I think it's always better to have more but if the goal is to hook up a scan tool and read a code and then change the part off of that code then go buy the cheapest freakin scan tool that you can find that's it end of debate yeah that's that pretty much covers it you know what I mean right right why are we even debating we're going to be if you're going to be hanging parts buy the cheapest thing you can physically but if you actually want to interpret the data and use it to do some diagnostic work you're going to want to one be able to understand a diagnostic work and two you want to try to find a tool that's going to be able to do that for sure so yeah you really you're somewhere in between there yeah but mostly I say it's going to be the capabilities of the tool as I said any scan tool is going to be able to read global right I think we can agree on that right but then as you saw there's more manufacturer specific information that's out there as well right in addition to that more specific manufacturer information you might get transmission codes you might get body codes you might get ABS codes the real takeaway here I think is what are you going to use a tool for are you going to use a tool to pull parts and to pull codes and replace parts and get the cheapest thing you can get if you're going to use the tool to do some actual diagnostic work you're going to want as much information as that tool can possibly give you and if you can get other information go with it like we spoke about earlier like those common issues that you found on your tool that was able to go out and give you that information now I'm going to also say that much of that are well not much of that information it is difficult to find but can sometimes be found on the Internet well the Internet has changed things drastic it has changed things drastically but it's not we can YouTube it we can YouTube it but it's it's not it's not it's not to do all end all I mean there's there's other there's other things to be considered there it's not like the video on YouTube is going to specifically deal with the issue that you're having right it could be similar to that but then you're still going to have to have some backstory you're still going to have to have some diagnostic ability to take you there first thing comes my zmapp you have evap codes come up a lot those are their evaporative emission system sometimes it's as simple your gas cap but sometimes you need a tool that's capable right of turning those cell anoints on and off to verify their operation right and this tool will not do that right but there are other tools out there that will so once again you're looking for that capability if you want to diagnose evap codes and things like that you're going to need a tool that's going to be able to go in there the term for your viewers to look for they call that a bi-directional scan tool yes a bi-directional scan so that means we can read information and then we can command the the computer so it's bi-directional so and in some cases you can command the windows to open and close or different different actuators on the vehicle you can command them on/off just simply by pressing a button on the scan tool right this this is nowhere near capable of that but it's price level dictates where it's where it fits in that food chain it's really a question of what do you need what do you know and what do you need to know right let's wrap this one up ok cool well there certainly is a lot to talk about a lot to think about when purchasing a scan tool especially after talking to you all the different things here you've got that we just scratched the surface - we did just scratch the surface and and that's the thing what everybody whenever somebody asked me that question of Eric what scan tool should I buy what should I look for a scan tool that is a very open-ended question because as you can see you can go from everything to just what you need and then somewhere in between there is the type of user you are and I think I think that's the first thing you need to determine before you got looking for a scan tool are you just need to pull codes just to see what that check engine light is on for you don't trust taking it somewhere some places charge like an hour Diagnostics just to pull a code if you want to do away with that actually for what you could spend on an hour of Diagnostics these days you could have a scan tool that would tell you that so that it could tell you the code but then you still need more information from that that that code is just it's just a stepping off point it's like I say often that like six different codes for o2 sensors and only two of them mean that the o2 sensor is faulty the rest of it means something else so you you have to know what you're looking at number one and number two you have to be realistic about what your expectations are so if if say for instance you're opening up your own independent shop or maybe you're a technician looking to have a scan tool on the side for maybe your side work or something like that so you will be working on more than one type of vehicle you want to try to go up the food chain so to speak and you want to look for something that might have abs capability or transmission capability or bidirectional was that word and so I would say that if you are that type of person I would be looking for something bi-directional as opposed to what we have here which is just a one-way street what is a map I mean we look at a scan tool like just to reiterate what you were saying we we view a scan tool as a as a map and you have a compass and you're trying to find some direction and so I always teach that the scan tool is your map and your compass you know it doesn't it doesn't need to be up you still need to walk there you need to be able to read the map and follow the compass and go the right direction and the scan tool can you know in the wrong direction if you're if your knowledge isn't there all right right that's a fantastic analogy actually because that's what it is it's a journey Diagnostics is a journey it's it's it's a way of getting from point A to point B you've got that little yellow light that comes on in your dash to the point where it actually gets fixed well yeah that is that can be most certainly a journey there are many times well will freely admit it could be as simple as replacing a faulty part but then there's also issues with wiring issues with connectors issues with computers and all types of other things that can go wrong that the computer interprets as a problem because computers speak in a language of voltage and the voltage is either here or there and if they don't see the correct voltage that's when that little yellow light comes and it says I don't see what I'm supposed to see here and there you go so they speak in the language of voltage as well so you need you need a tool that's able to speak yeah to give you that compass to give you that map but as far as what you actually need sit down and really think about that first and then look at the spec sheet on the on the tool that you're considering and that should get you the rest of the way I would think I think it's good I think you know maybe to follow it to is is to educate yourself which is a lot of your viewers are already doing get each other using each other and you're gathering information you're sharing that information and we need help you know that's what we do so you know you have something you're looking at you're on tour of you you go online in you yeah as it in and research it yourself and educate yourself absolutely and don't be afraid of ignorance because we're all ignorant to some degree and reaching out for help and asking for help is not a bad thing looking for a sign eat help all the time so do I the time that's why I have him here but but yeah I think you get the general just in a general takeaway of it so to answer your question figure out what it is you need the tool for and then work towards that look at the spec sheet and look at what that tool has to offer that you're considering and see if it meets those needs so I hope that answers your question we took all this time to try and slice it it's a tough cut he took all this time to try to answer it and we still don't feel like we've but scratched the surface yeah so that's the best we can do for now anyway I am pair at the car guy and if you have automotive questions I would ask that you head over to eric the car guy comm why why because it's the most awesome place ever to get answers to your automotive questions that's why you go there welcome video to tell you about all the wonderful features we have it eric the car guy calm to help you with those automotive issues and if you wish to connect to me socially i can be found on Google Plus Facebook and Twitter this guy can be found on the channel scanner Danner he cannot he also has a book which I want to put a link to in the description yes she does have a book you took the time to write it dude and actually I've read it it's quite good I've learned quite a bit myself so if you're on that level and you want to learn more about the back story behind those and how to interpret them in that type of thing that's I would advise this I would advise checking it out so thanks Eric and thank you very much let's not forget we got to close this out yeah yeah be safe have fun stay dirty stay dirty I'll see you next time all right cool

Channel: EricTheCarGuy

Views: 1,056,892

Rating: 4.722497 out of 5

Keywords: choosing a scan tool, looking for scan tool, automotive scan tool, shopping for scan tool, automotive scan tool guide, scan tool choices, DLC, Snap-on, OTC, Actron, Versus, Snap-on brick, ScannerDanner, ScannerDanner on scan tools, Rosedale, using a scan tool, lab scope, how to use a scan tool, scan tool basics, data list, reading data list, PID, PID codes, OBDII, OBD 2, automotive education, how to, how to auto repair, diy, diy auto repair, eric the car guy, ericthecarguy, etcg

Id: yCxsdCtxvtE

Length: 38min 55sec (2335 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2014