Why You Need an OBD II Scan Tool

Suffering with mysterious misfires, and an annoying CEL? The OBD II will help you sort it out.

The Jeep JK Wrangler may look a lot like the primitive agricultural machine from the 1940s that spawned it, but it isn’t. In reality, the current Wrangler is just as modern and sophisticated as any other 21st century vehicle. What that means is you occasionally get weird electrical signals and symptoms communicated to you via the Check Engine Light (CEL). Amazingly, thanks to the United States DOT and EPA smog laws, figuring out what is going on is as simple as plugging in your phone to charge.

These days every car and truck uses the OBD II second generation on-board diagnostic system, and has a port you can get information from. In the Wrangler, it is just inside the driver’s door, under the dash.

CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About This Nifty Technology

The video above (though shot with a Smart Car) outlines the process of reading and clearing codes for any car. The best part of this? The hugely useful OBD II scanner is less than $50 almost anywhere.

Don’t want to buy a scanner? Jeep includes a trick in the JK to display the codes on the odometer, though you can’t clear them. You can learn this neat Jeep hack in the how-to section of JK Forum .