Mostly a general question. I cant really seem to find an answer. When my 1994 firebird was obd1, stock pcm, Tuning it I just used a obd1 to usb cable to my laptop, pretty simple, could use any software I wanted. When I got the torqhead kit for my car, its now obd2 and I found that you cant just buy any obd2 to usb cable (maybe you can but The ones that I found were apart of diag tools ?) It seems the only option to tune a car with obd2 is to use a mpvi device, sold by HP tuners. Im curious why is this the case, what is so special about it ? Thanks.

 

Much more tuning capability.

 

You got lucky with the 94. Most odb1 cars used EPROM chips that needed to be removed for programming. Just before 96 a few ECUs where introduced that use flash. Also, the old OBD1 cable was basically just a serial adapter with some level shifting.

 

What model and year is your car?
There are some inexpensive options for roughly 1999-2004, maybe up to 2007 depending on vehicle, but they're not as user-friendly as HP Tuner or EFI Live.