great white
Retirement countdown!
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2012
- Messages
- 6,266
- Reaction score
- 210
Nope, OBD vehicles only.
OBDII is a horse of a a different color......licenses, hardware, etc.
Not cheap to do OBDII either. Cheapest option is tunercatII, which WAS around 70 bucks. It's gone off the market now. Sometimes a used one pops up on monodax.com, but it usually goes within a few minutes and is never less than around 350-400 bucks.
Cheapest you can get into OBDII is around 800 bucks if you want to go with RTOBDII from moates. RTOBDII is actually TunercatII, licensed by Craig from John and tweaked to work with Craig's Roadrunner emulators. Craig's Roadrunner real time tuning is awesome, but you need to be able to run a 411 pcm. Easy peasy if you're running one of the newer black box PCM's (mostly vortec trucks). Small bit of work and a 411 drops right in.
I use RTOBDII on my 1998 6.5 with a custom definition file, works great!
Plus, I can pop anywhere from 50-75 bucks and download definition files to do any vehicle (well, that there a def file available for, or I can write my own def file) I want with no limits on how many separate PCMs since there's no vin locking. Lot's of gasser support for tunercat on john's web site too. V8, V6, I4, front drivers, rear.....etc.
Next would be EFILive and a little closer to a grand. Also support's Moates Roadrunner PCM and is perhaps a little bit more user freindly than RTOBDII. That's probably just a matter of familiarity with the proggy's though. I'd say EFILive's biggest advantage is their user forums, availability for purchase and the number of people using it....they do limit the number of vin's you can do IIRC though...
I'd stay away from stuff like Jet OBDII. It's the old tunercatII program but it's incredibly locked down, neutered and pretty much ineffective for more than one vehicle. When it works at all that is. Lots of problems with teh hardware/firmware in the interface cables. Also, 100 bucks a definition file and they lock them to your vin. Jet really messed it up when they bought John out.
For data logging OBDII and trouble shooting vehicles I use a relatively cheap ELM327 chip interface (can be had on ebay for around 10 bucks with bluetooth) and a proggy called ScanXL from palmer performance. With the GM expansion pack, it even reads things like airbag modules, ABS, etc.
For real time monitoring and code reading in the truck on a daily basis I used a cheapy blutooth elm327 chip and DASHcommand by palmer performance on my iPhone since it sits in a holder for mp3 use though the radio anyways.
Lastly, since the 6.5 OBDII trucks are a bit of a "mongrel" PCM, I use a proggy called "car code" to command maint functions like "TDCO set" and "TDCO relearn". Proggy is free to download, but is tied to a proprietary cable through the firmware (checksums and what not) that you have to buy from the developer. Was around 50 bucks IIRC. It also does other things like dashboards and datalogging, but it's not very user friendly and it's just quicker easier to use ScanXL for that stuff....
Last edited:
