Moving thread from IMHO to The BBQ Pit.
I used to install gauges for oil pressure, charging rate, engine temperature and I threw in a tachometer for good measure. Somewhere along the line, I got too old and/or lazy and the manufacturers began to throw in a tach for good measure; now I just try to keep an eye on the lights. But—my darling Marcie’s Scion is a 2006 model and has only just over 5K miles on it. It drives the “needs maintenance soon” light absolutely insane.
I would still prefer gauges.
Exactly. My “Change Oil Soon” light (which is different from the Oil Pressure light) comes on roughly 1500 miles after the last oil change. I ignore it because no one in his right mind would change the oil after 1500 miles and because if it becomes a real problem I look for the Oil Pressure light.
But more often than not, a stupid pollution control device is why the Check Engine light is on. And that is a quick fix that isn’t car life-threatening.
Gus, the “check engine” light came off and on on my car for nearly 3 years, and every single time I took it in to the dealer, they said “huh, false alarm.” So I borrowed a code scanner myself the next time it came on, and the scanner couldn’t read any codes - even while the stupid light was on! Why make a complicated ass fuel injection and engine management system that lights up a “check engine” light that neither I nor the dealer knows what it means?
My car’s manual tells me which warnings I should consider ok to continue driving to a garage or home on, and which warning lights I should stop immediately for.
I am not a mechanic. Why should I be? Just because I own a car? Should everyone who owns a calculator be an electronics engineer? This is why we have those people called mechanics.
When a fellow employee doesn’t know how to create a rule in outlook, or convert delimited data into columns in excel, I’m not going to berrate them for not knowing how the tool they are using works.
You might try the cheap and easy method of getting the codes. My car (1994 Concorde) allows me to do that by turning the ignition to ON, OFF, ON, OFF, ON. The CHECK ENGINE light will flash a certain number of times, pause briefly, flash some more, then pause for a longer period of time. I count the number of flashes until the brief pause, and that’s the first digit of the first code. Then I count again until the long pause, and that’s the second digit of the first code. The next flashes will be for successive codes. For instance, flashing one time, then twice, then five times, then five times again will be codes 12 and 55. The codes are always two non-zero digits, so there’ll always be an even number of them.
I check the meaning of each code on a page like this, and that’ll generally tell me what the problem is.
It’s no substitute for having a mechanic with a real tester retrieve and interpret the codes, of course, but it can be a real help if your car begins stalling or won’t crank.
I don’t know how to do the quick-n-dirty diagnostic for any other car, but I’ve heard that many cars have such a feature. Some actually show the codes on an LED display.
I had an intermittent “check engine” light. Autozone said the codes indicated two mixture problems (too lean). When I took it in for the state inspection (light was out at that time), I failed because the flex pipe going into the catalytic converter was leaking. I repaired that, and the light hasn’t come on since.
From Home Improvement:
Tim: Honey, how long has the oil light been on?
Jill: I don’t know…two or three days?
Tim: Really? Didn’t you realize there was, you know, a problem?
Jill: Well, I thought if it was a serious problem, the light would get brighter, or there would be a buzzer.
Tim: [bashes head against wall]
My car is in the shop now having minor work done that was brought to my attention due to a “check engine” light*. I’m rather glad, because I haven’t budgeted for a new car or a new engine.**
First time light has come on since I owned the car.
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**
“Wow! Look-ee there! I can stir your engine around with a stick, mister…!”
“Stop that…”
I dont know what brands GaryT works with, but his post would hold true for the four manufacturers I worked for in the past FWIW.
It does seem strange to me sometimes. People would rather assume that the light is a false alarm than be cautious and get it checked out. And for everyone who was able to drive for forty thousand miles with the check light on, how many others only got four hundred miles before the loud bang came?
They OUGHT to have a little digital panel to address these issues that reads out in plain old english what the problem is.
Light comes on, little screen lights up and reads out: “Oil pressure low: immediately service vehicle” or “Problem with oxygen sensor: Service vehicle as soon as possible”.
I’m almost certain they don’t do this so they can make money off of reading the codes.
Because getting it checked out will set you back $100, even if nothing is wrong.
I notice & pay attention to the oil and temp indicators. check engine? at one point it meant “add gas”, now, the gauge is officially broken and is on anytime the car is running.
I saved my son’s car 'cause I watched the temp light. friend of mine in college learned the oil light the hard way.
Cars are appliances. And, to many people, not very interesting appliances at that.
