Service Engine Light!!

eman · Post by **eman** » March 28th, 2006, 6:09 pm

My Service Engine Light has recently started coming on. It comes on after driving for about 10-30min . It comes on and stays on for about 2-10min at a time then goes out afterwhich i lose power or cannot accelrate(stalls) for a few seconds then the car goes back to driving ok. This happens in this cylcle untill i reach my destination. This first occured while i was driving around with a bad radiator which has since been replaced. the mechanic did a diag and the report was bad coolant sensors or some sensor monitoring the water temp & supposedly "controlling gas flow" (my temp gauge was also not working properly till the radiator and sensors were replaced). Now he has reccomended I take my car to a electrical specialst to re-daig for a possible short in eletrical system. Is this possible, an electrical short causing my service engine light to come on and cause dangerous stalling?

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » March 28th, 2006, 7:04 pm

what year and engine do you have?

it depends which sensor your mechanic replaced. there are 2 coolant sensors. one of them is for your temp. guage and the other is for your ECU. if your mechanic replaced the one for your guage, but not the one for the ECU then your car could still have problems like you are describing. if the sensor is faulty the ECU thinks that your car is still cold even though it is warmed up...so it keeps dumping in more fuel that is required which could eventually make your engine die from being run way too rich.

ask your mechanic if the sensor had 1 wire or 2 wires coming out of it. the 2 wire sensor is the one for the ECU.

if you do a search for temp sensor or something similar there are many threads that even have pictures of exactly where the sensors are located and what they look like.

eman · Post by **eman** » March 28th, 2006, 8:44 pm

1993 mx3 1.6

eman · Post by **eman** » March 28th, 2006, 8:46 pm

both sensors were replaced according to the mechanic