Engine warning light.......any ideas ??

[a.twiddler]

Aah for the good old days when your car would just conk out without weeks of tedious or spurious warning lights. And when you opened the bonnet, instead of acres of anonymous plastic you could actually see to find what wire had come loose or what was hanging off and fix it to get you home with your Swiss Army Knife and a pair of pliers (or even the pliers on your Swiss Army Knife) and a large hammer and some hairy string. No wonder many drivers are technophobic when the response to practically everything that lights up on your dashboard is "refer to dealer" with a handsome fee for just looking. (Sigh) I'm just sooo old (wanders off mumbling into beard).

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Aah for the good old days when your car would just conk out without weeks of tedious or spurious warning lights. And when you opened the bonnet, instead of acres of anonymous plastic you could actually see to find what wire had come loose or what was hanging off and fix it to get you home with your Swiss Army Knife and a pair of pliers (or even the pliers on your Swiss Army Knife) and a large hammer and some hairy string. No wonder many drivers are technophobic when the response to practically everything that lights up on your dashboard is "refer to dealer" with a handsome fee for just looking. (Sigh) I'm just sooo old (wanders off mumbling into beard).

On the other hand those old cars broke down more often.

 

[Jody]

Aah for the good old days when your car would just conk out without weeks of tedious or spurious warning lights. And when you opened the bonnet, instead of acres of anonymous plastic you could actually see to find what wire had come loose or what was hanging off and fix it to get you home with your Swiss Army Knife and a pair of pliers (or even the pliers on your Swiss Army Knife) and a large hammer and some hairy string. No wonder many drivers are technophobic when the response to practically everything that lights up on your dashboard is "refer to dealer" with a handsome fee for just looking. (Sigh) I'm just sooo old (wanders off mumbling into beard).

What goes on under the plastic cover is still largely the same and they aren't as mysterious as people believe. The only difference is the car has the ability to self monitor and increase it's efficiency/output.

You wouldn't have got a production 1 litre petrol engine to 140+ BHP in standard guise (other than freaks like the Charade GTTi). A similar size engine would have given an output of around 30-50 BHP and be way less efficient.

Back in the day you would have needed technical expertise on how an engine worked. Now anybody can hook their car up with a £7 Bluetooth reader and their phone.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

The Charade was only 100bhp - but weighed about the same as a sliced loaf, of course 😊

 

[Jody]

The Charade was only 100bhp - but weighed about the same as a sliced loaf, of course 😊

Always thought they were a little more than 100bhp. They got to 140+ easy enough with a few mods but didn't last very long

 

[Alex321]

Aah for the good old days when your car would just conk out without weeks of tedious or spurious warning lights. And when you opened the bonnet, instead of acres of anonymous plastic you could actually see to find what wire had come loose or what was hanging off and fix it to get you home with your Swiss Army Knife and a pair of pliers (or even the pliers on your Swiss Army Knife) and a large hammer and some hairy string. No wonder many drivers are technophobic when the response to practically everything that lights up on your dashboard is "refer to dealer" with a handsome fee for just looking. (Sigh) I'm just sooo old (wanders off mumbling into beard).

Almost all garages now have the appropriate reader that they can plug in to get the failure codes, and access to a list of what the codes actually mean.

They aren't expensive to get yourself.

Yeah, the handbook says "refer to dealer", but it is illegal now to not make those codes generally accessible to other garages.

On the other hand those old cars broke down more often.

They certainly did.

 

[Mike_P]

I had a Seat Ibiza which on its way for a service and MOT had virtually every warning light come on. It passed the MOT after the garage reset it to fresh out of the factory. Never happened again. Another time I found the garage staff pulling their hair out; they had lost a dealership, who had taken all their equipment back, and had one of that makers cars in. None of their general / other makes readers could identify what was wrong with it.

 

[gbb]

Having had a 15 plate petrol Astra, coil packs are known to fail but usually around 50k, mine went right on the button, but you'd know it, juddery acceleration, lumpy engine
I brought a cheap Chinese plug in code reader off the Internet ,less that £20 (it might have been not much more than £13) just for reading codes it was perfect.

Trouble is, once you know the code, there may be several causes for it anyway.