F-Body Europe

Does anyone have a scan tool for a 1996 LT1? I just got a "check engine light".




Just need to borrow it. I don't want to have to pay $50 to have mine checked.

Yes I got one but I am just a little too far right now .

I have one also(Auto X-ray). If it can wait till the meet on the 20th, I will bring it then.

Thanks HotRod. I'll see ya the 20th.

I will bring it down with me. How is the car running? Any thing different or is it just a check engine light on?

Just the light. It kinda sputter if I'm in 6th and running at about 2k RPM. I'm hoping its just plugs. I'm gonna change them this weekend anyway

If you gased up at AAFES that could be the cause of your light. It set mine off EVERY time I was forced to gas up on post. Halfway through the second tank on un-diluted fuel, the light went off.
Disconnect your battery for a couple of minutes and it should clear your codes if nothing serious is wrong, if so, the light will come back on. But then when you "scan" it, the code might not come up to let you know what the problem really was in the first place.

I figure this is a good a place as any for this....

Last week was the big OBDII part of my class, that and a sales pitch from snap-on to promote their new MODUS scanner brought up some points I never really thought about.

Standard data for auto techs is to never delete the codes. The reasons:

problems are reported in 3 flavors based on priority. Some are reported the first time they happen ie. emissions stuff like cat failure reported by downstream O2. Priority 2 the first time it is stored as a DTC, then the 2nd time illuminates the MIL, and then priority 3 which have to see the problem on 3 trips.

If the MIL is illuminated then it will take 3 good trips where the car is operated like it was when the problem happened and not see the problem before the MIL is turned off, then 40 good trips before the DTC is erased. A good trip means the coolant temp, TPS, load, MAP, speed etc all have to be within a close percentage of the original values that caused the problem.

The reason not to delete the codes, is because everytime a DTC is set, a freeze frame is stored of the cars paramaters. When the codes go, so does the freeze frame.

Never just disconnect the battery or pull the fuze.

OBDII has a capacitor that will retain memory even if you pull the plug, and all you end up doing is erasing the long term and short term fuel strategy which must be relearned. Also you will loose your misfire monitor and it will not run until your car relearns the crank position again. On some cars that will require you to go into a looonnng decel (from 50mph or so) to relearn it, as it will never do it just idleing. Basically your PCM wont know what right looks like so it wont report anything concerning misfire.

If you get a MIL, that will cause alot of other problems to be masked. For example if you have a gas cap that wont seal properly you will probably get a code for small/medium vacumn leak in the evap. That could keep your car from running a myriad of checks because the computer wont run alot of diagnostics if it sees something that would taint the values.

Last, (since I'm wearing out the soap box anyway) I finally learned what the P codes are. I'm stuck in the OBDI world and never gave it much thought, but the P part is (power) the second digit can be a 1 or 0 (1 is manufacture fault, 0 is government standardized fault) the next number lists the system ie 4 is emissions, 3 is powertrain... then the last 2 digits are subsystem. It never dawned on me that OBDII mandates that ALL cars have standard fault codes and standard DLC locations. Pretty interesting stuff and it went on way longer than my ramblings.

Rob

Thanx for the info! No, I wouldn't call it "rambling".

Rob, what class are you referring to?

its the automotive performance (dont confuse the title, it centers around driveability concerns, and not picking the right cam or heads ) part of a ASE prep course. I'm really getting tired of it, its been draaaaagggging on since september. May 6 cant get here fast enough.

Cool, I am probably either going to attend UTI or SAM next year. I am leaning more towards SAM, but UTI has a good, total car concept, which I like.

good choices. They have always scared me away with there costs, but they would definatelly be career enhancers. This is my second ASE course, and I've earned 1 year worth of OJT experience thru school, but the fact that you have to have 2 years experience will probably keep me from taking the tests. The word on the ASE street is that there will be a new certification soon. General tech. The ASE tests are much harder to a majority of the dealership techs, and are geared for the independant tech.


Take a look at WyoTech also.

Will do, thanks!