service engine soon

help i am a new member. i recently purchase a 2001 camaro ss, today the "service engine soon" light turned on and i dont have the owners manual and i dont know what that means can you give me some clues on what is the problem.

89IROC&RS, that's your que brother...

drive to your local Auto Zone or Advance Auto Parts, and they will scan it for free to see what the code is. Then you can let us know what the problem is, and we can tell ya what ya gotta do to fix it... :)

A-men brother. Autozone should let you know what the problem is too.

check engine light always comes on for mine. To get rid of it, hold the trip meter button thingy in for about 10-15 seconds.

Well that's a quick fix, but you still have the problem of why it's coming on in the first place.

lol, the osterich syndrom, ignore it, it will go away:) or bite ya in the butt ;) but yeah, get the codes scanned, thats the first rule. also i would reccomend not driving it till you find out what the problem is, well, not counting to go get the codes scaned and all. then yeah come on back and let us know what the codes were and well do our best to put ya in the right direction.

Ya know, I knew a guy once that traded his car in cuz his check engine light came on. How dumb is that??

maybe it could be a minor problem with an o2 sensor.

but it's still a problem and will still effect performance not to mention gas milage. All those sensors effect how effeciant your car runs. The check engine isn't just to tell you that your motor's gonna blow up, it's to help you keep your car running the way it should.

I'll bet 10 bucks that it's just the gas cap. Pull it off, replace it and make it click 3 or more times. Start your car up and let it run for a while. It should go off.

I believe that light will only come off for an emissions problem, and judging that it's relatively new, it's probably nothing big. Try the gas cap, if that doesn't work, go get the error code from autozone or somewhere.

I really don't think that's good advise stingray. It's not only emissions problems. It's also engine controll problems. If you go get a new gas cap you can just have it checked then.. but I highly doubt that it's a gas cap.

I didn't say get a new one.. I said just tighten the existing gas cap. This happened to me. I was driving after filling up with gas... and my service engine soon light came on just before I got home. I took it in to get it checked out, and they said it was just my gas cap. It's a pretty cheap thing to rule out I'd say. But, if you can't afford a couple twists on a gas cap to possibly figure it out, then go ahead and take it in to let someone else find out. Be warned though, dealers charge 98 bucks to run the diagnostic.

yeah you both are right, it will go off for both, emissions and motor problems, so stingray was wrong on that, but it was still good advice, a loos gas cap sets an evap code cuz there is not seal to the fuel system. which the engine tests at every startup. so tightening a gas cap, which takes two seconds is worth a shot. but i also have to point out that be it an O2 sensor, or a gas cap, or a motor giving way, he needs to run the codes first to go in the right direction, untill we see what the code is, its all conjecture. and pretty useless.

Ahh ok, sorry I mistook what you said stingray. You said replace so I thought you meant get a new one.

I'll bet 10 bucks that it's just the gas cap. Pull it off, replace it and make it click 3 or more times. Start your car up and let it run for a while. It should go off.

I believe that light will only come off for an emissions problem, and judging that it's relatively new, it's probably nothing big. Try the gas cap, if that doesn't work, go get the error code from autozone or somewhere.

I had the same problem on my 2001 and it had a bad CAT with only 13K.
Take it to a shop or buy AutoTap to check the code.

BowlingSS:lol2: