Check Engine Light By Brenda Williams At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The check engine light is a component of your vehicles OBD or onboard diagnostics system and plays a crucial part in keeping your car in good working condition.

In the last 30 years or so, computers have been used to both control and take care of your vehicle. They watch the RPM of the vehicle the ignition timing, valve timing, fuel mixture, and more recently a computer can even control how your car shifts gears. With a computer hooked up to all of the systems it works in your benefit because it makes it easy for your car to keep a close eye on how each of these systems is working. When a problem occurs, whether the engine is misfiring or you stall out, the check engine light turns on to warn you before you drive the vehicle to much more and risk damaging it. The light is usually a picture of the vehicle or of an engine with the words check engine, check, or check power train, and it is usually difficult to miss. It may seem kind of odd to rely on a basic light to warn you of problems with the vehicle, and that 1 light for all problems could lead to more trouble down the road.

However, The on board computer stores a code each time a problem occurs that can be read by other computers that you can hook up to the engine. They have these computers at most service facilities, and small mechanic shops where you would take your car to get something as simple as an oil change. If you are so inclined, you can even purchase one of the inexpensive readers yourself fairly easily. In the late nineties these OBD systems made their most drastic change, they became required by law to be both installed in almost all vehicles and more comprehensive and capable in their abilities. They implemented far more tests that now focus more on the emissions of the vehicle, and even going so far as to continually sample the exhaust of the vehicle looking for all of the dangerous chemicals that it could be producing but isn’t suppose to produce. Now people are proposing a new change in the system, one that would advance it so far as to send the code to a facility where if the vehicle isn’t fixed in enough time they may even contact the driver to press the issue, and possibly involve law enforcement.

Though a bit radical it would give drivers more time and save them the expense of having to go and get the emission testing done at a local facility. The first place people can see remote diagnostics is coming in GM vehicles with the OnStar system that allows drivers to notify a technician from OnStar who can do the diagnostics for them, however, this testing still requires some driver involvement whereas proponents of the remote diagnostics systems hope to bi pass all driver participation and keep the cars regulated by a “parent” facility.

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