Honda Accord dash indicator...


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A friend of mine has a '97 Accord EX sedan. In the dash an indicator lights up and it says "Check" and I wanted to know what its for, its dead center in the area of the gages. Its not the "Maintenance Required" indicator.

Edited by Crackler
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The "check" light has the symbol of an engine surrounding it. This light activates when a problem with the emissions control system has been detected. It's nothing serious, but you should still have it checked out as you could waste gas and end up being in violation of state emissions control laws.

Just FYI though, the light can come due to false alarms generated by the OBD (On-Board Diagnostics) system. For example, if you don't tighten the gas cap properly. (Most new cars have a warning about this on the cap itself). Other times, it can come on if you fill up with really cheap gas from some no-name petroleum company on a regular basis. Deposits that form from crappy gas can set off the emission controller and cause it to think there's a problem when in fact it's just the internal engine is simply dirty and needs to be treated/cleaned/serviced.

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my mother's nissan sentra would show the check engine light when we hit a bump. without fail... something to do with a faulty speed sensor?

anyway, we got rid of it, and got a saturn l100 special edition... nice audio :) pretty quick too. beats my friends honda civic (he's put some work into it... nothing major, but...).

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The "check" light has the symbol of an engine surrounding it. This light activates when a problem with the emissions control system has been detected. It's nothing serious, but you should still have it checked out as you could waste gas and end up being in violation of state emissions control laws.

Just FYI though, the light can come due to false alarms generated by the OBD (On-Board Diagnostics) system. For example, if you don't tighten the gas cap properly. (Most new cars have a warning about this on the cap itself). Other times, it can come on if you fill up with really cheap gas from some no-name petroleum company on a regular basis. Deposits that form from crappy gas can set off the emission controller and cause it to think there's a problem when in fact it's just the internal engine is simply dirty and needs to be treated/cleaned/serviced.

I will be buying some fuel injector cleaner now. The check engine light comes on randomly everytime I drive my '91 Honda CRX SI and doesn't go off once it's come on until the car is turned off. I had heard that is was possibly a faulty O2 sensor but never knew exactly if that was the cause because everytime the mechanics try to do a computer diagnositic check the car's computer spits out nonsense codes so they can't even tell me what's wrong. Now that I know it's the emissions system I will be working to clean it up.

Could it come on because I took of the air flow restrictor? I might just stick it back on to keep the dag on little light from coming on. 2 years of seeing that yellow glow is killing me!

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my friend used to drive a minivan.

one day he serviced it and the check engine light was on, so he cut the wire to it. no more light!

one of my other friends chipped his car to give it 25 extra hp, and his light won't go off either.

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Could it come on because I took of the air flow restrictor? I might just stick it back on to keep the dag on little light from coming on. 2 years of seeing that yellow glow is killing me!

Very likely the case. In order for any engine to operate, there needs to be a specific fuel-to-air-mixture ratio. Removing the restrictor (It's actually called a constrictor) can affect this mixture and change the anticipated readings for the emissions system. As such, the system would detect a problem. In this case, it would not be a false alarm though, since you would actually be putting out more emissions than the system was designed to allow.

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Yeah, it makes sense now that I have read this thread. I don't live in California and my car has passed inspection every time I've taken it. Gotta love living on the East Coast. It isn't a false alarm but it's nothing the engine can't handle. If putting the constrictor back on keeps the light off without me having to sink money into buying a high performance chip, I'm all for it.

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