Are all diagnostic scanners created equal
Discussion
Car has a known hard fault, probably wiring related, when deleted the engine light will eventually come on and code will return.
Scanner 1 - New Foxwell N710, very well spec'd machine for the money, regular updates. When I delete the error code it comes back normally within 10Kms. sometimes a little bit longer.
Scanner 2 - Old reliable, my Snap On Ethos, easily 10 years out of date but it's excellent for basic stuff. Deleted the code this morning, drove 80+ kms (50 miles) of motorway, town and also engine stop and start, light still hasn't come back.
The code is just a bit of data stored on the ECU, why would one unit delete the code harder than the other
Simple answer, at least in the context of "is the code cleared or not" - yes, they are equal.
Obviously there are about a million scanners you can buy, from £10 to £10000 and they are not equal in their functions and capabilities. But for simple stuff like reading and clearing codes, they all do it the same. The extra money is on the screen, processor memory and speed, being able to read all (not just most) modules, service and reset functions which can cope with all the variations of make/model/year/modules, being able to capture and graph live data quicker, updates to its software, ability to communicate via secure gateway, extras such as multimeter, scope, etc.
Obviously there are about a million scanners you can buy, from £10 to £10000 and they are not equal in their functions and capabilities. But for simple stuff like reading and clearing codes, they all do it the same. The extra money is on the screen, processor memory and speed, being able to read all (not just most) modules, service and reset functions which can cope with all the variations of make/model/year/modules, being able to capture and graph live data quicker, updates to its software, ability to communicate via secure gateway, extras such as multimeter, scope, etc.
swampy442 said:
Car has a known hard fault, probably wiring related, when deleted the engine light will eventually come on and code will return.
Scanner 1 - New Foxwell N710, very well spec'd machine for the money, regular updates. When I delete the error code it comes back normally within 10Kms. sometimes a little bit longer.
Scanner 2 - Old reliable, my Snap On Ethos, easily 10 years out of date but it's excellent for basic stuff. Deleted the code this morning, drove 80+ kms (50 miles) of motorway, town and also engine stop and start, light still hasn't come back.
The code is just a bit of data stored on the ECU, why would one unit delete the code harder than the other
As your fault seems intermittent I'd suggest the reason for the difference in mileage before the light appears is simply the fault requires certain conditions to manifest itself and those are at different mileages.Scanner 1 - New Foxwell N710, very well spec'd machine for the money, regular updates. When I delete the error code it comes back normally within 10Kms. sometimes a little bit longer.
Scanner 2 - Old reliable, my Snap On Ethos, easily 10 years out of date but it's excellent for basic stuff. Deleted the code this morning, drove 80+ kms (50 miles) of motorway, town and also engine stop and start, light still hasn't come back.
The code is just a bit of data stored on the ECU, why would one unit delete the code harder than the other
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