Need advice for car trouble involving check engine light?
Car: 97 Honda Accord 2Door Model
Miles: 189,000
The past few weeks my speedometer has been acting up. Sometimes when I'm driving or stopped at a light the needle goes crazy, up and down, and eventually stays at 0.
Today when I turned on my car the needle started acting up again but this time the Check Engine light turned on. It's not blinking, just on.
I drove the car for a while and nothing seemed wrong, no noises. But I stopped at a red light and when it turned green my car was struggling to accelerate. No matter how much I pushed the pedal it would move very slow, it almost felt like it wanted to turn off. This happened twice and only for a few seconds.
It has gas and last week I checked all the liquids and they were good too.
I don't have much knowledge about cars and was hoping someone could give me a clue as to what could be wrong.
Take your car to auto zone (if there's one locally). They do free code scanning. If you ask me though, you have a problem with the vehicle speed sensor or the circuit for the sensor. The sensor is plugged into the transmission usually into or near the tailshaft (also called output shaft) housing. Check the wiring going to the sensor first. If the wiring is visibly damaged, corroded, broken, etc, that is most likely your issue, however if no visible damage can be observed, then try suspecting the sensor itself to be at fault. However, before any of that, get the trouble codes and see what they are specifically are as so to get you in the right direction towards fixing the problem.
Here's a quick thumbnail of what the VSS is and what it does and what problems can arise if it is at fault:
Check engine lights come on after a certain amount of miles not when the engine acts up
No one can guess what is wrong. As Jen said, the best place to start is getting the codes read. Autozone, Advance, O'Reilly's.
Get the code checked for your check engine light. Usually, there's an auto parts store or a mechanic that will check it for free. The code will usually tell you which part (or parts) need to be fixed or replaced, or if there are multiple parts.
No one can just guess, you need to go to get the engine codes to know exactly what is wrong.
Either the vehicle speed sensor (VSS) or the printed circuit on the back of the instrument panel or the ECM.
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