One of the worst fears of any car owner is driving along on your own marry way and that little amber light comes on. As if 2020 hasn't thrown enough at us with viruses, hornets, coin shortages, politics, mailboxes, and toilet paper, your vehicle now wants to throw this curve ball at you.

The check engine light is very important as it will illuminate whenever there is an issue detected by your vehicles' PCM that could raise emission levels. That is why you can also get a check engine light for a transmission issue. It could be "just a sensor", but which sensor? And is it the sensor, or is it a fuse? And if its a fuse, why did it pop? Is it electrical? Can it be "reset"?

Many questions with one common answer. Not sure. You can get a code read from a parts store, and while 99 times out of 100 it won't tell you exactly what part is needed to be changed, it will isolate which system (evaporative, misfire, transmission, etc) is effected. From there pinpoint testing needs to be completed by a technician who understands how parts work and what specs and data should look like for those parts. This requires a scanner capable of communicating and displaying live data, ability to complete testing, graphing, etc.

While the testing may be completed and it may just be a failed gas cap, its proper testing and diagnosing that will pinpoint the gas cap and not the purge valve or vent valve. Its a visual examination of the canister, vacuum hoses, and fittings that eliminates those parts from the equation.

While driving a car with a bad gas cap wont cause your vehicle to stall or leave you stranded, it releases vapors into the atmosphere that are bad for the environment. So while your car may run fine with it, the environment and air we all breathe suffers. Get it checked out sooner than later. In either scenario, something or someone will suffer the consequences for every minute a vehicle runs with a check engine light.