I have (actually my daughter has) a 1996 Volvo 960. I have been thinking of investing in an OBD II reader that would check this and our other vehicles (Chrysler, Chevrolet and Honda). All the vehicles are either 1996, 1997 or 1998. In doing some checking it seems like the Volvo takes a specific reader (one that won't work on the other cars).

Knowing that people here are primarily Volvo owners (and fanatics) but are also some of the most knowledgeable when it comes to vehicles I thought I would ask if anyone has info on scanners/readers - what to look for, range of costs, etc.

As always - many thanks for the help.

Ted in New Mexico

All 1996 cars have to be OBD-II compliant! That means the generic OBD-II codes are present in the Volvo's ECU. There are 3 interface variations, of which the Volvo is like most other european cars and those from Japan.
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'96 965 with 16' wheels at 121K. Had '85 745 Turbo Diesel for 200K.

Volvo's for that year are vanilla. No special codes. You can buy a stand alone scan tool for about 100 bucks at most auto supply stores or you can go for one of the tools that runs on a pda or a laptop. I have probably the cheapest version out there, it goes for about 80 bucks, runs on a laptop with a special black box interface that plugs into the cars odb2 port and the serial port. The software runs under windows and will show you all sorts of data including o2 sensors, engine load, rpm, temp. Here is the link to this guys site: http://obddiagnostics.com/ I have no connection except as a satisfied customer of his stuff.
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97 S90 with 177K miles still going strong