Check your Engine

My car's "check engine" light recently came on. Now in the "old days" the check engine light coming on was bad news, but in today's cars it can mean anything from your gas cap is loose to something very serious. The question is how to tell how serious the issue is and how soon you need to address the problem.

The good news is that cars today (as they have since the early 1990's) have an interface that you can connect a diagnostic tool to and get the specific code that turned on the "check engine" light (or have your local mechanic run this test).

The bad news is that the interface is not something most computer folks are used to dealing with as special equipment is needed to work with the OBD-II (on-board diagnostics) port in today's car. It should be noted that the OBD-II port is similar to the old RS-232 interfaces that PCs used to have (If your local mechanic performs the test you can expect to pay $60-$90 for the test).

For those who want to do the test themselves, devices such as the Black & Decker (AD925), yes the same folks who make power tools, will do the trick. This device connects to you car's OBD-II port and captures the code(s) that are turning on the "check engine" light.

You then disconnect the AD925 from your car and connect it to your computer via the AD925's USB port. It then connects you to the SmartScan home page where you can get more details about the codes and what you can do to correct the issue.

It also gives you the option of erasing the code from your car to turn off the "check engine" light. Of course this assumes you have corrected the fault and not just turned off the light.

Now if this interface was being defined today (vs. the 1980's), it would have been a pure USB interface (or better yet wireless interface) that would send the codes to your messaging interface of choice (email, text, IM, etc). The Ford / Microsoft Sync product's Vehicle Health Report offers the best current implementation (sample report), but this is more proprietary vs. being an open standard and doesn't provide all of the details available via the OBD-II port.

Now I don't expect most people to go out and buy something like the AD925 but as cars become more and more a technology platform vs. just a mechanical platform, it is important that car designers follow the current technology standards and stay away from things that exist in automobiles only.

As it turns out my check engine light was caused by something in the middle of the severity spectrum, that being a malfunctioning crankcase breather valve. The value has been replaced, the check engine light is off and my car and I are breathing better.