:confused: engine light..please help

[fishdude84]

okay some of you may know about my 94 cap class. with the flakey oil pressure guage. i started a thread about it last week. well ever since i got the car, the following has been happening. you drive it about 8-10 miles down the road and the check engine light comes on. then i would go park and take care of my business at where ever it was i went, and after i would be done, i get in the car, start it up and drive back home, but the light has gone out. it seems to happen when the oil PSI guage dips in to the red, and stays on till i stop, turn the engine off and let the car sit for 15-20 minutes. what could be the problem. the car has good oil PSI, that was tested as well as a new sending unit for the guage. the mechanic said the guage was bad. i dont know how it could be bad though. now my question is this. are the "check engine light" and the oil pressure guage related in any way? or are they independent of eachother? and also, if they are independent, would the check engine light indicate a real problem besides a broken oil PSI guage? everyone tells me not to worry about, and that its prob just another sensor gone bad, and that the car is 9 years old anyway. i think they tell me that because its not their car and they just want me to shut up and stop bitching. after all they wouldnt care, its not their car. also in the owners manual it said the oil PSI guage should have the needle within the white bracket of the guage. mine has never been like that. is it possible the guage is malfunctioning, could it be miscalibrated, or do in fact have lower than normal oil pressure? im reluctant to take the car to another mechanic, because i dont was to spend anymore money on it. Also for what its worth, the engine does not overheat and the temp guage reads perfectly normal. the engine seems to run fine, trannie shifts smooth and all. The car has 83,400 miles on it and it was origially owned by a municipality, so it must have been maintained right? Please if anyone knows more about this, it would help me sleep better at night.

[reverendstu]

You gotta get someone to read your computer codes. The CEL just means something, somewhere, isn't telling the computer what it wants to hear. Mine would come on sometimes, I assumed it was because the tranny was going out, since the tranny was...well, very unhappy. When I got a mech to check my codes to see what put on the light there was nothing about the dying tranny, but instead a rather vague reference to an 'EGR system fault.' Check the codes.

[fishdude84]

i took it to autozone, and they told me how to read the codes when the CEL comes on . the trouble is its hard for me to get the CEL to come on. i have to drive it ten miles down the road for anythign to haapen, but he gave me a key to stick in the thing, so i will work on it.

[reverendstu]

That key thing is mostly bogus. The computer keeps a record of what codes have been thrown, even when the light goes off. You have to actually go in and clear the codes after you've fixed something. Find someone with a reader, or find a mechanic who'll do it cheap. Hell, I had to pay $30 bucks after a LOT of haggling, to get a guy to plug in and give me my codes, even though he should have included it in the work he did. I mean c'mon, if you're trouble shooting a modern car, the first thing you should do is plug in and check, right?
I think there is a reader available for not too much money. Can anybody else confirm or deny this?
Personally, I'm gonna get a cable, order a program from Bryan Herter via e-mail and plug the car directly to this crappy old notebook I can use. Then I could check my own codes without some mechanic trying to rip me off.

[fishdude84]

i think im gonna put some tape over the light. this is rediculous. the engine doesnt over heat, the engine runs strong, and smooth, and the car does have good oil pressure, because it was mechanically tested, therefor the only problem i think it could be is something wrong with the computer, or another sensor or somthing

[Incitatus]

Find an Autozone that is 8 - 10 miles from you and drive towards it until the light comes on. Don't pay someone to check your codes, Autozone does it for free.
Also, the code reader cost about $150 at Autozone -I don't know if that qualifies as "not a lot of money" or not.

[reverendstu]

Thanks Incitatus. I forgot about the Autozones. Up here they only do OBD II.