Pleasanton Auto Repair

Have you ever had an experience like this in Pleasanton California? You drive through the one of those automatic car washes. When you get to the end, where the dryer is blowing, your check engine light started flashing! You fear the worst, but within a block or two, the light stopped flashing, but stayed on. By the next day, the light was off. You wonder; "What was going on?" Well, it's actually a good lesson in how the Check Engine light works. Your air intake system has a sensor that measures how much air is coming through it. When you went under the high-speed dryer, all that air was blasting past the sensor. Your engine computer was saying, there shouldn't be that much air when the engine is just idling. Something's wrong. Whatever's wrong could cause some serious engine damage. Warning, warning! It flashes the check engine light, to alert you to take immediate action. It stopped flashing because once you were out from under t ... read more

Did you know that most of the cars driving around Pleasanton California carry more computer power than the Apollo 121 Lunar Module that landed on the moon in 1969? New cars sold in the Pleasanton area have as many as twelve networked computers and over five miles (eight kilometers) of wiring. In fact, for the last decade or so, auto computers have been controlling about 85 percent of your vehicle's functions. Cars have sensors for manifold air temperature, coolant temperature, manifold air pressure, airflow, throttle position, vehicle speed and oxygen content. All of this electronic wizardry is pretty complicated. So how do you know when there is a problem? It's simple; the Check Engine light comes on. The computer monitors all the sensors and uses that information to decide what to adjust such as the fuel mix, spark timing and idle speed. In addition, the computer monitors its own circuits. When it finds a fault, it ... read more