If you’ve seen your temperature gauge move a little up big hills over the past couple of months, there’s a good chance that your engine is working a lot harder than the factory gauge will let on. Because symptoms of an overheating car are so varied, it’s not easy to pinpoint an exact cause straight away. What’s even more frustrating, is that car manufacturers use a trick in vehicle design that prevents you from properly understanding how hot your car or 4×4 is running – and the only way to get around it is with a scan gauge tool like the Engine Data Scan EDS from 4WD Supacentre.

Ever noticed how on most days, within a minute or two’s driving, your temperature gauge comes up to a particular point and stays there? Where that point is depends on the vehicle. On some, it’ll be around the one-quarter to one-third mark. On others it’ll sit just about on halfway, or maybe a tiny bit below. But did you know that your engine could be overheating without the gauge even moving?

That’s because manufacturers program a ‘dead zone’ into factory temperature gauges. They do this because during normal driving operation, it’s completely natural for engine coolant temperatures to fluctuate up to 40°C. Think about how hard you’d work your car or 4WD climbing a big range on the highway on a warm day. Surely by the time you crest the hill, your engine must be getting warm right? And then as you coast down the other side, all that airflow combined with a lack of engine load must cool things down considerably. But how can you tell if your car is overheating when the factory temp gauge doesn’t budge?

That’s where the scan gauge tool  comes in. This clever scan gauge tool plugs into your modern car, van or 4WD’s OBDII port and can digitally read and display exact engine coolant temperatures. You’ll be blown away by how much variance there really is in your engine temps when you can watch the factory gauge side-by-side with the E.D.S. You’ll see the factory gauge sitting at its ‘normal’ mark as early as 40°C, and not moving before the actual engine temps get as high as 110°C!

An EDS is a lifesaver in any modern car or 4WD. It lets you back off the throttle a little if you see the engine temperatures start to climb, because it’s much better to crest that hill a little slower than it is to overheat your motor! Of course, monitoring motor temperatures is not the only thing the Engine Data Scan does, because it’s also a full scan gauge tool that lets you check error codes, monitor heaps of different engine parameters and even display your fuel economy accurately as you drive.

The main thing we love about the EDS, however, is just how easy it is to install. Just one single plug, that plugs into your vehicle’s under-dash OBDII port literally in seconds. In fact, from opening the box to using the E.D.S. scan gauge tool’s functions takes less than 2 minutes, it’s that easy! No special tools required, no expertise needed at all.

The Engine Data Scan instantly replaces hundreds of dollars worth of traditional gauges that’d take up valuable space on your dash, and could indeed be illegal if they restrict the driver’s view. We use ours to constantly monitor engine coolant temps, battery voltage coming from the alternator, accurate vehicle speed and engine RPMs.

But the EDS isn’t just a scan gauge tool either. One of its best functions is its ability to read Check Engine Light error codes and display them. You can even clear the error codes to take the vehicle out of limp-mode. This allows you to diagnose the problem by seeing if the code comes back, or if it was just a ‘one-off’ random light that came up. With many modern vehicles going into ‘limp mode’ and the solution genuinely being to clear the error code, your EDS will pay for itself the first time you can avoid having your vehicle towed to the dealership to clear the code for you!

We genuinely believe every modern vehicle owner should have an Engine Data Scan scan gauge tool in their vehicle, because it’s a life-saver – and an engine-saver!