Changed my mind on those cheap scan tools after a 2004 Civic job

Had a Civic with a rough idle, my old $40 scanner just said 'misfire cylinder 3'. I borrowed a buddy's Autel unit for a weekend and it showed me the exact fuel trim numbers and a live O2 sensor graph that was flatlining. Seeing that data side by side made the problem obvious, it was a bad injector, not a coil like I guessed. Anyone else find a specific tool that made a night and day difference on a tough job?

4 comments

4 Comments

anthony61828d ago

Your "bad injector, not a coil" guess is why my old scanner and I are in a fight right now.

sarahb5928d ago

But what if the scanner is actually right? Those old codes can be super generic... a misfire code pointing at cylinder three could totally still be a weak coil pack dumping unburned fuel and fooling you.

wendy_murphy163d ago

Oh man, @sarahb59, I was totally in the "trust the code" camp for years. Then I wasted a whole weekend swapping injectors only to find a cracked plug on cylinder three. Now I always check the simple stuff first, even with a scanner yelling at me.

charles_kim3d ago

Good scanners show you the real story, not just the code. My cheap one had me chasing a ghost until I saw the live data, @anthony618. That extra info turns a guess into a sure thing.