A recommendation for the FORscan app

[Gareth Randall]

I’ve just used the FORScan app for iOS (also available for Android and Windows) to diagnose a problem with my 2003 Escape. Specifically, I needed to monitor the PIDs from the Generic Electronic Module to determine which door ajar switch was causing my door ajar light to stay on.

FORScan is specifically designed for Ford, Mazda, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles, and for the price it seems pretty much unbeatable. I just needed to buy a wifi OBD2 adapter, which I picked up from Amazon for £10 ($14).

It connected to the vehicle on the first try and communicated with all the modules. It checked for DTCs in all of them, showed me a non-critical fault I didn’t know I had in the keyless entry module, indicated how to fix it (press the lock or unlock button on the remote four times within 5 seconds), and cleared the code afterwards.

You can select which PIDs you want to monitor from any module, it’s all fairly intuitive. I was able to confirm that the tailgate glass switch was permanently registering the glass as being open (and the driver’s door and tailgate were registering as permanently closed).

I don’t know if any low-cost hardware-based OBD2 scanners will do the same stuff, but I’m very happy with this 🙂

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