What else can OBDII do? Jeep owners!

**TaylorMade** · 04-08-2004, 08:05 AM

I'm about to toss the carputer in my 98 JGC Limited which has the computer screen that tells you the standard stuff about which door is ajar and such, but it also tells me useful things like keep track of the last time I changed the oil, whether my coolant level is low, brake lights are out and other somewhat important, if not cool things. Is there a way to hack THIS computer so that I can put my head unit in it's place? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

**transist0r** · 04-08-2004, 10:07 PM

hello fellow 98 grand cherokee limited owner

i have no clue how to do that, but im curious, are you planning on putting your lcd screen there? I'm planning on putting mine where the radio is, but i will have to lose those two vents

**shakes** · 04-09-2004, 12:16 AM

make sure you post which obdii device you buy ... i have the standard cherokee from 01 but it's probably similar.

i'm thinknig about scantool.net ... it's cheap and allows people to code for their device.

**skippy76** · 04-09-2004, 12:57 AM

One thing guys! ODBII will only give you regular spec stuff. Things like Oil level, doors open etc with the Jeep are available over the PCI bus. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would need two interfaces, one for ODBII and one for the PCI Bus....????

**TaylorMade** · 04-09-2004, 09:40 AM

No, I'm putting my LCD up top as well, but I was going to put a head unit in place of the OEM display. I've contemplated going without a head unit, and in fact still may, but I was just thinking how cool it would be to replace the old tired display with a color display and maybe even incorporate a picture of the actual truck instead of the outlined one they have. I think it could be somewhat easily done. Just need to know where it's getting it's info from. I'll check out scantool, thanks for the posts.

**shakes** · 04-09-2004, 10:31 AM

skippy ... I don't realy know what information is available where ... but i do know that certain OBD tools are able to get more information than others. Well, i guess it's the software more than the tool. But like Autotap has a bunch of manufacturer specific codes it can read ...

**transist0r** · 04-09-2004, 01:13 PM

if you go headless, how would you get sound to the speakers? you have the infinity amp and speakers, right? im thinking about going with an auxiliary input converter, but wondered if there were any other options. also, what are you going to do about the power supply?

**shakes** · 04-09-2004, 01:30 PM

fyi in my cherokee i had the infinity amp ... and i turned out not to be a real powerful amp ... the head unit already preamped the signal, and the infinity just gave it a little extra boost. However i've also found that the audio coming out of the PC is rather hot ... so the infinity amp may have worked ok.

I ended up just buying new amps and went from the PC to the RCA inputs of the amp,

**skippy76** · 04-09-2004, 01:40 PM

Ok, the EVIC (The nice Jeep thing that tells you lots about your car etc.) connects to the PCI bus. ODBII is a seperate interface. I would therefore assume that the Jeep specific data provided over the car's PCI bus is different to that provided over the ODBII interface. Remember... ODBII is a standard, where as the stuff on the PCI bus is specific to Jeep.

**TaylorMade** · 04-09-2004, 05:39 PM

I've long since blown the infinity speakers. I have polk audio separates and subs. I'm currently running the stock infinity amp, but I've got a few amps from my cobra that I sold. I was going to use the Audigy sound car into a crossover that separates the high/mids from the sub amp. I have a Sony 4 channel amp running the separates and a much bigger Kenwood amp running the subs. I'd control the master volume with the Griffin Powermate. I hardly listen to the radio and would prefer XM to FM anyway, so I really don't see the benifit of having a headunit other than the immediate availability of turning on music rather than waking a PC from hibernate...but I digress...

Skippy, you're absolutely right when you say it's a totally different system. It makes a lot more sense to be that way. The word "standard" says it all. I'll look into how to translate the messages into another program...thanks.