revchris

Last week wednesday the Check Engine light on the truck came on. I took it in Thursday to get it looked at (I wanted to make sure it wasn't a serious problem before I hauled the camper to Hayward on Friday).

Dave at Don the Muffler Man looked at it, and called me up to say that it was an emissions code saying that the idle air control motor might be bad. Since there're a lot of things that can cause that kind of error, they reset it, told me that it wan't critical (being an emissions thing, if it goes, the truck doesn't run as well, but it'll keep on running), and told me to bring it back if it comes back on.

Friday, most of the way to Hayward, the Check Engine light came on again. We ignored it, spent a long weekend at my inlaws, and Wednesday came back. Yesterday, I took it in again to DtMM, and they called me up and said that it was a Cam Sensor error, which could mean that the timing chain is stretched a little, but since I was towing a 2000-lb camper with a Ford Ranger, and everything ran fine, they were going to purge the error, reset the system, and hope it didn't happen again (since a new timing chain is a $1k job).

Last night, after picking up a case of peaches from

teeka, the Check Engine light came on (are we starting to sense a pattern here?). This morning I took it in again, and as soon as I walked in to DtMM, they said, "Wait right there, I'll get your mechanic."

Dave said he was going to check the error, and if it was the cam error, he was going to replace the sensor so that if it happened again, we'd be sure what was going on.

They called me about an hour ago to say that the new sensor would be about $150, unless the sensor mount had broken up (which Dave said he'd seen - in the newer distributorless ignition systems, the cam sensor goes where the distributor used to be, and sometimes that part fails too, in which case it'd cost more, and I might not get the truck back today).

All is well, since they just called to say the truck was done, so now I'll drive it around a lot, and hope the error doesn't happen again.