PSA: I was sure those new scan tools were just hype for a while

A shop in Toledo I worked with for a week showed me how their $4000 scanner flagged a weird CAN bus fault my basic reader missed. It turned a three hour guess into a twenty minute fix on a 2021 F-150. Has anyone else had a tool they doubted completely change their workflow?

3 comments

3 Comments

piperm382d ago

Remember that article in Motor Age about the new wave of bidirectional testers? I was a total skeptic until my buddy's shop got one. They had a Chevy with a weird idle that kept coming back. Old scanner said all clear. The new tool actually commanded the throttle body to cycle and found the range was off. Showed the exact data the PCM was seeing. Changed my whole view on what a "good" scan tool needs to do now.

reese1242d agoMost Upvoted

Totally agree with @the_eric on that shift. Basic code readers just can't cut it anymore when you need to actually talk to the car. That bidirectional control is becoming the new normal for real fixes.

the_eric2d agoTop Commenter

Yeah that "good scan tool" idea is totally different now. My old basic reader feels like a toy after seeing what the new stuff can actually do.