What to Do When Your Check Engine Light Comes On

Publisher's Note: Welcome to our seventh edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "What to Do When Your Check Engine Light Comes On".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "Tuesday Tech Tips" to see everything published to-date.

John Gardner: You're driving along and bam, up pops that check engine light. No worries, this AMSOIL Tech Tip will tell you how to deal with trouble codes and how to avoid them.

What do you do when a trouble code pops up? Well, let's go down and get you a little scanner. You can get pocket scanners you plug them into an onboard diagnostic connector right up under your dash, and up pops a trouble code. Well, that's a bunch of hieroglyphics. But what does all that mean?

Well, your first code's pretty simple. It's going to be a B, C, P, or U. B being Body, C being Chassis, P being Powertrain, and U as a Network code. The second code, that O, is either generic or once manufacturer-specific. Then we get into these trouble codes right here that indicate an actual system: fuel, air metering, ignition. This is important.

And then the fall when we can avoid those check engine lights with a little preventative maintenance. It's like going to the dentist. We get our teeth cleaned so we don't have cavities. How can you help us?

Len Groom: That's correct, and a lot of times, you can simply avoid that by doing some preventative maintenance in the form of some fuel additives. We've got a couple of different fuel additives that we're looking at: our Performance Improver or our Upper Cylinder Lube. Both are up to the task. They are designed to help keep everything clean and free from deposits to keep that from fooling the computer into thinking that there's something wrong because the fuel mixture has changed or we've got some deposits somewhere they shouldn't be.

John Gardner: And that's how cars work. I mean, it's all about that fuel injection system and actually the oxygen sensor. Injectors play an important part. We have to have the spray pattern in there. The oxygen sensor has to work. We don't want to crud that stuff up. I mean, what's the best way to do it? How do we use it?

Len Groom: Well, we've got options for you. If it's really bad, or you haven't done it in a while, we would recommend the Performance Improver. That's a very concentrated additive you hit that once every four thousand miles. Now, if you've done some additive use in the past, we would recommend our Upper Cylinder Lube. That's an every tank additive.

John Gardner: Now, I'm all about preventative maintenance.