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Check Your Engine For Leaks
An engine leak in your car can be a real headache. It can also lead to large damage expenses if it is not correctly taken care of. It’s incredibly important to look over your vehicle for engine leaks on a regular basis. If you were to overlook something, it would not take long for it to lead to a serious problem. You do not have to be highly skilled with cars to do this. It is just a matter of paying attention to the right details. Checking for leaks should be a regularly scheduled part of your general maintenance routine along with oil changes and tune ups.
Some leaks could become a permanent problem if they are left too long. Nobody can afford that kind of damage, especially when all it takes to prevent it is some observation with a keen eye. If your car is leaking oil and you do not know, the engine could seize and that means getting a new engine. That is pretty much the same thing as getting a whole new car. Consider this when you neglect to check for leaks. Older cars do not have warning lights for every little thing and some new ones do not either.
Is the Check Engine Light Serious?
To best understand whether or not this is a serious problem we need to look at why the computer control system is turning on the check engine light or the service engine soon light. Most late model vehicles have several computers that control all of the functions of your vehicle. There are BCM’s (Body Control Modules), BSCM’s (Brake System Control Modules), ECM’s (Engine Control Modules), GEM’s (General Electronic Modules), PCM’s (Power Control Modules), TCM’s (Transmission Control Modules) to name a few. These modules are monitoring sensors and controlling solenoids and switches all over your vehicle, to make our (air conditioned phone booths) vehicles run efficiently. All of these computers are constantly sharing information with each other to fine tune the operation of all of the systems in the vehicle.
Whenever any of the computers see a value coming from any of those sensors it is monitoring that is out of the range it is expecting to see or it gets some information from one of the other computers that tell it the other computer has seen a value that is out of range. It will set a code in the computer and continue to monitor that sensor or other computer. If it sees that the sensor or other computer doesn’t coming back into specifications it will turn on the check engine light or service engine soon light.