I bought JDiag Fastlink OBD II scanner which is based on ELM327 based OBD II scanners. I noticed that the scanner was able to read all the instrument panel reading such as fuel level, engine temperature, RPM etc. but somehow the scanner doent read any trouble codes, eventhough the car has check engine light on!
I am curious to know if the fault codes from the ECU are encripted such that only advance scanners can read them? Or this functionality is purposely suppressed in cheap scanners? Since the scanner could read all the guages in the instrument panel then why cant it read the fault codes? Or maybe for each car the fault code had to be added to the software for OBD scanner to detect it?
I tried on Mini Cooper 2011 as well as Jeep Wrangler 2012 which obviously had faults but the scanner returned no codes!