darn CEL stay lit after I got out of work and prepared to head home.

It was fine this morning when I parked the car

car runs fine...no loss of power, no bad fumes, no shuddering, no nothing! any idea what it could be if i'm not seeing/feeling any symptoms?

i just dropped $450 for repairs a week ago too

 

yo gdawg, oh man, i feel bad for you. mine's been on for about 6 months now, and the car is still running fine. everytime i bring it in somewhere they tell me it's the same thing, the darn kickdown piece for the tranny. oh well, see if you can get it read for free somewhere, like here in cali, autozone will hook you up, and you can decifer the code at the stealership. good luck!

 

Don't panic, yet, GDawg. Could just be the ecu throwing codes. Just run it over to AutoZone and have them hook up to it and find out what the code is and see if it can just be cleared.

 

i thought autozone dropped the free CEL code pulling thing...hmm.

I'll see when I have some time to run it over. I remember last time I tried to get them to pull a code, they stop at 4pm, which is when the "techs" that use the code reader leave and i don't get off of work till 5pm.

 

Time to get the Audi

 

hehe. lookin' @ the A4 this weekend

we're tradin' up the audi tho, so most likely gonna hafta fix this one...can't get an appointment till Aug 4th, so we'll see what happens

 

Dude, I feel for you. CEL came on on our '95 C280 about a month ago. Took it to Mr. MB, and it turned out to be a sensor, bill was a little over $300. A couple of weeks later, the CEL came on again. This time it was the engine (gasp!) harness. $1300. If it was anyone other than Enrique at Mr. MB, I might have wondered if the first $300 was justified. He showed me the old harness and it was a mess. All the insulation was cracked. $1010 for the part (used to be about $600, but MB USA raised it recently), plus $85 tax plus $260 labor. MasterCard must love me.

 

god i hope its not that...i'm just hoping it's a O2 sensor, something small.

did the harness affect the car's performance that you noticed, such as shuddering, loss of power, etc?

my car is completely fine, can't feel a difference so i'm just hoping it's a oxygen sensor as those are common.

 

Actually, there was no noticable effect on performance or anything, just the CEL, but didn't want to raisk bigger problems, so we just had it done.

 

did they mention what were the bad effects of not having it done right away? Would the car die somewhere while driving or just not start one day or something like that?

 

To tell you the truth, I never asked. I've worked with wires and cables a lot and could only imagine that no good could come of a harness with cracked insulation. Seems to me that pretty much any wire in there could short to any other wire. God knows what might happen. Seemed like false economy to me to put it off, but then we plan to keep this car a lot longer. For you, if you plan to get rid of it soon, maybe not. Couldn't hurt to just have it diagnosed.

 

my car is going to be handed to my brother when he gets his license in Nov of this year. We've dumped over 8 grand in the past two years in doing repairs (headgasket, lower control arms/bushings, HFM Fuel Controller, Purge Valve, numerous O2 sensors, ball joints, etc). I just don't know where we should put an end to keep putting money into it, you know what I mean?

yes, it's a solid car, drives great and very good over all, even @ 10 years of age with 143k on it. But there's gotta be an end somewhere...

 

update:

this afternoon when driving home from work, at stop lights when i'm completely stopped, the RPM's would sometimes drop a little then back up. Happened a few times over the course of about 40 minutes, but only while stopped. It didn't do that this morning. I didn't have the HVAC on, so it couldn't have been the compressor kicking on.

I remember last time this happened and it was a O2 sensor...could this be related? Power is still there, no loss...