Need a little help from my friends! I have for some unavoidable circumstances ended up with 2 trucks with OBDII computer systems and the “check engine” light is on on both. When I retired I decided to stop working on my own cars to give me more time for the farm and woodgas (reading now). When I was working to save money for retirement, I was putting away from a wage of about $15.00 per hour. Now I am having to pay out over $70.00 per hour to get work done. I anticipated having savings accounts at about 3% interest. It dropped to below 1% about the time I retired. Also, my retirement was predicated on living to 77 years old, I am now 84. This is all eating away at my retirement so I feel I have got to slow down my output as much as I can.
After all that intro-- I know besides “woodgassers” there are a lot of “gear heads” on this site. Who know of a good OBD reader for reasonable and is most specific about the problem that the engine has. I can’t just put a bobby pin in the OBD connector and get a flashing signal. I have Mac and Dell computers, pad tablets and desk top. Years back I took a course on how to diagnose an OBDI engine without a scope or any of that stuff, just a multi meter. There is just too much on the OBDII system to pick out without a computer something. Thanking you in advance TomC
For a little over a week now there has been a hen laying eggs in my wood burner . I just realized she is reminding me to take a few dozen to Argos 
Now if you had the Gary cook top modification, you would have breakfast on the go Wayne!
Yes Marcus .
If I bring a few hens with me I wouldn’t need to stop at fuel stations or burger joints 
I bought one like this, it works on my car, I have it for my phone, need an app called car scanner, which is free, if you do not need all the things. (10 dollar ca)
https://www.carscanner.info/
Tom, I have a confession to make. I bought one of them elm327 @Jan showed a few years back. I needed it for wife’s 2007 diesel for a reason I forget about. At the time I never realised you had to have internet connection to read the codes. I used the pad and in the front yard I was outof wifi reach. I returned the “non-working” thing and got a refund. Never had a reason to use one ever since. The woodgas vehicles have no lights apart from the headlights, which suits me better.
Limited-time deal: Autel AutoLink AL519 OBD2 Scanner Enhanced Mode 6 Car Diagnostic Tool Check Engine Code Reader CAN Scan Tool, Advanced Ver. of AL319 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PQH6HSQ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_dl_6647YCTAZHVDBPVKEJQM
I have this one Tom, been running it for 7? Years? Does a fine job, and about as cheap as they get with live date options. Mine was off the matco tool truck for about 4 times this price 
Can it read fuel trim?
Hi TomC,
There are many more thing that a decent scanner can do, and need to be done on later model vehicles.
Compression, cranking testing
Reset the cam versus crankshaft sensors after repair
Many now for 10 years you need to do a commanded battery reset after replacing out the battery
Plus, pay a bit more to get a dedicated vehicles proems and systems look-up data base.
Last year I chose an Innova 5610
$300-400. USD
With this price you can pre-register up to three VIN numbered vehicles for their maintained specific models data base.
Registered my Wife’s 2014 Ford Edge. The adult nephews 2018 Ford F25 diesel pick up. My other sisters 2011 Toyota Camry.
Had to use it already on 2 of these 3. And have tried it across as many family members vehicles for working.
Oh. And I actually bought it in a new sealed box from and Advanced Auto store. Pay’d a bit more. But then no possibility of getting a sent back to Amazon “used”, returned unit. Resold to me.
Yeah no tweeky touch screens. No extra soft ware to buy and load up. No, non-compatible systems syncing to do phone to laptop from the plug-in dongle.
Designed in U.S.of A. Manufactured in Taiwan.
Regards
Steve unruh
If your running Ford,
Forscan is a pretty nice free program. I just bought a usb-obd2 cable and use my laptop… buddy uses it on his phone and got the more expensive bluetooth adapter.
Its a feee program but they do offer a 1 and 3 year i belive membership. They use to have a life time but thats gone now.
Or if ur poor like me u can opt for the free 3 month trial membership that u renew when you need too.
