Big Beef City posted:

REAL TALK: go buy one of those car code readers, they're cheaper than you think they are these days. It will A.) Tell you whatever the problem is and B.) If it's something stupid, like it usually is, simply let you delete the error code that's making the light come on, essentially telling your car 'no it isn't, stfu'. especially if you know that what it tells you isn't true. This happened with my truck and I was like 'why are you complaining all the time' so I plugged it in and did just that, and then it never did it again.

You can get them from Amazon or AutoZone and they either come with their own, corded units or they even have little blu tooth models you can plug in and read from an app on your phone in real time - again, they're cheaper than you think.

e: they usually plug in inside the car, under the dash somewhere, it's not a massive hassle you don't have to be a super mechanic to work with them either, if that's something you'd stress over.

For my truck, the reason I got it was because my partially digital dash was constantly saying 'SERVICE ENGINE' all the drat time when the actual reason was because my model F-150 has a type of gas fill thing that actively and isn't supposed to have a gas cap to it, and filling it in the Wisconsin winter/spring change seasons as the weather flexed caused it to think there was some kind of vapor lock issue in the fuel system or some poo poo (there was not). It was cheaper to spend $$ or whatever getting this sensor and reading the error code and looking it up and then kicking my truck in the rear end for being stupid than paying a mechanic for diagnosing that.