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I have a 2003 C5 convertible. The only things I've changed are swapping out the exhaust (cat-back only) and an aftermarket sort of cone-shaped air filter. I installed that at about 6K miles and this situation started at about 30K miles. 2 months ago I had the car in the dealer for some routine work and had them check the code. Surprise! It came back that the fuel mixture was rich and they blamed it on the air cleaner, non factory, so they charged me $30 for putting it on the machine and did nothing. Within a day or two, the light went out. It came back on, it went out - days at a time. It came on the other day, I took off the visually clean filter and lightly blew it clean with compressed air and disconnected the positive battery cable for 15 minutes. Drove for 10 miles, stopped, when I restarted, the light was off. A week later, it came back on. This time I disconnected the battery lead, took off the filter again, cleaned and re-oiled (as per K&N instructions and very lightly). Drove for 10 minutes, stopped, and next time the light was off. Then earlier today (1 day later), the light came back on.
I don't know how to check what code it is and if that matters. Should I just put the stock cleaner unit on and if it continues, take it back the the shop while under warranty? Should I pull the MAF and clean it somehow? (please provide directions on how to clean it, if that makes sense).
Any help would be appreciated. I don't really care about the aftermarket air cleaner as the cars a daily driver and I did it as much for looks as anything else.
Hold OPTIONS button in and press FUEL button 4 times
DIC will cycle through codes, write them down and I usually google each code to get to a site that will tell me what they mean. Don't include the C(Current) or H (history) when Googling.
I have a 2000 Vert with 28K on the clock. My engine light came on about 3 weeks ago. If you read your manual book it says that engine light on solid ( not blinking) may have to do with bad fuel or fuel cap not on correctly.
I remembered that I had bought fuel, only 5 gallons, at a station out of town. It was 93 but not my regular Shell station. I ran the fuel out, and when I fueled it up with the good stuff the light went out and hasn't been on since.
As to the fuel, I run just regular old regular gas 80% of the time. Have forever. The only time I run premium is if I'm going planning on driving hard. I just believe that the computer is smart enough not to let it knock like heck and damage anything. Did the same on my 740i without any problems. I did check the gas cap because I've done that before...
As they are history codes, reset them, but I assume they will come back. Try to remember what you were doing (hard acceleration, braking, cruising etc) when, and if, if comes back on.
thanks Mowton. I had this linked once before but lost it. Very good stuff!
For what its worth, I drove the car at cruising speed (in the country 50-70 mph) to and from a HS football game last night and the ligth stayed off. I'll be back when they come back on!
Well, it came back on again. The light was off for more than a week. I had driven the car intermittently that day. On my way to airport, after a mix of mostly 50-60 mph driving, once I got in a traffic jam, the check engine light care on. Checked the codes today and still show P0171 and P0174 - running lean (also had code B0516 that has something to do with the speedometer - I assume this is random and/or unrelated).
I've reset the codes but looking for advice of anything I should do other than just replace the aftermarket filter with the stock one. (If so, the trick will be finding the darn OEM stuff - I know I didn't throw it out!)