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Looking to buy an ODB. Own several vehicles, 99 Expy EB, 97 Blazer, 99 Civic, 03 Mitsubishi, 03 Toyota, any advice would be appreciated. I do not want to buy crap, but also do not want to pay for features never used. I do most of my own mecanical work.
I have also been looking off and on and found a few interesting things. There are hand held and laptop models. Some are manufacturer specific, some test many different OBD formats. In my opinion all 1996 and newer cars use one of four different formats. I'm sorry I don't know them off hand. But all will be in an ISO format by 2008, so you may want to up to that format. Some ISO OBD readers also do OBD I & II. Some places for information........ scantool.net, digimoto.com, and do a search for more. Read up and make good choice.
I bought an Actron model CP9135 at Autozone, I think it was only $60 on sale. It works on all OBDII compliant cars, even foreign cars. First night I got it, I plugged it in my 00 EB 4x4 Expy, worked fine (no codes, but it works fine). Then, I tested it on my wife's Hyundai Santa Fe (2003) and it worked fine there too. One thing I did do before I used it on the Santa Fe: I took both sets of service/shop manuals out (the Ford and Hyundai) and compared the code numbers in the code list. For the most part, most of the codes are fairly generic for both vehicles, at least for most of the standard engine and emissions functions. There are a host of vehicle/model-unique codes that are different, but basically the codes are the same. So, you might try that model or one similar. Just make sure it's OBDII compliant and that your vehicles are as well (which, from your list, looks like they are). Hope that helps.