I'm thinking of buying a carman scan tool for the workshop. It's not cheap $5k so I was wondering which ones are the most useful for the "local mechanic" are the $200 ones on TM useful! my old one works on every car except the one in my workshop with a trouble code.
thejazzpianoma,
May 20, 7:13pm
I can't tell you about which is best of the dearer ones but I can tell you this. If you have no scan tool a cheap one will be immensely useful as you can do 85% of scan jobs which is just reading OBD2 fault codes, clearing them and looking at live data.
Its the other 15% thats the tricky bit. Once you get into updating vehicle software, writing data to ECU's etc its very hard to get one reasonably priced scanner that will do everything you need.
Personally, I use a laptop with a variety of software including specific comprehensive software for the makes I work on most often. However, thats unlikely to be an ideal solution for you. (because I have a tighter budget but all day to get things done, and I can borrow a 20K unit if I have an odd job on something I don't have software for)
My thoughts would be to see what others like as their favorite, part with the money for a decent one but recoup it by charging a reasonable "diagnostic fee" (as well as labour) so the fee at least pays for your machine before you upgrade it again.
redbluecod,
Jun 10, 5:24pm
snap on priced well up dateable software and free help line
supertech1,
Jun 10, 5:28pm
mmmmBosch KTS 570!G SCAN!
bigfatmat1,
Jun 10, 5:52pm
You need to look at the market selection of vehicles you fix the most one brand could be good for one person but hopeless for another.
falcon15,
Jun 10, 6:46pm
bigfatman1 is correct. we have 4 or 5 "scan tools" at my work the one i use most is the hanatech
bigfatmat1,
Jun 10, 7:11pm
my prefered tool.
carclan,
Jun 11, 3:22pm
I brought a cheap and nasty one off trademe and works fine on both my 02 XR6 and 05 Fairmont.
post 7 and 8 are not workshop scantools. You may find you need more than 1 as well ie a hannatech, bosch kts, wabcowurth,depends what ya do really good thing about the hannatech you can get a model with a 4 channel scope built in.
beno,
Jun 12, 10:51am
Well Ive ended up buying a carman from sulco. I figure the back up and upgrades will be better as i can give the sulco rep a hard time if it doesnt work on whatever car i have in the shop with a misfire or mil. its 5k so not cheap.
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