Check Engine Light

These are the top 10 car companies least likely to have vehicles that flash a check engine light.

The camshaft position sensor gathers information about the vehicle's camshaft speed and sends it to the vehicle's engine control module (ECM).

This year's CarMD repair cost survey puts Washington D.C. at the top of the list for the most expensive repairs in the country. On the opposite end, in just a few years, Wyoming has gone from the nation's most costly to the cheapest.

CarMD has released its third annual Vehicle Health Index, which for the 2013 tracked the frequency and cost of repairs for "check engine" problems of 119-million vehicles built between the 2003 and 2013 model years. For the first two years of the index, Toyota ranked at the top of the list, but this year's results see Hyundai moved to number one, pushin

Has it seemed like the cost to keep your older car on the road has gone up? Well, we have good news (you're not going crazy) and bad news (repair costs are indeed going up all across the country). According to an annual study by CarMD, average repair costs have increased by 10 percent in 2012, with drivers in New Jersey paying the highest prices and those in Vermont paying the lowest.

Sorry, Wyoming residents, that Check Engine Light is probably going to cost you more to fix than the rest of the country. CarMD has published its newest report ranking average state-by-state repair costs to correct check engine lights, and Wyoming leads the nation. The info was collected from about 163,000 repairs made by ASE-certified technicians who report to CarMD, and in 2011, labor costs were down while parts costs were up, and people still ignore "idiot ligh

It glows on your car's dashboard and instantly ignites terror and loathing in the hearts and wallets of drivers; the dreaded "Check Engine" warning light. For some, it is a minor irritant to be ignored. Even Public Television's "Car Guys" joke that the remedy is to put a piece of duct-tape over it. Some cynics believe the "Check Engine" light was invented to get vehicle owners to schedule more visits to the dealer for service. Some cars, after all, seem to have such a sensitive "Che

You're going to pay more per year for car maintenance if you live in a western state, and the cheapest states for repairs related to a "Check Engine" light are Michigan and Indiana. That's according to fresh data from the annual CarMD Vehicle Health Index, a 2015 analysis of repairs made to 1,000,000 vehicles with problems that led to a Check Engine Light (CEL). The average cost to fix the pro

Is your Check Engine light staring you in the face? That bright orange warning serves as a beacon that something is wrong. Problem is, it doesn't convey anything more than that. For years, the prime culprit of an illuminated CEL has been a loose gas cap. In fact, according to CarMD.com, the gas cap has ranked as number one on the CEL hit list for the last 12 years. Recently, however, it seems people are either

How many times have we heard our dads say, "These new cars, you just can't work on 'em." He's right. Instead of blue smoke out the tailpipe and a chatter under the hood, modern cars have vague "check engine" lights and incomprehensible error codes. At CES we saw two devices that translate at least some of those ones and zeros.