The only scanners I'm familiar with are the DRB3 dealer's tool for my older Chrysler products, and the Solus Edge for my newer truck. For anything else, a guy would have to read the sales pitches to see what they cover. When I was searching on eBay a few years ago, once I found something of interest, I did a Google search for the manufacturer's web site and found the details there.
I use the term "instrument cluster" because everyone knows what that is. Every manufacturer has their own terminology, and then they turn them into acronyms to be sure we become more confused. I also see "IP" for instrument panel.
To expound on the Solus Edge a little, four years ago, a new one cost $4000.00, then I think you had to pay extra for Asian imports, and again for European imports. One of those two additional packages includes Harley Davidson and a few motorhomes, but no heavy trucks. That is also available separately. Snapon is very proud of their annual updates. I'm told they charge $1000.00 per year, and you can't skip any years. What I mean is if you have one, like mine, that's updated through 2018, you have to buy the 2019 update before you can buy the 2020 update, then you can buy the 2021 update, all at $1000.00 each. Independent repair shops have to buy every update to remain current, but you and I only need to have enough updates to cover the vehicles we're going to use it on.
Some shops have more than one of these, and they only buy the updates for one of them. The out-of-date scanners work fine on older cars and trucks, but once they become four or five years out-of-date, it's cheaper for them to just buy a new scanner. They come with the latest update. That's good news for us, because being out-of-date lowers the value to the shop owners. That's where we can find them cheaper on eBay.
There's was a fellow in IL who always had three or four of these listed at a time. I got mine from him for $1800.00 updated to current at that time. That was in 2018. There were others available from other sellers for as little as $700.00, but as I recall, the oldest was still updated through 2014. That would be sufficient for your truck.
Once you have a scanner, you'll wonder how you got along without it. Some of the better $30.00 code readers can display sensor data too. I bought one for my cousin, then found out the data updates as slow as once every two or three seconds. That's way too slow when watching for momentary glitches. Professional scanners update their displays a couple of times per second.
Scanners are "bidirectional", meaning they can receive data from all the computers and they can talk back to them. That lets you command a radiator fan motor to turn on, for example. That allows you to take voltage readings in an inoperative circuit. You can activate or turn off features like speed-sensitive door locks and things like that. The Snapon also has a section for "Code Tips" where they give you diagnostic advice for each code number.
I've also used a Genysis scanner a few times years ago, but I don't know enough about them to talk intelligently, other than the owners liked them. There's a lot of other aftermarket scanners, but once you read the advertising data, you'll know more about them than I do.
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Tuesday, April 12th, 2022 AT 8:44 AM
