Advice on "Check Engine" light, '95 Honda Accord

Need some quick advice.

My wife drives a 95 Honda Accord. In January the Check Engine light
came on and we took it to our reliable mechanic (has been servicing the
car since new). It proved to be a false alarm and said everything is
fine. He said older cars like this do funny things like that.

Now today (May) it happened again. My (crazy) wife told me about it
after it was dark out, but I checked the oil, coolant, battery lug posts
(they loosen frequently). I also looked around for any coolant or oil
leaks. I found nothing. Oil and coolant were fine.

It is idling fine and the fans kicked in as normal. It is not running
hot nor making any strange noises.

Background info:

The oil and coolant get serviced EVERY 4 months since new and I am the
original owner. The car has never been wrecked or abused. It gets a
tune-up once a year or whenever my (crazy) wife says she heard the car
"make a strange noise".

Question:
Should I panic and run this car over to the mechanic first thing in the
morning?

or

Should I take it to the mechanic for its quarterly oil change some time
in the near future (next week).

Remember, normally I would take this in right away, but we already had
the "Check Engine" panic in January and everything was OK.


Is there anything else I might check that would cause an Check Engine
idiot light to come on?

Regars,
Malomarski

 

under the dash on the passenger side of the car (under the glovebox) is a
blue 2 wire connector that doesnt plug in anywhere. use a jupmer wire to
bridge these terminals and the check engine light will flash diagnostic
trouble codes. it will flash each code 3 times the first code "12" is
normal and means that the engine is not running (key should be on but engine
stopped) it will flash 12 like this...
one long flash and then 2 short. for another example a 9 would be nine long
flashes, or a 21 would be two long flashes and one short. once you have
written down the codes you can contact a local honda dealer to determine
what the codes mean. If this is something you do not want to do yourself I
would recommend taking the car to a Honda dealership instead of your local
mechanic, they are much better equipped to deal with a check engine light.
Good luck,
George Pennington

 

Thanks for the info.

 

You can look the codes up on line. Just do a google search. Dealers are
usually reluctant to give out information if you aren't taking the car to
them to fix.

 

not always true, i'm more than happy to hrlp someone on the phone if theyre
trying to fix it themselves. I take a couple calls a day on these.

 

Have you filled up with gas lately? Either way before I did alot of work on
this I'd check the gas cap and make sure it is on tight.

 

Are you serious about the gas cap? The gas cap was lost around January
and I found a replacement for it at that time!

I had no idea the gas cap had a sensor that would give you a check
engine light...

I'll have to wait until the wife gets home with the car to check it out.

By the way, are these Japanese car gas caps "one size fits all" or are
there different ones for different makes?

Thanks all.

 

If the car was newer the gas cap could do it that started in 1996 when the
cars became OBDII compliant.

 

It wasn't the gas cap. Oh well...