Looks like I wasn’t the only one who had to spend time at a car dealership today. Once I got here to Bitter’s, I noticed my car didn’t want to turn at the intersection, which is when I noticed it had stalled. Its idling rough, and at very low RPM. Check engine light is on. I’m figuring an O2 sensor on the engine is acting up and the computer is running the engine too rich. The dealership I took it to hasn’t read the code off the engine yet. We shall see when they call me. Unlike Ahab, I didn’t bring a copy of American Rifleman, but the Honda dealership is right down the road from NRA headquarters.
UPDATE: Turns out the code indicates the computer wasn’t reading anything from the throttle body. When the dealer tested the throttle body itself, it was fine. They couldn’t get it to produce the code again. I’m going to take it home. If it happens again I’ll get the throttle body replaced. Hopefully it was a bump in the night type thing.
Whatever you do, don’t go in the NRA Museum. You won’t get out in under four hours!
We’ve been there a few times, Turk.
Just FYI – if the car is OBD XX, you can still use a paper clip to read the trouble code instead of paying $100 for the dealership to hook it to their code reader.
American Rifleman and First Freedom are both available in the lobby of the Ford Dealership here — amazingly, they’re also in the lobby, along with Guns and Ammo, of the local medical center.
Sebastian, just so you know the o2 sensor will not cause a rough running
or poor idle condition (I work in the automotive industry). I also would not recommend the old paper clip trick to check the stored trouble codes. That may have worked on first generation On Board Diagnostics but not with cars made after ’96. Let someone who has the proper equipment deal with the problem. Sounds like you may have a new TPS (throttle position sensor) in your future.
I do indeed. The computer threw another error for the TPS last night.