Scangauge II Is it worth the investment?

It all depends on how you are going to use your Prius. If you're just going to get in it and drive the same as you did in your previous vehicle, you'll be getting much better mileage that you did before; and a scangauge II is probably a waste of $$$.

However, if you're going to try doing various Hipermileing techniques and/or installing a grill block (for winter driving), or various other mods (e.g. a PHEV conversion), it will definitely help.

For doing a grill block--you need the fWT gauge (Water Temp in F) to monitor if your engine is getting too hot. It also lets you know when the car has warmed up enough to get into S4 (Gen II...I don't know particulars re Gen III).

For a PHEV conversion, you want to have the bta gauge...to display amps in/out of the HV battery.

For P&G, it's good to have the RPM gauge, to know when your engine is/is not spinning.

And lots of other nice gauges depending on what techniques you're using.

 

You're doing great. A scantool would be more for hobby interest than for any further increase in MPGs.

 

I've used my ScanGaugeII on 4 seperate ocassions to rescue friends & family. When they're engine-light came on, they were at a complete loss of what to do. Is it serious? Could that error just have been a fluck? Is it ok to keep driving with it on? How much will it cost?

Being able to read the code to tell them what the situation was, rather than it being a surprise at the dealer, sure made them feel good... totally worth the $$$ in my book.

Being able to observe what your Prius is doing. Hmm? How much is that education worth? Seeing the RPM and coolant-temp is surprisingly informative.
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I agree with John that the information makes it worth it. You learn a lot about what's going on under the hood.

On longer trips there's some useful information, but I would say my mileage was not necessarily affected given my particular terrain. It would be useful, though, for trying Hobbit's highway driving style, for example.

On shorter trips where there is a lot of chance for pulse and glide or EV use, the Scangauge is essential for me. You know exactly the point you can start a glide, exactly when you get into stage 4, and if you are gliding a lot, you'll see when you need to use the engine again to keep it hot enough to allow glides. On these shorter trips (12 miles) I have probably increased economy by 10% or so.

 

About using the sg in others cars... I haven't removed mine since I installed it. At that time I followed the instructions and, IIRC, hooked it up with the car running. There don't appear to be any instructions in the manual on disconnection. I assume I would disconnect with the car off. Is that right?

Eventually I expect a service place will disconnect it to hook up their code reader since I always keep cars til they're run to the ground... lots left on this one before that's true.

 

You can just unplug it anytime, make sure you've hit "SAVE" for the various parameters in setup (you probably did this on following the instruction initially). Mine got unplugged accidentally when I was driving and nothing bad happened, it just popped back in and kept working. On other cars usually just have to change the engine size, and change it back when you get back to the Prius. When you bring it back to your car, I believe tank mpg will be affected if you've driven in the other car with it, if that's important to you.

 

Wow, nice! I would be happy to even break 500 miles..I'm only averaging ~44mpg.

 

I recently bought a Xitech Elm327 bluetooth OBDII dongle from amazon. There are probably a dozen different manufacturers making these. I use my droidx on my cardock mount and run Torque which talks to the bluetooth dongle. It can monitor any obdII senor reading as well as reading and resetting trouble codes. The screens can be customized with guages such as dials, graphs, digital readouts, sizes, alarms, etc. For a total investment of about $50, I think it was a bargain.

 

Sorka,

My original droid's contract will be up soon and I am wondering if I want to use it for running torque, if it is better than SG. Could you let us know what gauges are displayed with torque and post some photos of them? How does one program Torque to display kW, injectiong timings etc? Will it diagnose trouble code generate by ECUs other than that generated by the main engine?

stefano5777,

Are you making fun of us This guy is buying a SG after his first 700 mile tank??? What the heck? SG helped me because before it I didn't care to hypermile and now I do and have gained ~8-10 mpg. Now that I know what's going on, I find it silly to not modify my drive for high efficiency.

 

I can't add more other than at hiway speeds I can get an instant, accurate mpg with the ICE operating. I never had much luck with pulse and glide but keeping an eye on the scangauge has given me an average of about 54 mpg for 24,000 miles. And there are times through the last winter with 0 F temps and 3-4 inches of snow on the roads when 45 mpg was tough, even with grill blocking.

 

same here. I guess its the short trips I do living in inner London. Still, its more than double my old car

I know OP has already placed the order for the SG but there is also another option to buy one of those OBDII adaptors with bluetooth. There is a wonderfull app for android phones called Torque which (via bluetooth connection to adaptor) gives engine rpms, fluid temps etc.. among a boat load of other features. Its great and the adaptor only cost me £15 on ebay!

I'm sure there must be an iphone equivalent out there.