Pain in the neck engine light !!

[pauleo9]

Hello there!

I've got a 2002 Vectra 1.8 LS (not the new shape), which is the only car I can fit in at the moment because of my height! I've put it in for the usual MOT's and services over the last couple of years, from which I have got it back and no problems reported.

Yet over the last year, both the engine light and service light continue to light up my dash like blackpool lights!!

At first, the service light would come on about 1mile after the start of any journey (as soon as the car stopped and then started again, it would do the same. So temporarly this would 'clear' the light) Then it would come on and stay on from start to end of any journey. After a while, the engine light came on, as well as the service light. Now the service light doesn't bother to come on and the engine light is permenently on.

While these warning lights have been on the car has run fine until a few months ago when it would start up and then loose power after a few yards, to the point were I could have my foot down and the car would just roll while the revs are up. Once it did this it would run fine and wouldn't do it again unless it sat for a while or over night.

I've had numerous suggestions that it could be the egr valve, but this has been removed by a previous owner and a blanking plate put on. All the garages it has been to have said they can't see anything wrong and can't replicate the issue (which is rubbish cos it does it to me every day on the way to work, in the exact same spot on the journey!!). The garages have also said that they do not have the information for the code that comes back during the diagnostics.

Any help, absolutely anything, would be very much appreciated!! Cos this is starting to get very, very annoying.

Thanks

[rsv gone!]

If the car is OBD2 compliant you can plug a code reader into it to get the exact fault code

[morgrp]

^^^ What he said - get the code read to find out whats wrong with the car

[cobra kid]

I have the same car....same year. My lights have been coming on for nearly 3 years now with no effect on the drive or economy.

A Vauxhall dealer said a non-specific fault code based around the throttle body/ECU.

I aint touching it til it starts flashing.

[TheEnd]

OBD2 was introduced in 1996, but it was Euro law until 2001 for petrol cars, and 2004 for diesels.

Yours should be fine, and if you have a laptop, a simple OBD2 reader is pretty handy, it'll read codes from any compliant car, they can log data, do dyno simulations, show you live data from the car, and all for 15 quid from China.

Get anything that says ELM 327 and the car will tell you what the problem is for half the price of a main dealer diag.

They won't do body modules, like windows etc, or ABS problems, but it'll do engine codes.

[Don]

...as above...but..

...betcha, betcha it's a lambda sensor...

I ended up replacing the whole exhaust on my 51 plate Vectra.

All that before it finally snapped the cambelt and that was the end of that...

[Grey Ghost]

[quote=Don...betcha, betcha it's a lambda sensor...
[/quote]

Or could it be a MAF issue?

Sounds like the car has an intermittent problem that is getting worse and also causing it to go into "limp home" mode on occassion.