2000m Phase 2 V70 Fault code interrogation

[Scott Stephen]

2000 Phase 2 V70 T5, Hi all... Done to death? - Anyhow, I'm finding conflicting views on here if a standard OBD 2 reader will diagnose on this car or if one needs £££'s of gear .. ANY help/equipment recommendations appreciated .. Many Thanks

[Georgeandkira]

Hello, Do a search on this and other Volvo boards and go through the thread's responses. By doing that you will see many more specific model numbers of reader than you'll get with this one thread. You need a reader which is CANBUS compatible. Many clearance priced readers are not. There are "previous generation" Volvo readers (XXX 2000) which several people on this board own. The BSR model PPR reader is a legendary Volvo reader which was only in production briefly. Finding one of those would require luck. I have a first generation ScanGauge. The one they sell now is called the ScanGaugeII. It lists for $179 (US). It's merely a smaller package to facilitate mounting somewhere in the interior of your car. I don't use it that way because I'd be looking at all the gauge functions as I drove and would crash. It has never failed to connect with any car or truck. It does read off the sensors in your vehicle (intake air temp., rpm, throttle positioning sensor, coolant temperature etc.) as well as read codes. Search on Brickboard, Volvospeed, Matthew's Volvo site, Volvoforums.com, for "readers" or "code readers". If you can, buy locally so you can return it if it doesn't connect with your car. Reputable "e-shops" like Amazon have reasonable return policies. Kira

[Missing Lincs]

Any reader that is OBDII compliant will read standard codes which are the same for any make of car which is OBDII compliant. This covers the vast majority of cars in the UK for the last 10 years.

Essentially this means you can read any codes from the engine ECU.

Volvo like many other manufacturers have more electronic modules in their cars than you can count. Reading these modules requires a tool that is specific to the mark of car, and in many cases they are also age dependent as the systems have changed over time.

If you want to read codes specifically from Volvo then you need a unit that can be programmed to do this. As an example, codes stored in the SRS system can't be read by a generic OBDII reader. There are a few mid-priced units eg Autel 702 which do a reasonable job of doing this and will allow codes to be reset. Even readers like this can't read every system on the car. The BSR units as mentioned will do this at a price as will Volvo's own DiCE.

[mikealder]

Look on e-bay for "Volvo DICE" they might be a copy/ clone from China but they will work very well with your car, make sure you understand any PC software OS issues prior to purchase as you might need a Laptop running a caertain version of XP/ Windows 7 etc, but DICE will read everything, a generic reader will only have visibility of whats wrong with the engine - Mike