I’m looking for recommendations for a basic diagnostic box (hoping that’s the right description!) 

 

budget up to £50

Not always a question that is easy to answer, one thing is, you are best to look only at scan tools that cover VW Group's extended engine fault codes as any basic really cheap scan toll will only be OBD2 compliant and so only correctly cover mandated emissions fault codes - which is a lot better than nothing at all.

 

What age is your car and does Carista claim to cover it - note newer scan tools like Carista only "work forwards", ie they only cover cars initially brought into production while they were assembling their initial data base - and onwards in time. Carista will cover all smart controllers in VW Group cars and work out cheaper than for instance VCDS, though obviously you have your £50 price limit.

 

There were some good cheap scan tools out there, but when VW Group moved in 200? they ran out of life so people stopped selling them, I had a useful scan tool from Gendan but that ran out of life when I bought a 2011 car - so I sold it and moved onto Carista to have in the glovebox of both cars for diagnosing faults when "out and about".

 

Maybe VCDS Lite if it still exists would cover all your needs, I don't know the costs involved with getting that up and running.

@Wench

Is this for using on your Mk1 Fabia?

On 15/12/2019 at 16:03, Roottootemoot said:

@Wench

Is this for using on your Mk1 Fabia?

 No for a friends... we thought it’s a mk2, turns out it’s a mk3!

I have the following:

 

Carista(£10) - Great tool for getting into your car and playing with features etc although I did find the diagnosis it a bit slow, There's not another ob2 tool that I know of that has as much features apart from VCDS which is another level.

 

Streetmods odb2 scanner (£18)- Cheap and cheerful wired ob2 I bought while on a road trip, Has cleared all errors I've needed it too and really quick.

 

Digital boost gauge with built in diagnostic(£70) - Binned the other for this as it sits on my dash, Not as much features as carista,as quick as the streetmods and looks the part, ALso has built In 0-60 time and brake testing.

Thing is with carista, it's not quite the full story is it.....

 

To have all the features will cost atleast £34 a year...

PC:

1- VCDS (Chinese version)

2- VCP (Chinese version)

 

Android :

1- Autel AP200

2- OBDEleven

3- Carly for VAG

4- ELM327 (with Pic18f25K80) + Deep OBD for BMW and VAG (Need to modify the ELM327)

and none of them will touch genuine VCDS....

 

If you intend to have a long term ownership of the vehicle, or even sometime will buy other VAG based cars,  then investing in a good diagnostic tool is money well spent "imo", does not take many hours of labour to get the cost back.

Edited 20 December, 20196 yr by UrbanPanzer