I’m looking for a diagnostic tool that will be capable of being used with BMW and Ford.

Mainly for resetting codes and checking for faults.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

I bought a cheap £19 one from euro car parts for the Audi and Citroen. It will only read and reset codes that are common across all makes and models. Generally cover engine and fuel fault codes.

Ended up buying a £5 kkl cable off eBay and downloading vcds lite (vag specific). There may be a freeware equivalent for yours.

Thanks, I was thinking one unit might be better but it seems that there is more options when getting a dedicated manufacturer unit.  I’ll look at getting specific cabling and see how I fair with that.

I used a £30 one off of ebay to clear a airbag light on my Mini. I can find the link if you like.

I use a £20 ebay one (Konnwei) for generic stuff, it has worked on VAG, BMW, Nissan for various OBD codes, clears codes, see pending codes/stored codes, can read MAF value, fuel trims etc, however it does not do airbags or more complex manufacturer specific stuff.

I use VAG COM VCDS for VAG, it is great for more involved work.

I would say it depends what you want to do, general fault codes a cheap hand held is fine, but manufacturer specific software is always better.

For £20 the ebay hand held is great, showed pending fault codes on a car a mate went to look at without dragging along a laptop.

My tame petrolhead recommends the Autel MaxiScan as his “keep in glovebox” device.  He has the MS309, but it’s years old so may have been superseded now – Autel did a shedload of different models last time I looked, there may be better models for similar money.  £20-ish on that Amazon.

OBDII Bluetooth connecters can be had for a tenner and work with various apps available for your phone. I’ve used these for diagnosing basic stuff.

Any cheap OBD scanner will clear the generic codes for the manufacture specific codes you may want to check out the BMW and Ford forums to see what they recommend.

If you are near Galashiels you can have a go with my Ford one?

What do you mean by codes ie changing whether door lights come on when reversing, radio switch off on ignition etc?

If so I bought a lead off amazon for £7 and got software off BMW forum

I was thinking of getting this,

https://v12.getfixd.io/offer-01/?lpid=458&utm_source=8291&utm_medium=1456971268&utm_term=31444&utm_content=1047&utm_campaign=GU&aff_id=8291&camp_id=31444&sub_id=1456971268&req_id=320252216&contract_id=746&oid=486&guvertical=42&guu=aa13e36f-f83b-44ce-86c1-34b4e09bab4a&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjtLZBRDLARIsAKT6fXx8gRaGgQV61GToxiiQkE8yTNZ632veM3PgeGPUEZ_6wCD5GkIhZK4aAidaEALw_wcB&guautoplay=1

Seems it works with all brands from 2006 onwards.

It’s a bit of both to be honest, checking codes – i.e. wheel speed sensors. I had a problem before under warranty which got fixed without charge, but the diagnostics is about 90 quid just to get plugged in, so I want to avoid that by being forearmed with the info, and also gives me an idea of whether I can fix the issue or not. It also opens up the area of ‘coding’, changing settings which aren’t normally an option.

Anyhow, I’ve plumped for a dedicated cable for each and I’ll use the laptop to connect.

I can’t see me needing this away from home so it shouldn’t be an issue.

Thanks for the replies, it seems there are many options with this.