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If your buying and selling cars you should own an OB2 Scanner. It's a very useful tool. You can use it to scan a check engine light on a vehicle. This one here I bought for $100. If my check engine light is on I can scan the code to see what it is. I can also erase/reset the check engine light.

I'm going to check to see if this 1999 Dodge Ram Van I recently bought is ready for smog.

First look under the steering wheel for the OB2 connector.

Plug the OB2 scanner into the connector

Make sure the key is in the ignition position.

This is the main menu. I'm going to scroll down and check the vehicles monitors.

Below are the monitors that need to be checked to see if the vehicle is ready for smog. If the check engine light was just reset all the monitors would be incomplete. This car is already in the process of going through a drive cycle so some monitors are o.k. and some are still incomplete.

For vehicle 1996 to 2000 their can be two incomplete monitors to run the smog test.

For post 2001 vehicles their can only be one.

Due to the status of the monitors this vehicle is not yet ready for smog. I need to continue to drive this vehicle and then check it again tomorrow.