[AT] Right to repair

[James Peck]

20 plus years ago I was offered a used  red Snap-On Automotive Diagnostic Tool for $800. New. It was selling for around $2000 then. My concern was paying for the regular software updates for it.

Steve W. AT List Member and Sun machine owner (swilliams268 at frontier.com); Even with OBDII there are still a lot of imports that have special connections to get all of the information the system can give you. There are also some GM vehicles built in 94 and 95 with what many call OBD 1.5 It has the OBDII connector but doesn't use all of the abilities of the system.

It's why I have about 5 different scan tools to deal with all of them. Plus some scan tools play better with some makes than others. That can be interesting at times.


Steve Offiler AT List member Mechanical Engineer (soffiler at gmail.com); The original OBD ports started appearing in the 1980's, but they  lacked standardization.  Various different connectors proliferated  among different manufacturers, not to mention they offered rather scant data. That was fixed by SAE standard J1979, which defined a standard  connector, and made a longer list of data mandatory.  This became a  requirement on 1996 and newer vehicles and was quickly nicknamed  OBD-II (or OBD-2).  At that point, the older systems picked up the  nickname OBD-I to be clear on the differentiation.