Last nite I went over to Autozone to have them run a scan on my car so I could figure out why the car is running so rich and having bad gas milage (averaging 150-160 miles a tank city driving, pretty much babying the car due to bad 3/4 syncros). I told them it was a 95 formula and that it was an OBD1 car. They brought out some kind of tool thing and the guy got under the dash and said "This is an OBD2". I was wondering if maybe 95 is a split year for the OBD1 and 2? I was hoping for a 1 just for the more mod-friendly computer.

The guy goes back inside, brings out a scanner and plugs it in under the dash, puts the key in the 'on' position and the guage lights came on...the scanner read 'linking'...about 8-10 seconds later it flashes 'cannot find link' or something like that. The guy then told me that the computer didn't see anything wrong. I thought that the computer stored errors in it? In the last 3 months 6 out of 8 times on the highway after about 15 minutes of highway driving the SES light has come on.

The guy asked me how many miles were on the car and I told him 96K. He said that the oxygen sensors were probably stockers and needed to be replaced. Do you guys think that replacing the sensors would be beneficial or should I go somewhere else with a scanner to have it checked out? And is the car really an OBD2 or is this guy crazy??

Thanks

 

 

Ahhh ok. That explains it...so where can I buy a scanner like this? I don't really want to pay the dealer price to get it scanned when I'm sure I'll need it again eventually.

 

Do you have a notebook PC? If so go to AKMCables.com and buy a cable then download the trial copy of TTS Datamaster. They give you 20 free links with Datamaster which should give you more than enough for what you need to do. Plus if you decide you really like the Datamaster abilities, you can buy it through AKM for $95. I've used several different scan tools and scanning software and this is the best solution I've found for really monitoring your car. As a matter of fact I like this solution so well that when I had madwolf do my tuning, I switched to OBDI so I could use it.

 

Any OBD-I scanner will work. You just need a special cable to connect to the DLC (like Autoxray sells with their scanners). You can also adapt a 12 pin cable like this.