GENERAL
Diagnostic scanners
Q Can you advise what the relevance of the page listing a collection of vehicle manufacturers is in a scanner; is it necessary to select the manufacturer before the scanner will become functional for a given car? Thanks.
Robert Gordon
A The very basic scanners are normally set to just read EOBD codes from the diagnostic socket, and for these there is normally no vehicle selection needed. Once the scanners start to get a little more sophisticated, then they will acknowledge the slight differences used by the manufacturers and so by selecting the vehicle manufacturer on the start screen, it will ensure a correct translation of the hexadecimal codes that are retrieved from the engine control unit.
These units do normally also have an EOBD option on the start screen, and it is normally possible to select this to read off the codes, but selecting the manufacturer will give a better interpretation and will normally ensure the code is cleared correctly.