You dont need the membership unless you want to write to to pcm. And a few other features, for example add keys or change factory setting.
I used it a few months ago to reprogram clutch and trany moduals on a fiesta. Car is working great after a trany swap and new clutch.
SLOVENIA’S Wood Gas Meet Up. I like the sound of it. All of Europe welcome to DOW.
The distance traveled that Mike and I have driven to Argos from Washington State. We would drive through a few of your countries.
I know in Sweden they have Wood Gas Meet Ups. We have one in Washington State now.
The new Wood Gas Revoluion has Begun and will continue to grow bigger and bigger.
Nature’s Carbon neutral nonpoluting power for all. It is done by Nature growing it’s own renewable energy “Solar Cells”. The more common term is called “WOOD”. Wood waste scraps that no one wants. Most of it is free for the taking, and with a little labor of love it can be made into useable ready to burn in a gasifier for wheel/generator power.
Bob
Was delivering to a Toyota dealership that gets high volumes of repairs and saw they threw out empty gear oil drums. Asked if I could take them home. Lids are unfortunately long gone but I got 3 rough looking ones and 1 really good condition one. Very rare find for me so I jumped on the chance.
Very stinky sulphuric oil.
what a score! And the perfect price!
They’re just right to weld the other 10 gallon buckets I got, so I could make a pretty tall filter body that way. Might do that with one of the not as nice drums. The insides have no rust they’re just dented real bad, guys used them to dump oil filters and stuff into.
The worst ones I’ll probably use for making smaller charcoal batches when I’m short on time or want to do multiple runs. Just lid them with some sheet metal to cool off then toss into another drum with a lid.
Any cheap reader will do what you need Tom. Harbor Freight. It will show a code on the screen and they usually have a small book with the codes in it or you can look it up on the web many places. My experience for twenty years of dealing with OBD2 vehicles is it’s almost always going to be a bad coil pack or some easily replaced or cleaned sensor. Most other issues you are not going to have the tools or necessary skills to deal with. Cheap scanner will turn off that damned check engine light as well.
If you are getting work done for $70 then you are lucky. Dealers here are billing at
$130 something and Local garages are right around $100-110
In my experience those thin drums won’t last as a hay filter. My first one was out of barrels very similar, it didn’t last a year.
Good to know. I might just save them for charcoal batches or external bodies for mini gasifiers.
The other small drums I got, they didn’t hold anything greasy so I was thinking of painting the inside with Cerakote since it’s chemical and PH resistant. They finally make an air cure version so you don’t need to bake the whole thing.
Had a plan to use a 20lb propane tank for condensate collection and run it up into the filter body. Would have to be a Daily Drain sort of tank though since it could only hold 5 gallons max.
That is what happen on my 92 Dodge Dakota build. Chris S. Replaced it with a plactic barrel. It is still working good. But you do have to have the barrel reinforced in side. They do not like -30 plus high vaccum pulls on them.
My next build will be a hot water tank with the glass coating in side for added protection.
Bob
I’m saving my hot water tank that I just got for the Mazda, since I am removing the bed I can recess it entirely. I like that the bottom of the tank already has a convenient drain and the concave bottom makes sure the moisture pools up around the outside edge.
Thanks to all for the input on scanners. I went to the web Marcus suggested and lordy, lordy. It led to a lot of different ones. Marcus, do they give you a good instruction book with it? It seems they us a lot of, what do you call them; where you put OBD meaning On Board Diagnostic? The government uses a lot of them like HHS for Health and Human Services.
tchoulton-- you are correct. I had my lawn mower tuned up today. Labor turned out to be about $120 per hour. Wow. That is why I am considering the scanner. I took the one truck in to get what ever the “check engine” light was telling me. He said it was the “vapor canister valve”. So for $165 he replaced it . Couple of days later, the light comes back on. I went back and he did a “smoke test” and said it was my carbon canister, plugged up. Another $200+ for the part plus his labor.
I hope that I am able to interpret what all is connected to the code. TomC