How to Cut Car Repair Costs with a Diagnostic Code Reader

With the price of gas consumers are looking into everything they can to cut the cost of simply owning a car. One of the biggest expenses of owning a car, second only to the fuel and perhaps insurance, is the cost of repair. You're driving along, singing a song, and suddenly the check engine light is blinking in rhythm with your happy chorus. Most people pull over, pop the hood and if no recognizable malfunction is present, take their car to the shop. With an auto diagnostic code reader, you can find out what's wrong with your car and possibly avoid the repair shop all together.

A check engine light can be literally hundreds of things, many of which can be easily repaired at home, but dang it, how are you supposed to know what's wrong to fix it? An auto diagnostic code reader. An auto diagnostic code reader can be purchased for most vehicles on ebay, or from your local parts dealer for under a hundred dollars. For my Volkswagen Cabrio it was only 30 dollars! Auto diagnostic code readers do get more expensive if you want an universal auto diagnostic code reader (which will fit any vehicle and not just an exact make and model from a certain year range), but even then they are in the 300-400 dollar range. If you have more than one vehicle, or maybe a friend or family member willing to split the cost, this is still often far cheaper than taking your vehicle to the shop.

You simply pull over, put on the parking break, plug in the auto diagnostic code reader to your diagnostic socket (usually under the instrument panel, your owner's manual will likely tell you where to find it if it's not visible), and what's wrong flashes across the screen in neat coded letters. Your auto diagnostic code reader will come with a code book with over 200 codes, which you simply match to your message. Now you know what's wrong so you can either fix it, or have some idea of what it's going to cost to have it fixed.