OBD II scanner

Anyone out there used a 'CREADER' OBD II code scanner? My '00
Chrysler Voyager got a bad tank of gas on Saturday. It's been
hesitating and stumbling since then and as of yesterday, the check
engine light came on. It stumbles a little bit at idle, and minimally
at light load cruising. It flashes if I accelerate briskly or put a
load on it when cruising. When I got the oil changed today, the
dealer kindly offered to charge me $80 to read the car, which I
refused. If I'm going to pay $80 to get the codes out of my car, I'd
rather invest it in a tool like this.

Anyone have personal experience, thoughts about this and other OBD II
readers, such as EQUUS, Actron or others?

 

If you have an Autozone parts store in your part of the country, they will
attach their scanner and read the codes for free. Just a thought.

--Geoff

 

Flashing CEL indicates engine operation that is deadly to the emissions
system components.

Am thinking one or more injectors may be jammed open from debris that
somehow got through the filter. Don't be surprised if pump and
injectors need to be replaced. Keep your receipts and go after the
station that sold the bad gas.

 

You know, I thought about this, but dismissed it because I thought I'd
asked and they didn't do this any more. I just called and they said
they still do it. I'm going to get my car scanned tonight. I have
grown to really like autozone, even if I don't like ALL their parts.
I don't think the quality is there in some of the Chinese made
electrical parts, but their mechanicals have always been good quality
and inexpensive. Thanks.

 

Go to Autozone and have them pull the Error Codes for Free!. Screw the dealer
who wants $80 to read error codes. You could buy a scanner on sale for about
that money.

 

Yeah screw anybody who has to pay $3000 or more for diagnostic equipment, a
technicians time etc. Many dealers will wave the diagnostic if the customer
elects to have the car repaired. So yeah SCREW em. Great!
Larry

 

You really don't know how the dealer's service department approached this,
you know.

It could have been that when it was in the shop getting oil changed the
service guy saw
the trouble code light go on an told him "You know we can read the codes for
you" then
when he asked how much it would cost, was told $80. I'd call that
opportunistic.

However if the tech that changed the oil happened to see the code, then
asked the
customer "has this vehicle been having trouble lately" and then got the
explanation from
the customer. Then if the tech offered _to_fix_the_vehicle_ not even
mentioning any
$80 diagnostic fee, that would be a lot different, in my book.

What matters in service, whether servicing a car or anything else, is that
the service
adviser is acting in the role of a salesman here. A good salesman finds out
_what_the_
customer_wants_ first, then figures out how to answer this. By contrast a
bad salesman
only bothers to find out _what_they_can_provide then tries pushing it on any
customers
that come into the shop, regardless.

Obviously the dealer did a terrible sales job here. They shouldn't have
even quoted the
customer the $80 because clearly the customer wasn't ready to pay to have
his car fixed
in the first place. A good service manager would have spent a few minutes
talking to
the customer first, and determining this before quoting, then if the
customer asked point-blank
how much they would charge to read codes, or if they would read codes "as a
favor"
the service manager could have simply said "we only read codes for cars that
customers
have contracted us to fix" or told him that the tech that reads codes wasn't
available, or
some such. That would have had the effect of steering the conversation into
an estimate
of how much it would cost to do the repair work, which is what the dealer
really makes
money off doing.

Ted

 

Ted
We don't know it happened the way you said either. All we know is a "shop"
wanted an $80 charge to read them. Almost every shop I know dealer or
independant has a policy if the customer elects to repair the vehicle they
apply the charge to the repair charges. It's simp;y good business and a
customer coutesy. But I'll lay odds it didn't go down that way for the OP.
I'll bet he heard $80 and saw red.
Larry

 

I have an Actron I bought for about $90.oo at a Farm and Fleet store. It
works fine on my Ford Taurus. My Chrysler products have the older computer
systems.
Although some stores will give you a free reading, I don't think you want to
be bothering them for free readings several times until the problem may be
fixed. The Check engine light on my car was fixed by replacing the EGR
after the code came up 0401 for restricted EGR flow.
If the gas you bought really is to blame, you may have a dirty fuel filter.
Chrysler products are also prone to having the fuel pump go out,
particularly if the fuel system is clogged and replacement is a big job.
In this cold weather there's the possibility of ice in the tank or gas line
too.
If you get a code for lean mixture or similar I think I'd begin by replacing
the fuel filter.

