Scanmaster worth the money?

[Cerwin Vega Fan]

I keep looking at this thing with my finger on the buy button but I just can't see dropping $250+ on something so small? I mean what kinda uses can this thing have besides just reading codes and stats?

[Craig 94 TA GT]

Do you have a laptop with a serial port? If so, you can buy a cable on ebay, $50 shipped. That was one of the best things I purchased for the car. If you don't have a laptop, then it's up to you if you're willing to spend that much on diagnostics. I love the cable and laptop because you can save the readings as any format, view them any time you want, etc. Plus, in the future, you can always use the cable for flashing the PCM from mail order tunes. I'm not sure what scanmaster can do..if it can do all that?

[Injuneer]

ScanMaster is a small, dash mountable scanner, with a bright LED display. It can display about 20 different sensors and PCM parameters (including DTC codes on 94/95 cars). It can not record much, or data log. On a single WOT pass, it will record the lowest O2 sensor readings and the highest knock retard, and show you the MPH at which each occured. Its a great device for real time display of the information that you need to understand if your engine is performing up to its potential, and if not, what may be wrong.

The ideal setup is the ScanMaster for real time readouts, and a software logging package like FreeScan, TTS DataMaster, EFILive (OBD-I) and Autotap or one of several other OBD-II packages.

If you want more info, read this:

http://members.aol.com/InjuneerZZ/ScanMast.htm

Even though I don't use the stock PCM for much of anything, I still have the ScanMaster on my steering column, and many of the critical sensors paralled into both the stock PCM and my aftermarket ECU, so that I can get the real time data in the most visible format. Data logging is handled by the MoTeC engine management system: