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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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