[Five-o]

Last week I had a heavy load and once when I accelerated hard the check engine light came on and flashed for a bit then stopped and has never been on since. Ideas??

 

[dizzyD]

Did the engine stumble when the CEL came on? If so, check your spark plug wires and make sure they're routed as far away from the headers as possible. On my way back from Yosimite towing my trailer a few months ago, I had the CEL flash on me and the engine stumbled. I popped the hood and saw the # 6 plug wire shorting across to the header. Rerouted it to get home and bought a new set of wires, it was time anyways.

Only my 2¢

 

[Five-o]

Come to think of it, I did heard it pinging when the light came on. I used High-test on the return trip and had no problems and, as I said, I was loaded down and had a car top carrier.

 

[tomk]

Based on something unrelated that I just happened to read, I "think" a flashing MIL means something is happening that has the potential to damage the cat. A misfire is one of the possibilities.

There should be a stored code if you can hook up an OBD2 reader.

 

[Neil]

The bottom line is, the only way to tell is to get the code. 99+ you can try cycling the key ON-OFF three times and leaving it in the ON postition the third time. Any codes should be shown in the odometer window. Or you can go to Autozone and they'll read it for free. OBDII code readers have also gotten pretty inexpensive.

 

[Five-o]

Sounds like a plan. I'm interested in what's been stored over the last 7 years :cheesy:

 

[Neil]

Codes are only stored for a limited number of starts (couple hundred?)

 

[red01r/t]

Yeah, a flashing CEL means cat damage, usually a misfire. I'd go get it scanned and see what pops up. I have a 96 VW GTI project car that had the CEL on and when we scanned it, it had 13 codes! Most were misfires on different cylinders. Good luck!
-Patrick