My “check engine light” has come on twice in the last few weeks. The first time, I paid eighty bucks to a mechanic to read it. He told me it said something about a hose, they checked all the hoses, found nothing, and cleared the code. Oh, and by the way, my third brake light was out. So I stopped at an auto parts store and got the bulb that night, where the kind gentleman putting it in for me (Viriginia really is great for that) told me that I could have saved myself the money–they have a free code reader. So when the light went on again two days ago, I decided to go back to the auto parts store, and chose Sunday.
Tonight, I had dinner at Heidi’s, and parked my car, as usual, partly leaning in the ditch on the passenger side. When I left tonight, I turned on the car, and the check engine light was gone.
Apparently, all I had to do was lean the car far enough to the right in order to clear the code.
Fine by me. I didn’t want to stop at the auto parts store tomorrow, anyway.
There, now I have a post for the day. Off to bed.
Next, a voice prompt in plain language describing the problem and suggesting a correction. Ain’t engineering grand?
And when next leaving the car level, the light comes back on, right?
As the Car Talk guys would say, just because the symptom went away don’t mean the underlying problem did…
For eighty bucks the mechanic, on not finding a faulty component, should have checked why the light came on in the first place.
Maybe it is the “cutting-edge” technology that is faulty – short?
The computer code said it was a hose problem. They checked every hose in my engine and found nothing.
I have a sneaking suspicion it’s related to my having told them not to change my air filter and charge me thirty bucks for it, then putting the dirty one back on because they were not expecting that response from me, and my not having gotten to replacing the dirty air filter yet. It’s going on today. Then we’ll see if the light comes back.
Off to my boring in-service training session.
Meryl – In all probability, the leaning had nothing to do with clearing the code.
My last truck had the “check engine” light come on at about 60,000 miles and, after taking it to the mechanic twice and no problem found, I was assured by him that I should ignore it. This is the same advice I’ve gotten from others. The light tends to come on intermittently when the vehicles with those computer “brains” get older, even if nopthing is really wrong.
228,000 miles later, that truck is still sitting in front of my house, and still runs like a champ. And the light still comes on periodically.
You need to find a reputable mechanic, one to go to and get a rapport with. $80.00 sounds steep for just checking it out and I live just north of SF. Mechanics are high here.
Good luck.
PS – If you know someone in the SF Bay Area who wants a truck with 228,000 miles on it, let me know. They can have it cheap! LOL