hd6gtom

Well-known Member
Guys gonna retire from the car dealership later this year. Will not have access to the professional scan tool after that. What brand do you recommend and use? Have access to all the professionl brands. The boys in the shop are pretty well sold on the one they use and I will darned if i can remember the brand name. Thanks guys.
 
We have a small OTC ~$300 at work which does ok but now we had to add another to do more of the airbag work. Plus we now have to buy one that will do tire pressure monitors. We have a Snap on from about 2000 that is junk. It would require about $2000 to update it.
 
If you are gonna work on one brand a factor scanner for that brand is going to be best. I work on everything but euro I use Snap-on scanners. I have a Verus pro and a Solus Ultra. I looked into trading the Solus last week for a Solus Edge it was $4574.00 all they were going to allow on trade in was $600 :shock: I have always traded up every three years and done well on the trade in. I traded the Solus in 3 years ago and got $3800 trade in for it then the next week brought it back for $1000 :) I had a $1000 rebate and spent it on buying my dependable Solus back.

I use to never update a scan tool and used the money I would have spent on updates to upgrade my scan tools. I fell into the update trap it does not add value to scanners. Updates are $1380 a year.

I am into the Verus $9000 the updates have cost $5520 its worth $3000 as is and worth $3000 if I had not kept it updated. It proves my point don't update it use it 3 years and trade it in.

I have a Ease PC based scan tool I like if I would buy the enhanced software for it ($900) and I just may as a bud of mine keeps pushing me that way. It has the best mode 6 software in it I have ever seen bar none. (I have never used a Factory scan tool)

Several times I have needed a bidirectional function that's in the snap-on scanner but would not complete the tast. I ran to a buds shop and used his outdated Matco scanner and it flew thru the function. GRRRR!

There is always the chines knock offs on ebay some like them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvvLwpj96yY
 
When I retired almost 4 years ago we had 4 Tech. 2s, an old Snap On, a new Mac for the off breed junk, wish I had that Mac. Also had 2 or 3 laptops for the new stuff, forgot whatever Chrysler dealers called theirs, we had one of those too.
 
the software updates are the killers on these scanners, most run about a grand a year for domestic asian and european data. the past couple years i have been buying a small mac scanner, i think its called the task connect. they are about 450 dollars. software is loaded for the year of the scanner and older. when we need new software, i just trade in the old scanner and buy the current year. way cheaper than buying the update software. there is a company in our area that will come out to the shop with a laptop that buys the oem stuff and can flash modules and reset things we cannot do with our regular scanners. they charge about 100 dollars for a service call.
 
I took our 2003 Tundra for emissions check last week. Had last emissions check 2 years ago. The computer kept telling the techs that they needed a certain connector for the Tundra. After trying the different connectors that they had with the machine, they couldn't get any of them to fully connect. They did get partial data from the vehicle and manually entered that the truck passed in all categories - even though they didn't have all the data. Guess they were too embarrassed that they didn't have the right connector. There are a lot of that vintage Tundras driving around the area that require the same connector.
 
If you have a smart phone or tablet get yourself the torque pro app (costs 5 bucks), then you will need a wifi or bluetooth OBDII plug in (costs anywhere from 10-40 bucks). It will do just about everything the high dollar scanner will do.
 
I swore i would never buy one , well i lied . I ended up buying a Snap On solus that was good to 2008 just for my own use on my own cars . because i do not like being lied to . Before the dealership that we bought the Durango from made some changes in the service dept . We had some issues with the service manger and one of the service writers . I did not believe them on what they were sayen and i had the problem checked elsewhere and found that THEY had unplugged a censor to make the check engine lite come on to get me to pay for work not needed. Wonder i did not go to jail for my response to the findings as the plug they removed was not one that would unplug it's self . well my scan tool works fine for the older cars and truck but now i have one newer and it will not work on it and like you said the UPDATES will kill ya .
 
(quoted from post at 16:07:38 01/23/17) the software updates are the killers on these scanners, most run about a grand a year for domestic asian and european data. the past couple years i have been buying a small mac scanner, i think its called the task connect. they are about 450 dollars. software is loaded for the year of the scanner and older. when we need new software, i just trade in the old scanner and buy the current year. way cheaper than buying the update software. there is a company in our area that will come out to the shop with a laptop that buys the oem stuff and can flash modules and reset things we cannot do with our regular scanners. they charge about 100 dollars for a service call.

That sounds like the way to go. Last place I worked at had Snap-on that was about 3 years out of date. Owner didn't want to pay $800 per cartridge for the domestic, jap, and European that we needed. So we 'winged' it, used the older cartridge and it seemed to work most of the time.

I seem to remember the Snap-on driver saying if he bought new cartridges each year, he would get a 40% discount, but if he didn't, it was full price.

And you can't do squat on any car made in the last 25 years without a scanner, only way without one is to have a known good, identical make and model sitting next to the screwed up one. Then swap parts until you fix it.

I saw dealership techs doing that 30 years ago, before the scanners got better.
 

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