Vehicle health check

November 22nd, 2011 - Joe Duarte

Handheld device hooks up to the car’s on-board diagnostic (OBD) port.

CarMD-Vehicle-Health-SystemShop expertise for the consumer

So your car’s acting up and you don’t know why. Usually at such times, you book a service appointment and the technician gets under your car’s dash with a computer cord and hooks up the car to a computer terminal … prints out a report and tells you what the problem is and what needs to be done to fix it.

Wouldn’t it be faster if you could skip one of those steps? Now you can, with the CarMD Vehicle Health System (available in Canada for the first time at a cost of $120, online).

The hook-up at the dealership (called OBD, for on-board diagnostics) allows the technician to download the fault codes from the vehicle’s on-board computer to diagnose what went wrong and when. That’s what CarMD’s system does, too, but you don’t have to have a mechanic’s education to interpret what they mean. The system comes with Mac/PC software that will interpret the codes to tell you what’s wrong.

Much in the same way as it’s done at the shop, an easy-to-use handheld device hooks up to the OBD port (the system will even show you where it’s located) to download codes. The device can then be hooked up to your computer via a supplied USB cable and the results interpreted at CarMD.com, at which point you can fix the problem yourself or get somebody to do it for you. You can also tap into CarMD’s award-winning database that provides information on the most valid fix (as well as outstanding recall issues), down to the parts required and the labour costs (according to the user’s postal code).

The Vehicle Health System works on cars, pickups, vans and SUVs of vintage 1996 or younger (foreign and domestic) and comes with a handy caddy, two AAA batteries and lifetime software and firmware updates.

1 comment

  1. mech says:

    You make it sound a lot simpler then it is –the OBD reader will tell the fault code but not the exact problem that caused the code default. One code could possibly include as many as 6 or 8 sensors and will not pick out specific one causing the code to show on the reader.
    The garage owned readers are more expensive and accurate then ones costing a couple of hundred dollars ,some costing upwards of 10 thousand.

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