If you live in a part of the country where you have an emissions test to go through you already know that you can’t go through emissions with a check engine light.  What you may not know is that inside the computer is something else called a readiness monitor, and unless that is set and ready, you still can’t go through emissions.  To help you test some of these things you’d want a tool like this.

Not only does this read codes – and you have to remember that codes don’t tell you what is wrong they only tell you what is being affected by what’s wrong – but in addition to reading codes this can clear codes and it can reset the monitors.  That way you can get through emissions.

Another thing, you may for some reason want to disconnect the battery or remove fuses or something like that.  This is a memory saver it plugs into the cigarette lighter, uses a nine-volt battery, and it protects the memory in the computer including those monitors.  You have to be really careful because if your car has an under hood light or you leave the door open, the nine volt battery will go away in a hurry and you’ll still lose the memory, so be quick about it and keep the doors closed and remove the under hood light bulb.

If you have some problem with fuses blowing, here we have something that is really unique.  This is from Innovative Products of America.  Now what this amounts to is an adaptor that goes in in place of the fuse that keeps blowing.  Now when the fuse would blow, this trips a circuit breaker in the end of it so all you do is you reset the circuit breaker instead of replacing fuse after fuse after fuse.  There are three circuit breakers, and they are color matched to match the amperage on the fuses. There is a red one, a yellow one, and a blue one.  It can save a lot of fuses and a lot of aggravation. 



If you have a question or comment, write to me.
The address is MotorWeek, Owings Mills, MD, 21117.