So - lemme start out by saying that I really like the service I get up at Evergreen. I would go there all the time if I didn't live 50 miles from 'em. That said, I have had some CEL appearances in the first 5k miles.
Backstory:
CEL came on after ~400 miles. Misfire detected. CEL light cleared at Autozone. Rinse, repeat three times. I take car into a REAL shop, they end up replacing the coil and plug on cylinder 1 after swapping the coil with cylinder 2 to make sure it's the one causing the bad juju. Because the coil was bad, the plug was fouled...etc. Problem solved...for three weeks.
CEL came on again last Tuesday. I said "eff this", and made an appointment at MMM to have them look at it. I told them about the work that had been done, and that CELs had been triggered for cylinder 1 AND cylinder 3 during my brief relationship with the car. They brought it in, and plugged it into a laptop for "thirteen to fifteen minutes" and recorded a total of four misfires - one per cylinder. They said that over the 22,500 (15 minutes at 1500 RPM) firings, four misfires wasn't abnormal. I then asked them how many misfires would it take to trigger a CEL, and they didn't know.
They asked about the gas in the vehicle. Here's where my obsessive/compulsive drive kicks in: I ONLY GET GAS AT ONE STATION. One. It's the only station in the Portland area (that I've found, anyway) that sells 93 octane fuel. It's the Sunoco station - Scrubadub Car Wash at Woodford's corner. Every time. No exceptions.
Input appreciated here:
They said I have bad gas (my wife would agree, but only after dairy). Their theory was that the gas the station has doesn't "turn over" fast enough to prevent the fuel from degrading by the time I pump it into my car. They think that the gas that starts life as 93 is degrading down to an 89 or an 87 just because the station isn't selling it fast enough. By their own admission, they didn't have an octane testing kit to confirm their theory. Their advice? Put two tanks' worth of 91 octane from a high-traffic gas station and see what happens.
I left MMM with no CEL on. I drove to/from Bangor with no CEL on. The next time I got gas (Saturday night), I went to the Mobil station down on Commercial Street by Becky's, and filled 'er up ('cept for the 3/4 gallon left in the tank) with 91. Started the car, got a CEL IMMEDIATELY.
If you read this far, you've got a better attention span than I do on most days. Any thoughts?
Backstory:
CEL came on after ~400 miles. Misfire detected. CEL light cleared at Autozone. Rinse, repeat three times. I take car into a REAL shop, they end up replacing the coil and plug on cylinder 1 after swapping the coil with cylinder 2 to make sure it's the one causing the bad juju. Because the coil was bad, the plug was fouled...etc. Problem solved...for three weeks.
CEL came on again last Tuesday. I said "eff this", and made an appointment at MMM to have them look at it. I told them about the work that had been done, and that CELs had been triggered for cylinder 1 AND cylinder 3 during my brief relationship with the car. They brought it in, and plugged it into a laptop for "thirteen to fifteen minutes" and recorded a total of four misfires - one per cylinder. They said that over the 22,500 (15 minutes at 1500 RPM) firings, four misfires wasn't abnormal. I then asked them how many misfires would it take to trigger a CEL, and they didn't know.
They asked about the gas in the vehicle. Here's where my obsessive/compulsive drive kicks in: I ONLY GET GAS AT ONE STATION. One. It's the only station in the Portland area (that I've found, anyway) that sells 93 octane fuel. It's the Sunoco station - Scrubadub Car Wash at Woodford's corner. Every time. No exceptions.
Input appreciated here:
They said I have bad gas (my wife would agree, but only after dairy). Their theory was that the gas the station has doesn't "turn over" fast enough to prevent the fuel from degrading by the time I pump it into my car. They think that the gas that starts life as 93 is degrading down to an 89 or an 87 just because the station isn't selling it fast enough. By their own admission, they didn't have an octane testing kit to confirm their theory. Their advice? Put two tanks' worth of 91 octane from a high-traffic gas station and see what happens.
I left MMM with no CEL on. I drove to/from Bangor with no CEL on. The next time I got gas (Saturday night), I went to the Mobil station down on Commercial Street by Becky's, and filled 'er up ('cept for the 3/4 gallon left in the tank) with 91. Started the car, got a CEL IMMEDIATELY.
If you read this far, you've got a better attention span than I do on most days. Any thoughts?
