My dad finally bought a handheld diagnostic tester for his tranny business, and just to have. It has plugs for chevy, ford, gm, obd1 and obd2 apps. I can use the obd2 b/c it's compatible with chrysler. We can buy more plugs to use with any cars. It's gonna be a lot more convenient to just walk outside and plug this thing up instead of having to poke ass along to a shop to get it checked and worrying about driving ur car on 2 cylinders or something.
I still have a CEL, but I know it's still my cat. I need to gut it or get a high flow. I wish it'd go away, but oh well. My coil went and the wires were arcing out. The guy I took my car to said it was only running on 2-3 cylinders. It wouldn't hardly go at all. I thought I'd blown the engine or something. Anyhow, since there was no fire on a cylinder or 2, unburned fuel was being shot thru the exhaust. That was fun, except for the fact that your car goes 0-60 in like 2 minutes at WOT. DOH. I remember it: I went to hit it to haul ass onto the highway, and it was like, vrooooooom, pop, vrooooom, (fuel cut nasty rev noise). Then I let off and eased it up to the 70 mph limit and got it home, but it sounded like shit. I got off the dark ass highway and pulled into an arby's and called my dad like, I broke my car, come get me. He drove it home, and I followed him. Kinda sucks when shit happens and you have to guess. I didn't have access to a tester, and didn't wanna drive to advance or autozone, so I was going by trial and error. Changed the fuel filter, nothing except some backfire action on revs. Finally, a coil pack, plug wires, and a $100 and some change for the wires, my car was running again.
To sum it up, I am glad I have a tester, and I'd recomend a handheld diagnostic tester for anyone who is tired of having to go by trial and error when something goes wrong and you can't really drive your car. Shops can charge anywhere from 25-50 sometimes for just telling u what's wrong. You could charge your friends a small fee for using it, and save $$$.