brandons94lt1

Been having a problem with my formula, it's not the tranny, but like so many of us hoping for an easy fix, I went ahead and replaced to A,B,3-2, absolute pressure manifold, and of course no change. The car has been doing some strange things. Pulled the pcm yesterday, replaced a faulty battery, when it was all put back in the car ran fine had all gears for @ least 3 upshifts. It usually has first when u pull out of the drive way,in reverse, then it will shift 1-2-3. But as soon as I stop, it goes into default, 3rd, 2nd if I pull it down manually, no 1st, no od. So I am tired of bringing the car to people to have it scanned or have the codes read. I NEED a scanner, not a code reader. So before I have to pay the IRS this year I was going to invest in one, largely because I've found out the hard way not to trust a lot of the so called mechanics down here. I am looking @ the obd1 to USB cable from aldl cables, it comes with a CD-ROM with several different programs that all appear to be pretty good, more data than a scanne, active real time data, and for less than 60$ before shipping. But before I do this, does anybody have any better ideas? Scanners, or programs that they have used to diagnose their car? Now I don't want to drop a ton of money or I would just buy a tech 2, might be a good idea yet, my wife would have a fit, only she gets to buy items for large amounts of cash and use them 4 or 5 times, so let's say ideas for 300$ or less.
I've looked @ ebay and they have some decent tools for sale that are used, one that caught my eye was only for obd2, I was given a suggestion, there is a company that makes an obd1 to an obd2 cable, and I think that if you were to use this cable to plug an obd2 scanner into an obd1 port, it would get very poor results, not to mention it's made in china, no way to assertain the quality(6.99) sounds cheesy to me. Am I wrong? I'm just thinking the overall differences would make comunication with a scanner very unreliable @ best, it would be looking for inputs from readings the the obd1 isn't capable of, and would register all kinds of faults from the lack of this information. Thanx for the help.

shoebox

Get a reliable cable to connect to a laptop or pc, then you have lots to choose from. Freescan, Tunerpro RT are both free. TTSDatamaster is free for trial.

brandons94lt1

That makes sense, pay for the cable, and they work with just a out any laptop, aldl is a good company aren't they? And I think data master is on the cd rom, free for 20 uses or something like that. Will they read tranny codes? I see that there is one on the cdrom that is also tuner software, but I'm not worried about the tune right now, just need to see why the car is doing what it's doing. And the ability to data log would be a big help in the process.

MikeGyver

a USB cable from AKM and datamasters is the best troubleshooting setup.

brandons94lt1

Ok, so akm? U have a link to their web site? Have u had a better experience with akm? What's the difference between akm and aldl? I'm just trying to do my homework here so any info helps. Thanx

Injuneer

The AKM owner (Andrew) is a Moderator here. I've used his products, and both the products and his customer service are exceptional.

http://www.akmcables.com/

http://www.ttspowersystems.com/DataMaster.html

http://www.andywhittaker.com/ECU/Fre...0/Default.aspx