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What is OBD2?

OBD2 stands for "On Board Diagnostics second Generation". It was enacted to provide standards which are designed to alert one to an Emmisions failure. Vehicle emmisions contribue to Global Warming, Increased pollutants in the enviorment, and excess vehicle emmisions can also lead to wasting our planets natural resources. On the vehicle diagnostic side in a nutshell it is a set of standards developed to define how Emmisions data from an Automobile should be communicated via a Diagnostic Scan Tool. What is defined includes things such as,

Connector Shape/Placement
Connector Wire Pinout Standardization
Scan Tool Connectors
Scan Tool Protocols
Data to be displayed
Modes of operation
Trouble Fault codes
Emmision Monitors

One of the reasons for the standards would be to make it so that one Generic Scan Tool could access all the different makes and models of cars. The data stored and displayed would also be somewhat consistant and would allow a greater number of successful repairs, which would result in cleaner Emmisions, which is the real ultimate goal.

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