engine ligth on sometimes
 

I have a jetta VR6. 97 with 75000 miles, a few months ago the check ligth come on and after a few trips its turn off by itself,when the ligt come on my jetta spend more fuel,and very often happen the same history on and then -off. i have less that 3 months to fix the problem before go to the state emission test,i want to buy a scanner to solve the problem by myself, i already went to autozone to take a free check engine ligth,but the scaneer on the auto parts,was too cheap (on the autozone store) and too smallto reallyread the code trouble, and the autozone guy, tell me to go to the VW dealer, but i dont want to spend too much money on the local dealer if i can do it by myself, so what brand of scanner should i buy? (about$ 200 is my budget for the tool) or/and some else could know whats going on on my VW?

RE: engine ligth on sometimes
 

You won't know until you download the code. AN OBD II reader is somewhat like $100, I'm not sure but it sounds right. The dealership will download a code for you, but the Autozone one will download a code and whatever it says, the guy has to look it up in the book. Other thanthat, you have to know what the code is, and then you can start fixing it.