The Trouble With Trouble Codes

By Buster McNutt

It’s all about the evil Check Engine Light. It didn’t make it into the last Book of Revelations update, but I’m fairly certain it will be added to the Signs of End Times Top 10, along with no-fat salad dressing, brand new $100 blue jeans with holes already in them, Speedo swimsuits in retirement-home swimming pools, and of course, any Japanese karaoke renditions of “MacArthur Park.” And ear worms, too.

The vehicle in question is 13 years old. I bought it new (shock!) and until the recent month-of-the-eternal-check-engine-light, the only trouble it ever gave me was when the intermittent wiper relay shorted out, and the wipers kept going faster and faster until the wiper blades shot off the windshield and over the neighbor’s fence, where it grievously injured my neighbor’s prized pet ferret. He didn’t die, but he had only recently been retired from the Ferret Show Circuit and “put out to stud.” After the wiper blade impacted his, ah, grievous, he became decidedly less studly and chose instead to spend his time on the living room couch watching the animated “Mickey Mouse Club Show” on Hulu and trying to sing that “Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Hot Diggity Dog” song, which, if I am not mistaken, was on the flip side of the original Richard Harris “MacArthur Park” recording.

The first time the light came on, I pulled off the road, opened the hood, and well, I followed instructions and checked the engine! It was still there — check. The oil and coolant levels were good — check. All the plug wires were connected — check. The other wires, hoses, and potentially eatable automotive parts weren’t being attacked by mice, squirrels, frumious bandersnatches, wombats, or, even worse, zombie mutant flat worms (there was a recall on that one) — check, check, and double check! I started the engine back up, and the light is still on. So I drove it to the auto repair center, turned off the engine, asked the mechanic to take a look, started it back up, and, you guessed it — no check engine light! He said not to worry, it was probably a tank of bad gas, and then went on a five-minute rant about how “Obama’s ethanol gas” is responsible for just about everything that is wrong with this country, right up there with letting NFL players kneel during the anthem, girls being allowed to join Boy Scout troops, and even the 1,328 Church Streets in the United States that don’t have a single church on them. He gave me the internet site to confirm all this, a pledge envelope, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any stranger, he turned his back and walked away, and, ever so faintly, I can hear him singing, “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark, All the sweet green icing flowing down….”

So bad gas triggered the trouble light, but then it went out, so no worries, right? Ah, this “no worries” dude simply doesn’t live in my cosmic neighborhood. Lady M. took the car to go pick up the Tony Orlando and Dawn Christmas platters that were on sale at TJ Max. I’m at home nursing a cold one when she stormed through the door yelling, “How long has that check engine light been on, and why haven’t you done anything about it?” Apparently, the engine “Knocked Three Times” and when she put on the brakes, Tony and the Dawnetts platters crashed to the floorboard, and instead of a set of Christmas platters we now have a jigsaw puzzle, which to me would be a way better Christmas present, but then again women don’t think exactly the same way we do (not a recent insight on my part).

The light finally stayed on long enough for me to take it into the shop, where they asked if I’d ever changed my plugs and wires, and without thinking I told the truth, and they determined that was probably the problem. He pulled a plug and said, “See? It has oil on the spark plug gap,” which apparently with these newer high-tech engines is a bad thing, probably similar to having ketchup on your tater tot gap, or possibly Evel Knievel on your Grand Canyon gap.

So, I drove out a few hundred dollars lighter, but with no check engine light on, which seemed like an acceptable trade off until two days later, when I was still a few hundred dollars lighter, but once again had the check engine light on! I called the shop and they said it was probably just the “shock” to the engine of having new plugs and wires and to “give it a couple days” before bringing it back in — I did, and I did. Well, fortunately for me ace mechanic Jordon was back off vacation; I was told he was widely known in these parts as the “Check Engine Light Whisperer.” It took him a couple minutes, and he came back and said it was definitely some sort of evaporative canister relay switch, which was not particularly unusual “in this particular year of this model.” Naturally it was a dealer-only part, so it took a couple days, but then I was back on the road once again with no check engine light on. For a whole week this time!

I go back, they say to leave the vehicle for a “few days” and they will run it through “a full range” of tests, which I think is mechanic speak meaning for a week they used it to grocery shop, take their kids to school, make donut runs when the light was on, and so on. I didn’t care; I just wanted the light to go away in some solution that had nothing to do with duct tape over the light or perhaps a couple of “accidently-snipped wires.”

After a week they called and said they could find nothing wrong — it was running better than ever. I asked what trouble codes were coming up and there was a pause, before the shop owner said, “Well, there’s only one. And it is 666. You need an automotive exorcist.” And conveniently, they knew of one.

That’s where I drew the line. All I needed was the spectacle of this “auto exorcist” holding up a cross shaped air freshener, chanting over my vehicle and maybe even handling a few snakes or something … and then the headlights would spin around in their bezels, and the hood would fly open, the radiator cap would fly off and green pea soup would pour out. And the exorcist would start speaking in tongues, and I would record it, and then later play it backwards slowly, and this is what I’d hear: “Someone left the cake out in the rain ….”  •

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