Check Engine light: A brilliant idea?

My response would be to go to

Yow....those were loose bearings!!! I can imagine the conversation now:

She: Dear, what is that rattling and banging coming from under the hood.

He: Oh, nothing. I found some gasoline on sale and the motor is pinging a bit. It will settle down I'm sure.

It would be totally useless information to 99.9% of drivers. Most drivers would be more than a little irritated at arcane numbers and letters temporarily flashing on and off that obscured a feature they do use. Car makers have a balancing act to perform when designing driver-automobile interfaces because the cars are used by a lot of people with little or no technical background.

I have seen this happen more than once on an airplane engine. The thing about airplanes is that it's hard to pull over to the side of the road when it starts running rough. But basically it was a matter of a bearing seizing and spinning out, and then next thing you know the bearing race is being torn up... and all of a sudden there is a lot of scrap metal in the oil pan and there is no bearing there at all. This is sometimes accompanied by large amounts of oil spewing out of the engine cowling, which is always an exciting view for the passengers.

--scott

We can tell that you are not a mechanic with boat payments to make. ;-)

If the consumer doesn't have the wherewithal to repair the problem themselves, what good would knowing the problem be? Typically, the codes aren't broken down into 'go ahead and ignore for 6 months' and 'fix this one immediately' categories. It would be best to develop a relationship with a trustworthy mechanic who can assess the risk of letting one go for a while. They might even read the code and provide an estimate for free.

So they can call their trusted mechanic what the problem is. Then the mechanic can give an estimate of the scope of the problem, how soon it needs to be fixed, and how long it will take.

This seems a whole lot better than the consumer taking their car into the shop with no idea when they are going to get their car back or if interrupting their life at a bad time was really necessary.

======= ======= what Ken said..... in all caps.

and...... i'd like to submit his name as the new PR manager for the union.

~:~ marsh ~is off to Biloxi fer duh ATRA seminar~

Been there. Tried that. Response from the shop: "Those codes are not always right. Bring it and and pay the diagnostic fee and we'll tell you what's really wrong". (of course the code was right...)

So, what good does giving the codes to the owner do? If they call in with the diagnostic messages, the shop might still say, "We need to see the car". That's why you need a trustworthy mechanic.

Reading the codes only takes a minute or so. If a shop needs to do some additional checking (legitimately), of course they are going to charge more for their time. And they're not apt to give you a quote over the phone based on dashboard diagnostics. If they aren't trustworthy, how can you trust a price they give you over the phone.

I've taken cars in to good mechanics on several occasions and had codes read for free (before I bought my own reader) and had them put my car on an emission tester for a very reasonable price.