That reminded me of when I lived in the sticks, had a Taurus with CEL and had to use a voltmeter to pull the codes by counting the sweeps of the analog arm. Those days stunk!

 

those obd1 cars made mortgage payments if you were a tech at that time, everything was a pain to diag, and even if you followed the pinpoint tests, what the test said was the fault was often times incorrect. ahhhh the good old days lol

 

Wife and daugter both have Dodge Caravans 2002 & 2004 when the CEL came on, all I had to do was key on-off 3 times and the CEL codes came up OBD2.
I also had a Dodge Dakota that the Dealer said they could not find the codes on their reader? Yes, I questioned that. I went home, Googled, and found out the key 3 turn method. Went back to dealer and they repaired under warranty several cracked hoses.
In today's age of computers, I cannot see why a person cannot personally check their cars computer and diagnosis a potential problem.

 

this is not a dodge, ford obd2 code retrieval requires a scan tool. you are correct, in todays age of computers, a person can pull their own codes



with this