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With all that I talk about my beetle, one might think that's my only car. We also own a Ford Escort, which is what I drive when the Beetle is being worked on (like now).
I had some work done on the Escort recently, and on the next big drive, instead of seeing this on the temperature gauge,
I had this:
; oh, and the "check engine" light came on.
One thing about these newfangled cars (starting in the 1980s and anything after 1996) is that they have a computer that controls the running of the engine. The computer has inputs from sensors that tell it temperature, pressure, and flow and it sets the output of, say, the fuel injectors appropriately. If the computer detects something that happens outside of its parameters, it logs the error and turns on the "check engine" light. Mechanics have widgets that can read the error codes and that will help them figure out what's wrong with the engine, if there is something.
I decided that in case the error conditions were something that could be read out, I wanted to have a code reader, so I picked up the cheapest one that O'Reilly's had:
It was about $70, which isn't too bad for a tool that I'll use a lot.
It has a keyed multi-pin connector that connects to the diagnostic plug on the car.
The diagnostic plug is typically in front of the driver's knees at the bottom of the instrument panel. Here's where the plug is in the Escort:
The reader is powered by the car's battery. When it's plugged in, it reads codes out of the computer's memory automatically.
