Editorial standards

Who runs this site

OBD Codes List is built and maintained by Gary Cadle. It is one person, not a content farm. If you email a correction, it reaches the person who wrote the page.

This site is a reference for trouble code numbers. It is not a repair manual, and it is not written by a master technician. Where a page gives a check order, it is the order a careful DIYer would work in, checked against the source for that code, not a claim of shop experience. What we bring is the curation, the cross-checking, and a structured dataset, not a written-up reference from memory.

How the code data is sourced

The generic codes are defined by the standard, SAE J2012 (ISO 15031-6 for the emissions-related set), so the number and the name are not our invention and not an aggregator's. Every generic code page says so and carries the date it was last updated. We check our names against the public J2012 list.

Manufacturer-specific codes are not covered by that standard, because each maker defines them. Those pages, on the brand sites in this network, are checked against a public source, and where two independent publishers agree the page states it. Where only one source exists, the page says that too, rather than presenting a single source as confirmed.

Citing a source is not the same as adding value to it. Where a reliable source does not cover a code, the page stays general or comes down, and it is not padded with text we cannot stand behind.

How we use AI

We use AI to help draft and rewrite code pages, and we say so plainly. It is a drafting tool, not the author and not the source. Every entry is checked against its recorded source before it ships.

The pages also carry generated titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text, the parts that appear in search results. Those are reviewed for the same accuracy as the page body, not published straight from a model.

What we will not do is publish content a machine wrote with no check, and we will not put a made up author or a stock photo on it. The name on this site is a real person.

Thin pages and the rebuild

Part of the catalog was still built from a shared template: a code number dropped into the same paragraph, which is not good enough for a reader or for a search engine. Those pages are now marked noindex, so they stay available to anyone who lands on them but are held out of search results while they are rebuilt.

As each code gets a real source, the page is rewritten and returned to the index. That is why the indexed size of the site can move down before it moves back up: it reflects the work still to do, not a loss of pages.

The code data as open files

The whole list is free to download and reuse, including commercially, with one attribution line. You can read the terms and grab the files on the code data page, or take it from GitHub, Kaggle or Hugging Face.

Corrections

If a page is wrong, email admin@obdcodeslist.com with the code and what you believe is correct. A correct fix with a source goes up, and the change is shown on that code page with its date, not just recorded on file.