bdcardinal said:
no, but something did cause the light to come on. did you leave your gascap loose maybe? you can pick up a code scanner from any parts store for about $100 and pull the code yourself. pulling 1 code yourself will pay for itself the first time because a dealer will charge you about $85 to pull it.
bd that 85 dollars includes somebody that knows ( or should know ) what to do with the code. a lot of times you can have a code but that does not mean that part is bad. somthing else could be causing the code.
for example i had a friend of mine go to autozone and have the code pulled on his explorer because he did not want to drive all the way to my work. the code was a po401 egr insufficent flow detected. the autozone guy told him. see egr you need a egr valve. so my friend buys a egr valve. a few days later i hang out with him and see the valve on the seat and i ask him why he bought a egr valve. he tells me "well i did not want to drive 20 miles to your work, so i had the guy at autozone diag it for me". I ask him the code and he told me po401 and I told him how it's not the EGR valve it's the DPFE sensor and that it's a common problem in many fords. Now to make it even worse for him, the DPFE is covered under recall. so instead of saving money he wasted money. I put the DPFE in for him and no more light.
EEC diag does require skill. in fact some EEC problems are very complex and you need to go way deeper then codes to get the info needed to repair the car. the guy at autozone does not have the skill or the equipment to do EEC diag, he can only guess
when professionals diag your car we do not look at a code then sell you that part( unless it's very very common problem) we do tests that a code scanner does not have. and use test equipment that goes beyond codes and have years of knowledge to draw on when thinking a problem out.
tell me what autozone will do for you on a po171-174 lean bank 1,lean bank 2 code. no part to throw at that one. i have seen customers come in and ask for 02 sensors because autozone told them the lean codes mean the 02 are bad. 02 sensors are not the cause of 171-174 codes.
will autozone find the leaking intake gasket or broken vac line causing the above code. or the maf sensor thats slightly off and causing the car to lean out, but not go out of range and set a code.
i think us techs get a bad rap because of the non-professional hacks shops hire to save a few bucks. management thinks that scan tools tell all and no skill is needed, so why not hire glorified oil change monkees to diag problems.
