If your “check engine” light comes on, be sure to check your gas cap.
Some dealers across the U.S. have told National Auto Dealers? Association that a loose cap is often the culprit for such a signal.
But it?s still a good idea to have a car that displays that warning light checked by a certified automotive repair specialist, said Jeffrey Boone and Ed Kriston, approved automotive repair specialists for the Towson Office, AAA Mid-Atlantic, headquartered in Wilmington, Del.
“It could be any number of things,” said Boone. “Any repair facility can?t tell if something additional is wrong until [they diagnose the car and] it is driven two to three weeks.”
Of all the warning signs on your car, the check engine light signal is the potentially most crucial.
Although some auto parts dealers believe that cars? engine “codes” automatically pinpoint the problems, that is not the case.
“They will repair the known item,” said Kriston of steps taken at an AAA approved repair facility. “Then they clear the codes. If no [definitive problems] are displayed, they will advise the customer to drive the car for a month to see if the engine light comes on again.”
What many people don?t understand is that the process of checking an engine is not a simple task.
Boone and Kriston likened it to a physician diagnosing a mysterious illness of a patient; although some malady may be immediately obvious, others are not.
The bottom line is to be patient when a car is diagnosed.
“It might show that the car?s catalytic converter [has malfunctioned] when it?s really the oxygen sensor,” said Boone. “It might be the driver ran over a pile of snow and pulled wires loose. There are a lot of things it could be. The only thing the code does is tell an experienced automotive technician which direction to begin to diagnose the problem.”
For more information on this and other car safety strategies, go to www.aaa.com.