 

thats alright, jdoe! when the new can bus. c.n.g. comes out they will have no
choice but to come to a dealer for work

 

To answer many of your questions:

I bought gas last Saturday morning. By the time I returned home after
driving about 75 miles that day, the car was bucking and hesitating.
Hence the bad gas diagnosis. Monday night, after not having driven
much further, the check engine light came on. Tuesday I was due for
an oil change so I took it in and inquired how much they'd charge to
read the codes. I was quoted $80, and in light of the fact that I
though I had bad gas, I declined. Mind you, this is the dealer that
my union has a deal with for cheap oil changes and does sly things
like add a $2 charge for topping up the washer fluid I just topped off
two days before. Note this is not the dealer I bought the car from
and I only take it there for the oil changes. I can't do it myself
for the $10 they charge. AS for the $80, I'd sooner apply that money
to something I'll use again (a scanner). I did go to Autozone and had
it scanned. It turned up two P0301 codes indicating a misfire. I see
this as consistent with bad gas. Last night it was down to a quarter
of a tank so I filled it up at another station. I haven't driven it
far enough to flush out the badness yet. It's still running a little
fough but the light went out and now only comes on when I accellerate
briskly because I must be dumping unburnt gas when it misfires. I
might change the fuel filter this weekend, although the prospect of
getting gassy on a cold day in upstate NY doesn't excite me.

 

There are SEVERAL ways that I said it could have happened. Which one is
the one you are claiming that I said was "the" way it happened?

If you re-read my post I said:

"They shouldn't have even quoted the customer the $80 because clearly the
customer wasn't ready to pay to have his car fixed in the first place"

In short, the shop mishandled the sale opportunity because the OP saw
red. The shop shouldn't have even given him the opportunity to see red
since he obviously wasn't ready to have it fixed.

Actually, in any case the follow up post by the OP was rather instructive.
He had nothing good to day about the oil-change shop. I guess I have a
really hard time believing someone would take a car to a shop they don't
trust for _anything_ even an oil change. It sounds like the OP must be
one of those cheap bastards that rubs the face off every nickel he gets.
In that case he probably respects the oil change shop's greedy ways as
akin to his own. I hope his oil-change shop isn't buying the recycled oil
and the fram filters, but they probably are. Despite what some people
appear
to think, there's lots of way to do crummy oil changes that save the shop
money.

Ted

 

Have you tried giving it a good dose of a good fuel system cleaner. Even
fuel de-icer if you think the bad gas contained a good dose of water. It
normally works pretty quick if that truly is your problem.

 

One thing I think that was missed is that dealers don't just "pull the code"
for $80.00. Most likely he was quoted $80.00 to diagnose the problem that
resulted in a code or codes being set. Almost anybody can read the codes but
it takes a lot more to accurately diagnose the problem. This new group is
full of stories of multiple parts being replaced needlessly.

KS

 

Can you say 'Plug Wires', girls and boys. Yesterday, I finally got my
wits about me and thought about the behaviour and the P0301 misfire
code and went off to find a highly technical diagnostic tool: a squirt
bottle of water. 5 minutes and one pretty light show later, I'd made
an accurate diagnosis. After the fix, I can see I want to buy a spark
plug boot puller, because's its difficult to get the necessary
mechanical advantage on #3 and #4 with your hands given the confines
of the engine bay.

 

that statement is exactly why i filed a complaint with the state of michigan
regarding auto zones and such doing just that! esp. since they are not holding
a facilty repair license

 

I agree, this dealer probably has a minimum $80 fee for a diagnosis,
probably to discourage
DIYers who want to come in and get a free diagnosis from the dealer, then
take the car
home and replace the parts themselves. (then scream when that wasn't the
problem)
But if that was the case, they still needed to handle him differently than
how they did.

Not always. In this case per the followup post, the code was for a misfire,
and replacing the
plug wires fixed the problem.

Yes. It's also full of people who are still trying to fix their vehicles
without a factory
service manual, which is insane.

Ted