Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Check engine light

You can thank better balancing, better seals & bearings along with hardened valve guides.

From a geek point of view car computer systems are pretty impressive. The engine control module was the real innovation. [rant]The rest of it seems like just marketing, but then I DRIVE a vehicle. Don't need GPS, OnSar, digital music, active suspension, parking assist, road hazard warnings, or even anti-lock brakes for that matter. I will take cruise control but originally that was linear, not digital computer.[/rant] Typical for computers the human interface isn't so good. When the idiot light/message comes on you can't tell if it's important or nuisance or one time glitch.

No excuse now for not giving the message in plain English instead of codes or requiring an external reader. Except to pull people into the dealer's shop of course.

B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name.

American car manufactures were undoubtedly spending millions figuring out what needed to be done to make cars wear out in 100K miles. IIRC it is well documented.

In N.C. light on means inspection failed, no tag. Taxes not paid, means no tag. In most counties emissions test fail, no tag. We don't even get a inspection sticker. If your tag is current, all is well.

Do you mean to tell me with your bare face hanging out that the union workers didn't show at work each morning and chant, "Let's see how good we can build 'em today, guys!"??? Say it ain't so.

I'll thank Honda for building the 300,000 mile engine, and the American manufacturers for "planned obsolescence".

Between MBA's and accountants, it's a friggen miracle this country produces ANYTHING at all.

One can buy a lot of gasoline for $600, well, before zero anyway. So, if you lose a mile per gallon due to a bad sensor, how many miles would you have to drive to benefit by that $600 expense.

i call it the "check write" light.

Ain't no way I would read all the crap posted. Most of you are too young or forgot the 10,000 mile tuneups, 10,000 mile tires, 1,500 mile grease jobs and oil changes on vehicles that lasted maybe 50,000 miles. We did a search on our customer work orders last spring. My customers have an average of 162,000 miles on their vehicles. Some places have emission checks and if everything is not in order you will not get an emission sticker and here it keeps you from getting your tags. Do I like it, well I just ordered a $12,000 scanner and I will have to buy software upgrades yearly. A lot of computer parts today require a reprogram of your computer when replaced. You can buy a code reader for very little money, but it only tells you the area of your problem, not exactly what it may need. You think I would spend $12 grand if a $50 tool would fix it, give me a break!
Now I live in a non emission county and have a check engine light on my regular driver. It gets 27MPG and gets me to work and back. It is a 2002 and has 202,000 miles on it. In my particular I will not spend $600 on a Cat converter for the reason eyeball mentions above. My 2002 Duramax has 300,000 miles on it and has needed virtually nothing. Front brake pads are original.
Mickey is right, if not fixed for whatever reason, what would you do if you have an additional problem if you weren't aware of it.
All that being said, regular maintenance items are where a shop pays their bills, not computer related problems.

I am no longer able to fix anything on a car. I can barely add gasoline so when the check engine light came on on my 2006 Mustang ,off to the dealer. Turned out to be pack rat damage. Had it repaired. 2 months later same thing. So far that cost $1200 dollars. Had to drop tranny to make repair as it was on top of it. Put all kind of lights,hung mothballs and Irish spring soap in engine compartment. Found a nearby packrat nest and destroyed it along with some poisen. Fast forward to a new Veloster Turbo. Check engine light. Packrat back. Chewed up O2 sensor so had to replace wire AND sensor. More lights and such. One more time check light and this time he just chewed the wire so cost was lower. Now looks like a lit up Christmas tree everynight. So far so good. He also chewed thru the vacuum lines on my old Dodge. But no other damage. I also have a small strobe light in the engine compartment attached to the battery that runs all the time. I rather hate the little buggers.

Cup of antifreeze in the garage be your friend. That or peanut butter in a rat trap.

A bad sensor can lead to more problems, namely ruining a cat. A clogged cat can really affect performance or even cause your car to go into the limp home mode to prevent further damage.
I don't like owning anything that doesn't work right so I just plug my code reader in and have at it.
One way or another they got us by the short hairs.

Stick a dongle in your OBD2 port and an app on your phone, and you not only get that message in plain English, but a whole bunch of other real-time live stuff while you drive. It can even combine engine info from your car, position info from your GPS, and motion info from your accelerometer to do some pretty interesting things.

Interestingly the Cadillac Allante ('87-'93) would show trouble codes and all the data (real-time live) it was monitoring on a one line (x 24?) LCD. Forgot which MCU they used, 40 pin DIP - think 8051 level. But you did need the shop manual to decipher the trouble codes and for the magic combination of buttons to get into the diagnostic modes. Imagine what an automotive engineer could design in today with something as cheap as rPI and graphics LCD. Fiber Ethernet of course but they say something like CAN is still more efficient as system messages are very short.

But noOOOo. R&D must go please marketing gimmicks.

Hey, you didn't happen to wash the engine shortly before this happened? I have essentially the same truck,and took it upon myself to wash the engine,which was rather muddy...I should have been more careful,as I was aware of the placement of the knock sensors and their tendency to crap out. Well, I wasn't,and they did. I probably could have let the water evaporate over time and been ok, but I went ahead and pulled the intake,changed the sensors and intake gaskets while I was in there. Hopefully your guy sealed up the plugs well, if he's good he likely did and you shouldn't have further issue's. Its a bit of a crappy design on GM's part,and I've seen some where the sensors are so badly corroded it takes quite a bit of work to get them out.

Three hours is not too unreasonable for the job, I think it took me about 2.5 at home. I prefer to take a bit of extra time and make sure all the mating surfaces for the intake gaskets are very clean and everything is sealed well. Mechanics trying to make time can result in lack of attention to detail and cause more grief down the road. Sounds like you have a good one.

No, it's been quite some time since I had the truck detailed. He did build two dams around the new knock sensors when he replaced them and you're right, I do have a good and honest mechanic. Strong Christian and I mean a real Christian, not just a mouth Christian. We've been friends for many years. I wouldn't believe he would cheat me if he said he was going to cheat me.

a few years back my car's catalytic converter became clogged.

replaced it with an aftermarket model which also set off the check engine light after about a year.

I ended up getting some "spark plug extender" socket, screwed that into the 02 sensor port, then screwed the 02 sensor in, reset the light and code never came back. Learned that trick from google.

never noticed any performance issues, but then again the car had over 180K miles by then. Performance at that point was defined by getting me from point A to point B without problem.

I think that all conversation on the Campfire should be conducted in English.

I'm witchew, there.