Evening all...first post..be gentle...My brother's 95 C280 just tripped the "check" engine light..rather than take it to the dealer, told him to purchase a code reader...well....he checked with a Merc dealer in Toronto..they told him any OBDII reader would do the job...he purchased one on Ebay..have been reading posts on numerous sites today...most work..his car has the 16 pin diagnostic plug under the steering column..plugged his in...it will display 8888 and nothing else...now I've read pre 1996 weren't OBDII compliant..any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated...Thanx

1995 C280s in the U.S. were fully OBDII compliant, not sure about Canada. Any plug under the steering wheel is not a 16 pin connector, would have to be an OBDII connector, which coincidentally has 16 slots. If you have an OBDII connector I'm guessing you're fully compliant, which means there's something else wrong - with the code reader or the code reader.

Thanks for the reply...now you have me wondering if I'm plugging into the correct slot...I flip down the access door and the OBDII scanner plugs right in...is there another plug in..??I looked everywhere for the emissions sticker...it's supposed to say if it is OBDII compliant....Where might I find it..??..seems like this scanner is stuck in display test of the led's..I drive a 95 Taurus SHO...I'm used to jumping pins to get the check engine light to run test and flash codes...I'm just guessing his "check engine" light has tripped from 02 sensor's as the exhaust smell is pretty rich and they haven't been changed...he just turned 100k miles....thanks again for any info

If the plugs fits it's got to be the right plug, and it's in the right place. Do you have an auto parts chain that does free OBDII testing? That would be my next step - to see if your code reader is working, and to confirm that Canadian cars were compliant. Not everything purchased on Ebay actually works. You should also have a 38 pin connector in the engine compartment on which you could do flash testing. Try a search - there's several good threads on this subject for your car, one fairly recent it seems to me.