Had a Service Engine Soon (i.e. SES) light pop up on my Camaro recently, and stopped by BOTH an Autozone and an O'Reilly's to have the code scanned, and BOTH places told me they no longer have the equipment to read/scan codes on OBDI cars!

My '97Z was, of course, an OBDII car originally, but, like soooooooooo many of us on here ......... I converted it to OBDI.

Before, I would just tell them I had a '95Z, (i.e. '95's had the 16 pin OBDII ALDL connector with the OBDI PCM), and, all would be good. Not the case any longer! If you tell them you have a '95 or older car ............ they say they can't scan it anymore.

Anyone else find this to be the case with either O'Reilly's or Autozone???

 

In CA they don't even scan for codes anymore...

 

AZ has not done OBD-I for years (in most regions).

 

Can't you use a jumper wire?


Lt1 scanmaster FTW

 

93 ECM only.

 

When I used to work at Autozone a couple of years back there were a couple of us that would scan OBD1

 

The autozone, advance, napa here locally doesn't carry the connector for OBD1 yet I still get mine checked at O'Reilly. But, I'm in Indiana and it all depends on location I think.

 

Go on ebay and look up a Snap on MT2500 scanner. You can buy them cheap becuase Snap-On will no longer update them. The last update was 2009. I still have mine from when i was a mechanicand its stuck at 2004; they will not even sell me the 2009 update. Last I looked they were going for around 500.00. It would make a worthy investment becuase you can scan a wide variety of cars that you may own as well.


Considering they will more than likely come with the troubleshooter kart as well, you will find its so much more info than a cheap Autozone scanner.

other than a PC based program I dont have much other useful advice for you.

 

TGGodfrey, I liked everything about your post until ...... you mentioned that $500 price tag! Everything else I currently own, (and will own in the future?), is OBDII. My Z is the only thing I have running OBDI, so investing $500 for just one (1) car seems a bit much.

I've scheduled an appointment with a fellow CZ28'er for Sunday when we can use his laptop, cable and FreeScan software to, hopefully, drop the code.

If his setup works okay, I'm assuming I could pick up a used laptop for around $75/$80, buy a used AKM cable for another $40/$50, and download FreeScan for $0 ....... and be "good to go" from here on out with any future Z codes.

Any comments guys about going this route???

 

A laptop/PC and cable is a good way to scan/datalog. BTW, there are tons of scanners that do OBD-I and II and are way less than $500. Do some shopping.

 

I assume this would depend on location based on what scanner they have/use.

I just went to Advance Auto and had them scan my '97 OBD-II. Now to figure out why my car's miss firing.