Rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about high level scan
tools and how far you might want to go to fixing your own car, now you really can't
do all that much on modern cars without a decent scan tool, now this foxwell 301 for
$69 actually does quite a bit, when you plug it in it automatically reads
the data, your vin number so it knows what car it is, you can read codes, erase codes,
it's got an i/m button to see if the thing will pass state inspection, and it does a
pretty good job on giving you live data for a lot of stuff, but I'm always getting people
asking me, hey scotty I want to work on my ABS or the SRS system, well one of those isn't
going to help you all that much with that it's too basic of a scan tool,
take this foxwell 650 it's a fancier one, it's $249, it can do a lot more things, it
can even check your charging system and the battery to see if it's any good,
if your serious about data it can give you live data and it can graph quite a bit of
that data to give you a serious analysis of the problem, it even comes with this handle
usb here that can take the data out of the scanner, you can put it on your laptop, you
get a whole software sweep with that, it does a lot for $249, but let's say it doesn't go
far enough for you, well here's where the law of diminishing returns
starts to come in, the more you spend the less extra things you get when you get into
the higher end scanners, like this launch x431 this thing is like $1,100
now as a professional mechanic I actually like this thing because it does a whole range
of cars, it does a whole range of data, and you can store a bunch of it on the unit itself,
but for a DIY guy this is kind of overkill because it does a bunch of cars and it does
a bunch of things for those cars, but you only have one or two cars your working on,
your not using 99% of the information that comes out of here even though your paying
for it, and to take things even further, this otosys
im600 it does all kinds of stuff, this is my favorite scan tool that I've been using
recently, but this thing costs $4,300, it can diagnose cars, it can program immobilizer
keys it can program keyless ignition system, it gives you information on service and it
comes with a lifetime of free updates too, but for a DIY guy this is overkill, here's
my toyota 2007 matrix key, I can program the immobilizer in it with this machine, but it's
a $4,300 machine, let's say you need a key programmed for your car, I've called around
here in Houston I use this nice Pakistani guy and his wife and they'll come to your
house and sometimes for as little as $75 they'll sell you the key, make it and have it running
in your car before they leave to make sure it works,
it really makes no sense to buy a machine like this for a DIY guy and as I said about
the laws of diminishing returns, this $69 one hey, the $4,300 one does not do that many
times more things than this for the money your going to be spending, I learned that
about tools years ago being a professional mechanic running my own business,
there's certain things you should get involved in fixing and there's other things that you
say, hey no that's not something that I'm going to get involved in because it's not
profitable, take doing front end alignments for example,
I'm not going to go out and buy $100,000 or more of equipment to do front end alignments
unless that's mainly what I did because I'd have to have a lot of volume in order to make
a profit out of it, it just doesn't make sense, just like I don't have a tire machine here,
I don't sell tires it's not worth my time to compete with these big stores that buy
tires in volumes and save money so I just get a relationship with tire guys, my customers
need tires I say, go over there and get tires I'm not going to be involved with putting
them in because I'm not going to buy all that equipment and then not make profit over a
few years, now I know some guys say, oh I do everything in my shop we fix everything,
well these days even for professional mechanic that's pretty much an impossible thing to
do correctly, because even with these fancy expensive scan tools, they don't do everything,
if you ask any honest mechanic they'll tell you there's nothing that works exactly the
same as a dealer scan tool, and every year they keep upgrading stuff so those tools are
upgraded and yes the aftermarket does a pretty good job of catching up over time but they
never make them perfect for an entire range of cars, so for example it your working on
your own car do a little research first to see what a kind of scan tool will do with
your car, this one is a pretty good all around scan tool, but let's say you want to get involved
with doing ABS work or more complex tire work for tire sensors, then your better off spending
$250 and getting one like this from foxwell that's a high level one that can do lots of
sensors, it can give you some serious data that your not going to get off of a cheaper
scan tool but it's not crazy, $249 versus $1,100 or $4,300 that's a big difference,
these modern scan tools are pretty simple to operate, their just logical, once you've
used one you can plug in another one and you'll see, oh we'll go to that section and go to
this section, it's pretty easy to navigate and use these things,
just realize the limitations of scan tools, don't go falling for an ad that says, oh this
does everything, airbags, TMPS, can do just about everything, because the smaller ones
their not going to be able to do that, they might claim a lot but in reality they won't
do all that much, and don't just go out and spend thousands, your not going to be using
most of the data that's in there unless you run a business, if your running a business
that's another story then something like this comes in really handy,
but a scan tool like this, hey it may be $250 but it does live data recording, it does all
kinds of things, my advice would be, if your serious look at units like this and decide
how much do you want to spend vs how much information are you actually going to be able
to use that's inside these machines, because let's face it a lot depends on the
model that you have, the make, I mean say you got a VW hey you might get that Vadcom
set up that plugs right into a laptop that does a lot for the amount that they charge
but it's only good for VW and Audi products, it's not any good if you got a toyota,
so know you know a little more about high end scan tools, and since this is Mechanic
Monday I'll be giving away one of these scan tools, to have a chance to win just place
clean non offensive comment on the youtube comments below and the winner will be chosen
randomly by computer to get a nice scan tool to work on their own car,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!