Without the diagnostic equipment here, automotive repair could be so much harder. This is one of the areas where the good ol' days weren't all that great in comparison. Today, with automotive manuals to tell you all the correct settings, test leads to connect your equipment to the automobile, scan tools to communicate with a car in such a way that anyone can discover what a car's problem is simply by plugging into a cable adapter.
A scan tool with enhanced diagnostics can save you alot of time and money and allows you to do most of the troubleshooting from inside the car. If you don't have a car-diologist (humor) handy to do a full body scan on your car's engine, doing a scan on a regular schedule can reveal a problem that has not yet turned on the MIL.(those little lights that come on in your dash board)
The use of OBDII is used by all car makers now and is Federally mandated. If you DO have an MIL on, scan tools will help you pinpoint the exact problem so you spend minutes on automotive diagnostics and not hours.
Of course, the MIL will stay on even after a repair is done because the DTC (diagnostic trouble code) and you can turn these MIL's off with the use of the scan tools.
OBDII will help you find the solutions to all those simple problems and also give you all the information you need to find even more complicated issues. OBDII scan tools will also provide you with all the engine operating information like RPM, injector pulse width, ignition timing etc. etc.
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