I am trying to clear the codes on my 1997 legacy brighton wagon and the scangauge II does not seem to work? Did I waste my money on it and is there another way to clear the code?

I've had an issue clearing codes on 95-99 legacys with my scangauge 2 as well. Not sure what the deal is, usually if I unplugged it and plugged it back in again it worked fine. I usually had better luck if I went to the gauges screen, waited for everything to initialize, then went back to the code reader screen. Something about letting it initialize on the gauges screen increased the chances it would clear codes properly.

 

I'm surprised they're still selling the scangauge mostly unchanged, I bought mine USED in 2009 or so.

YES there is a trick, at least on my scangauge, on my '96 it will NOT work unless I go deep into the options and change the setting for 'PIDS' from 'all' to 'supported' I think is the wording. I think they made that automatically pick the right option in later scangauge versions possibly. I only knew that because before mine arrived I happened to read through the owners manual and noticed it saying something about some vehicles that option has to be changed.

 

If that's not it, I have also noticed that you have to wait about 20 seconds after connecting it (until it starts reading values) before trying to clear the codes. As mentioned above it seems to have to get the communication working first.

Edited January 25, 201610 yr by porcupine73

I have trouble occasionally with clearing codes with my Innova 3130.

 

I've found that after reading the codes if I re-scan and then immediately clear them (rather than scrolling through) it will work.