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Manufacturer codes: what your car’s code means

Besides the standard codes, the ones starting with P0, every make has its own for the engine, gearbox, ABS, airbags or body. Choose the make, type the code exactly as you got it and I will tell you what it means.

Standard codes (P0, P2, the standard P3 codes, U0, B0 and C0) each have their own page, open to everyone. Manufacturer codes are looked up one at a time, up to 20 a day, and we only show the ones we’ve seen on real cars or that match across several sources.

What it is for and what it is not

It tells you what a code means for your make, which is often not the same as for another one. What it cannot tell you is why it appeared on your car: for that you need to see the fault with its data, which control unit it is in, whether it is current or old and what the sensors were reading at that moment. That is what Final OBD does connected to your car.

If your code starts with P0, P2 or U0, it is a standard one and you have it explained in more depth in our list of OBD codes.

Open the bonnetthe in-depth explanation

Why every make has its own codes

The OBD standard requires every car to report anything affecting emissions with the same code: a lambda sensor, a misfire, the catalytic converter. But a modern car has thirty or forty control units, and most of them have nothing to do with emissions: ABS, airbags, the instrument cluster, the doors, the climate control, a hybrid’s battery. For all of that each manufacturer has its own fault catalogue, and it can only be read by talking to each control unit in that make’s own language.

What a code looks like for each make

Older Volkswagen, Audi, Seat and Škoda cars used a five digit number, like 16683 or 17978, and the modern ones use codes with a letter and four characters plus a suffix. BMW uses hexadecimal codes of four to six characters, like 2AAF. Peugeot, Citroën, Renault and Mercedes use the same shape as the standard (one letter and four characters) but with their own meaning, and often a two character suffix, as in B1000-54.

That suffix tells you the type of fault: an open circuit is not the same as a short, a signal out of range or a message that does not arrive over the car’s network. That is why you can type it here with or without the suffix.

The first letter

When a code starts with a letter, the letter tells you the system: P is engine and gearbox, C is chassis (brakes, steering, suspension), B is body (airbags, lights, doors, climate) and U is the communication network between control units. And the number after the letter tells you whether it is a standard code (0 and 2, almost always) or a manufacturer one (1 and 3, almost always).

Why there is no full list

We wrote the explanations ourselves, code by code and in four languages, and they are the heart of the app. That is why the lookup goes one at a time and has a daily limit. If you need to see all the faults on a car, connect it with Final OBD: it reads every control unit at once and explains them.