Engine management light, what are the potential causes??

[Evil.soup]

Hi all,
The wife came home tonight and the engine management light has come on on her 56 VW Polo 1.2. The book says the light is an exhaust problem indicator. I take this to mean that a sensor has picked up an issue with CO2 levels etc but i am unsure what potentially could be the cause's of this.
My initial thinking from past experience would be a possible sensor fault or maybe one of the coil packs is on its way out causeing poor ignition. The car drives without obvious issue at the moment so i am not too concerned, just curious as to what the potential issues could be and if it could be something serious??

thanks,Ian

[pk500]

a quite comman fault is the brake light switch faulty the lights still work but theres 2 parts to the switch this causes engine light to come on, best get it plugged in a local garage should be able to help dont have to get ripped off at vw

[stevieturbo]

Really, there could be a hundred possible faults that could bring the light on. The only way is to have it hooked up to a diagnostic computer to see why the light is on.

Could be something very minor, or not

[mnkiboy]

pk500 said:

a quite comman fault is the brake light switch faulty the lights still work but theres 2 parts to the switch this causes engine light to come on, best get it plugged in a local garage should be able to help dont have to get ripped off at vw

That would bring the EPC light on, rather than the EML.

If the car is driving fine, I would carry on using it as normal. Usually if the fault doesn't repeat the light will go out.
If it's still on in a week or so, then get it hooked up to a diagnostic machine.

[Evil.soup]

Driven the 11 miles to work this morning and the car is running without issue and showing no hesitation etc so i would imagine its a minor issue. I will get it into my mates garage later today and let you know the outcome.
Cheers for the advice by the way!