Automatic Transmission Temperature With an OBD Scan Tool

Which OBD2 Scanner Shows Auto Transmission Temperature Data?

Today we’re covering a short article on how to access transmission temperature readings through an OBD scan tool, which is a great tool to have when changing your transmission fluid. To clarify before we dive in, to access live data you would need a full systems OBD scanner, your basic OBD2 engine reader would not give you access to this type of information. 

We often have a lot of our customers wanting to make a temporary check on their transmission temperature before and after changing their fluid but they often struggle to access this specific type of live data on their vehicles using their handheld tool. The common issue here is that most people tend to plug in and proceed with an automatic scan of their vehicle. To access live data on a specific module of your vehicle, you need to do this manually. 

As an example, we’ll be taking a look at how to access transmission temperature through the live data screen on a Vident i400AU OBD Scanner. 

We’ve documented the screen path below:

1. From the main screen, select ‘Scan’
2. Select your region depending on your vehicle (Asian, China, European, USA)
3. Select your car make e.g. Toyota
4. Select area (USA, Europe, Others or Japan)
5. Select Manual selection
6. Select your vehicle from the list e.g. Land Cruiser
7. Select the Year of your vehicle
8. Select Diagnosis 
9. Select Control Unit
10. Find the exact module you want to work on e.g. transmission  
11. You should now have access to a range of options such as; read codes, erase codes, live data, freeze frame data
12. Providing you selected the correct module, you should now have access to a live reading of the auto transmission temperature

By following these steps, you are able to select and view data on specific modules in your vehicle. The same steps can be applied to other readings you want to view in the live data screen. You simply need to select whichever module you want to view data on. 

The same steps can also be applied to the Vident i700 series scan tools (i700, i705, i710 and i730). In addition to this, generally, most scan tools on the market are following the same or very similar menus, as this is the way the vehicle computer and scan tool software is built. So long as the scan tool itself is capable of diagnosing on the transmission module, the above steps should work fine to access transmission temperature live data.