Not too long after my niece got her driver’s license I asked her what kind of car she had. Being a teen & excited to finally, guy!!!, like wow, be able to drive, I figured I’d get some sort of useful answer.
She did not know the model. She did not know the make. She did not know the year. She did not know even part of the license plate/tag number. She did know it was blue.
I don’t know the model or year of my washing machine. She doesn’t know the model or year of her car. Same thought process at work.
My niece is not a ditz. She does well in school & has grown-up interests beyond hair & boys. But in a lot of ways she seems pretty typical in her attitude to technology.
One side effect of consumer electronics being unrepairable and unmodifiable (and uninformative to disassemble) is they encourage a Magic Black Box style of thinking about them. How they work is both immaterial and unknowable. So why bother with any curiosity towards them?
We also have become spoiled by complex machines which users expect to intuit. Nobody reads the owner’s manual on their iPod. Everything they need to know is discovered by fiddling with it.
Which is why the US loses billions of dollars of productivity annually because most users of Office can barely operate 2% of the features, but would gain by being able to use 10%.
And why so many people will learn about the meaning of the oil pressure light by ignoring it until it does something they can’t ignore. Like seize.
I had one of those.
One day, I was at a kinda blind intersection. I pulled out and wasn’t as far away from a car coming up as I wanted to be, so I really gunned the engine and skedaddled. The light went out. Every time after that, if I did some very aggressive acceleration when the light came on, it would go out. No idea what that was all about, but the shop never found anything wrong.
Haven’t people been posting (in various threads) that some parts stores will read the codes for free? Seriously, I don’t know, but I think Pep Boys at least will. My Ford dealer will do it for free (for me at least).
Edited: clarity added.
I paid attention to one of those CEL lights once. I swapped cars with my girlfriend (who was off for the summer) and she took it to a mechanic to have it looked at.
The mechanic raised up from under the hood, shook his head and said, “it ain’t good.” The timing belt’s shrunk one size too small, the spark plug wire’s are a little too long, and the main crossponder is nearly gone. The injector ports are stripped, and that wasn’t all.
He also said the torque converter’s running low on torque, and the water pump was down a quart.
But he said we caught it all in time, so we were in luck. He said he had the time and parts, and could fix it all for $800*.
Should’ve seen the look on his face when I showed up after work and gave him the stink eye. Turned out one of the hoses on one of the pollution control thingys was loose.
Gus, the real idiots are the people who see the light, and notice that the car is “off” somehow; losing power, engine noise is different, just “something ain’t right.”
And then they continue to drive anyway, as if nothing is wrong.
When I’ve been stuck in traffic for hours, creeping along at 0.1 MPH, and finally come upon the smoldering wreckage of some jackass’s car sitting in the middle of the highway, fire trucks still pouring water on the smoking engine block, I often wonder if his CEL was on, and for how long.
*The Talkin’ Song Repair Blues, by Alan Jackson
Autozone will do it, though I have heard in California parts stores are not allowed to do this anymore. I’m in NC and just recently went there to get my CEL codes read. As suspected, it was the gas cap. It wasn’t sealing properly anymore and a new one fixed the problem.
CELs are generally useless in and of themselves - you have to get the codes read to find out if it’s actually something serious (and in my vehicle at least, it rarely is).
At our auto shop a typical “check engine light” incident often (not always, but often) follows this sequence.
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Owner sees light on, takes car to parts store and gets it diagnosed.
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Parts store sells owner some repair parts based on the diagnosis.
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Owner takes parts home, installs same on car.
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“Check engine light” still comes on.
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Repeat steps 1 thru 4 several more times.
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Owner finally brings car to us. Is put on hugely expensive analyzer loaded with hugely expensive software.
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Very experienced technician interprets code, and repairs problem.
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Owner drives car away with unlit “check engine light”. Owner usually becomes a regular customer.
This is all very true but your car is the most important appliance you own. It pays to take it upon yourself to know something about it. Not knowing can cost you a lot more (extra $ for repairs, job, being stranded) than not knowing about your refrigerator or TV, usually those only create an inconvenience. You don’t need to know how to fix your car but at least know when the car is telling you things are going to lead to a failure. Specializing like you would for your job is not needed (I can quote ANSI Y.14 because its such an interesting document 
) but knowing what your car is telling you is. It’s just a very poor strategy and, as you said, it’s entrenching its self further everyday.
Btw, I’m not picking on you, just the thought process you described so aptly.