Professional Distributor - 32

DIAGNOSTIC TECH

Find out what
shop owners are
reading about in this
month's pages of

Scan tools, code readers,
and professional diagnostics
Leveraging the data as OBD-II designers intended.

BY SCOTT BROWN
Scott Brown is an ASE Master Certified L1 Technician and has over 37
years of professional service industry experience. He is an independent
shop owner in Southern California
and is engaged at various levels
within our complex industry. He has
a deep understanding of the challenges technicians experience at the
service level and is continuously
striving to move the industry forward
through education and networking.
Brown founded Diagnostic Network
(diag.net) after 22 years of service
at iATN, where he retired as
company president in 2018.

he first scan tool I purchased back in the
early 80's was an Alltest 3226 BrainMaster,
which I believe was one of the very first
scan tools to enter the aftermarket. The unit covered Chrysler, Ford, and GM vehicles. Today,
there are a multitude of scan tools available, but
their uses and capabilities vary tremendously.
First, I would like to pay tribute to the late Jack
Heyler, an industry pioneer and technical advocate, for his tireless efforts back in the 80's in promoting a standardized diagnostic connector and
more for what would later become OBD-II. Back
then, I really didn't know "Jack," in both senses
of the word, but I knew that all the manufacturers
had different data access ports requiring different
cables, software cartridges, adapters, etc. to "talk"
to the vehicle.
If you were working in the industry back then
and tasked with diagnostics on multiple car lines,
then I think you'd agree with me that we have a lot
to be thankful for today. At the shop, we maintain
a number of both OBD-I and OBD-II diagnostic
scan tools.
If you were working on General Motors' vehicles back in that timeframe, you would have grown

32 Professional Distributor I May 2020 I VehicleServicePros.com

A range of industry scan tools.

accustomed to being able to query the vehicle for
Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs), view and record
live data, and perform bidirectional tests. Looking
back, I can remember being disappointed when I
connected to one of those early Ford vehicles and
discovered that a datastream was unavailable. At the
time, I was too naive to realize that Ford was really
trying to help guide the technician to the problem
through their built-in diagnostic routines.
Beginning in 1996, OBD-II normalized the
data port connection, DTCs, data parameters,
and more with a primary goal of helping service
technicians diagnose vehicle performance issues
affecting emissions.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO "SCAN"?
In my opinion, the term "scan" is widely used but
often misunderstood. Most professional technicians
would likely agree that the "scan" you get at places
like a parts store widely varies from what a professional technician would do when scanning the
vehicle. As you can see, this can lead to confusion
for the average motorist who is bombarded with

http://www.diag.net http://www.VehicleServicePros.com

Professional Distributor

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