Your Favorite Aftermarket Scan Tool

[mrbudge]

Shopping around for an aftermarket scan tool. What are your favorites, or what are turds to stay away from?

[Bruce Amacker]

Stay away from the Modis, for its abilities and its price do not match. We've been down this road before and I still like the AutoEnginuity. Bang for your buck is very good. Genisys isn't bad, don't get the scope module or HD truck setup. Autel Maxidas is supposed to be very good but I haven't used it. What are you working on- everything and all systems? You are familiar with aftermarket scan tools, right? You know that most do 25% of what an IDS does, right?

 

[mrbudge]

We have AutoEnginuity, but it is way old. I find it very slow connecting with and communicating with vehicles, but I expect the new ones are much better? One of the guys here has the new Snap On scanner (solus?), seems easy to use on basic stuff, haven't had to use it on anything too tough yet. Mac tool guy is going to let me demo their new unit, which I believe is a re-badged Genisys? I would be using it on non Ford stuff, including body/chassis and OBD. I am not really familiar with aftermarket scan tools, but when I go to help out some other shops with our IDS they are blown away by what it can do. I would not touch a Powerstroke without an IDS.

[YukonTyler]

Back before I joined Ford I began my apprenticeship with an indy shop in Toronto. We worked mostly on German and Japanese imports and had four to five different scanners depending on the time. Each had varying levels of performance on differing makes and models and there was never one 'go to' unit.

 

I remember using AutoEnginuity mostly as a datalogger and for mild output state control functions. It was superior for that sort of work than our other units and its cost was significantly lower. Also, if you already have your own laptop to run an IDS and VCM combo then you'll simply be running AutoEnginuity off of the same computer. Otherwise, we used VeDis was for our German lines, and then an old red brick and a Genisys did the other work.

 

Slightly related, why will Ford/Rotunda not build in some basic global OBDII capabilities to IDS? It would be really, really nice to be able to pull some basic SAE codes out of something that doesn't have a blue oval. Maybe that and some basic mode 6 style misfire counters and PID data ... I would have been less reluctant to buy my VCM II if it had that sort of capability.

[ktmlew]

We have AutoEnginuity, but it is way old. I find it very slow connecting with and communicating with vehicles, but I expect the new ones are much better? One of the guys here has the new Snap On scanner (solus?), seems easy to use on basic stuff, haven't had to use it on anything too tough yet. Mac tool guy is going to let me demo their new unit, which I believe is a re-badged Genisys? I would be using it on non Ford stuff, including body/chassis and OBD. I am not really familiar with aftermarket scan tools, but when I go to help out some other shops with our IDS they are blown away by what it can do. I would not touch a Powerstroke without an IDS.

I have Ford & GM enhanced AE and don't really have any big bitch about connection time. It does take 20-30 secs to detect all the possible sensors. Is that what you are talking about? Has your shop version been updated recently, laptop USB port slow? The updates did just double in price...still cheaper than any other AM scanner though.

 

If I ever get back to doing automotive stuff full-time and profitable, I will add the rest of the expansions to my AE.

[Fredsvt]

For the price, it doesn't do everything on a Ford, but it copies the IDS very close in many ways, is the Autel Maxidas.

I have one, it has power balance, I see the last update added PMI, but I didn't go into that menu yet. It connects similarly to the IDS, where you have to wait at the initial connection.

 

It also does nearly all Euro, Japanese and GM/Chrysler.

 

It's NOT a replacement for OEM tools, but works well for the price.

[Bruce Amacker]

 

 

Slightly related, why will Ford/Rotunda not build in some basic global OBDII capabilities to IDS?

They did- don't you have it?

 

http://www.motorcraftservice.com/vdirs/wds/diagnosticsites/GOBDII/usen/

 

 

[Steve Mutter]

Is that available in Canada? In bold letters it reads "Generic OBD-II functionality is intended for US customers only"

[amailloux]

I am running the solus,updated regularly and it great. I bought auto enginuity and it was terrible on speed, and anything body. I was in contact with them for a while and decided to just return it. I have used the modis, and would not purchase one. I work with a guy who owns the verdict! And it is pretty slick in that it is windows based, has a touch screen, and you can download all kinds of software on it. I installed ids on it and it worked, although the processor speed is slow. I have owned or used the genesys based tools and there are very slow and lack a bunch of information and functionality. I would stay away from the genesys tools. I worked next to a beta tester for snap on and I can say that in the lt 2 to 3 years I have seen them drastically upgrade Coverage and functionality. If you have software over 3 years old, be aware that you will be missing a lot of output, and body stuff. I would look very closely at what makes you are going to be servicing. For me it is 80 percent ford and gm, and 20 percent other makes. So I own a vcm, ids subscription and run that on a dell laptop. I own a fully updated tech 2. By the way, all 2014 and up gm vehicles will use gds, and not the tech 2, and some 2010 and up require gds. I own a gm mdi and run tech 2 win and gds on a $650 touchscreen tm2t. I own a very well updated solus, and a snap on vantage pro scope and meter. My solus has euro, and rarely send out vehicles for diag. I am waiting for a smoking deal on a solus ultra, so I can trade up. The coverage on the solus, ultra, and verdict are all very very close, so a good priced updated solus would be great, just lacks the touchscreen interface, and the bling.