Danger, Will Robinson

Dashboard warning lights. They're there to help. But hell, if one of my vehicles didn't have the check engine light on it wouldn't feel right.

Oil lights are another thing entirely. Mine came on my new old van this morning. I turned off the car to check the oil level. It was full and clean.

I turned the new old van back on. No oil pressure light. I've driven several miles now and everything appears fine.

I call that problem solved, and am going about my day.

Ding Dong Ding

I went down to Electric Eel in Springfield, Ohio yesterday (Electric Eel: for all your drain and sewer cleaning needs!) to pick up a load of snake cables and parts. There was one barrel more than the back of my new old van would hold. But it was relatively light, 100 pounds or so, about what a smaller person would weight. I was able to muscle it up into the passenger seat and go about my business. Who says Marty can't adapt to circumstance, huh?

Once I was out on the street, the bell which signals that your seat belt isn't fastened began ringing. I checked my belt and it seemed secure. The bell kept dinging. I tried unbuckling and rebuckling. The bell continued to chime.

Pulling over, I shut off the car and restarted it. It works for computers, right? Making certain to belt myself in, I started off again. So did the warning bell. Oh well, I thought, I guess I just have to deal with it.

A few miles of constant dinging later, and it was glaringly obvious that that wouldn't do. There was no way I could listen to that stupid dinging all 195 miles back to Detroit. The sound didn't even fit a decent song beat which might have made a hummable distraction. I had to do something. But what? If the alarm bell was somehow broken, what could I do?

Then it occurred to me. I was indeed buckled properly. But the barrel of cable next to me wasn't, and its weight was telling the van's sensors that someone was sitting in the passenger seat. I pulled into the nearest parking lot, buckled the cables in, and Bob's yer uncle, the dinging stopped.

So I drove on home with no dinging, the cables secure at my side. At Cosgriff Sales, we care about the products we sell!

Oh, and we care about the customers too.

Battery Light

The battery light, the warning light on a car dashboard that look like a small rectangle with a positive and a negative sign within it, came on yesterday just as I was leaving Indianapolis. So what did I do?

I drove home with it on. I thought, well, the new old van is running well, and if I turn it off, what? Will it restart? Obviously I had no way of knowing. But my choice seemed to be to find a mechanic in Indy, a very random random process, or see if I could get back to the D to take it to my long time car guy. I elected the latter, and got all the way home just fine.

In fact, the first time I shut it off, the engine restarted readily and and easily. A couple hours later when I tried firing up the old van once more, it again started with no trouble.

Do I take it to my mechanic anyway, or was this just a fluke?

Car warning lights

I fully admit that I tend to ignore the idiot lights on my dashboard. Check engine? Why? It's running fine but a mechanic will surely find something wrong which be a harbinger of an impending nuclear explosion in your engine if you don't get it fixed now! Oil pressure light on? Check the oil; if it's okay  and again, the car is running fine, ignore the warning. The dashboard warnings are there at best as clues to the vague chance that something is wrong, not omens of dire consequences.

Yet I must concede that I was, well, not exactly taken aback this morning as intrigued. My eyes saw the warning, and I'm sure my head went to side to side as a dog's might when contemplating an unknown. Where my odometer, mileage reading, should have been was instead the word gascap.

My first thought was that I have one of those, yes. It fits over the end of the gas tank tube. But still, when I got to the Shop I checked it. It was secured tightly.

The warning came back on when I restarted the car awhile later. Hell, I thought. Another thing I gotta learn to ignore. About the worst thing is I won't know when to get my oil changed now.

Idiot lights

All cars have warning lights, which come on on your dashboard when the vehicle wants you to fear something's dramatically and horribly wrong, causing you to rush to a mechanic who is all to happy to take piles of your cash simply to turn the light off. They were once called idiot lights, but I suppose the PC culture has caught up even to that and has given them a more kind, humane name.

Whatever. I ignore the pesky things. I have yet to have a car which hasn't had the check engine light on the whole time I've driven it. So long as it starts and gets me where I'm going, it's not important. My engine will tell me when something's truly wrong. Like it won't start, for example.

My seat belt light stays on. I don't know why, because I always have my seat belt properly across my lap and shoulder. Yes, I really do. So I pay no heed to that.

The ABS light has been on on my van for, I don't know, months now. But the old Chevy Venture stops readily and easily, so I don't care. There's a door ajar light always glowing at me. But again, the doors are secure, so so what?

I did have a scare yesterday though, when a light I never noticed caught my attention. For whatever reason, I hadn't seen it before: a bright orange light which highlighted the capital letter D. I admit, I panicked. What in the world could that one mean?

It means you're in drive, you maroon, my mind quickly told me.

Yeah, idiot lights. Sometimes they do let you know who the idiot is.

The polar opposite

As I related yesterday, I took my van to my mechanic. He tuned it up and it's running great. Yet there's still something wrong.
Driving home, I couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't quite right. It drove smoothly and accelerated well. It did better than it's done in a long time in fact. I couldn't quite put my finger on the problem though.
That's when I noticed this blank spot on the dashboard. That blank spot didn't look right at all. I wondered what it could be. I began to worry about what it could be.
Then I realized that my service engine soon light was not on. My mechanic had tuned up the van, and that apparently caused the warning light to stay off. So today, right after stating that I did not worry about idiot lights begin on, I'm concerned about the fact that one particular idiot light, one that I'm very used to being on, is off.
It'll be weeks now before I'm really comfortable driving the thing. Maybe I should have left well enough alone.

It's just a car

I took my van to the mechanic today. It's been running rough when accelerating, although when I get to speed it holds the speed well.

I tend not to fret about my cars. If they start and get me from point A to point B, I'm happy. To give you an idea of how little I watch my cars, I never, ever worry about the 'check engine' or 'service engine soon' lights being on. All they mean are that the mix of air and gas isn't spot on or that the engine is somehow not running ideally. I say the hell with that. Live with it; all those sensors cars have these days simply detect too many things too delicately. Check oil lights and heat gauges are the ones to watch. If you're car's running too hot or has low oil pressure, those are the real danger signs. If it's making noises it obviously shouldn't make, then be concerned. And of course, check fluids regularly. Otherwise, no worries.

Anyway, the old girl's been running rough enough that I figured it should be checked this time around. "Does the check engine light come on?" my long time and no doubt long suffering mechanic asked.

"It's always on, Sam. You should know that, " I answered.

He snickered, "Right. Well, does the light flash when you accelerate hard?"

"That it does. Then it stops flashing when I reach speed."

Sam responded, "It probably just needs a tune up. I'll put the tester on it and let you know."

Boom. No worries, no big deal. Don't worry so much about your cars, folks. I would have kept driving it if I'd known that was all there was to it.