Hey Friends! My 17 year old son was driving my parent’s 2015 Mazda 5. He didn’t understand the shifter and drove home on the highway in a low gear. It is a grooved shifter, and there is a gulley you can push the shifter over to from drive to shift manually, and he had the shifter over in that gully.
The car doesn’t appear to be driving badly. No knocking or anything like that and it’s running at a normal temp. However, there is a yellow check engine light on solid.
What are the odds he caused something to go wrong in the engine?
The engine light is on because something is wrong or something was wrong. 5 ignition cycles might be required for the light to go out if nothing is still wrong. Might be your kids fault, might just be coincidence.
You can get the codes read for free at auto parts stores in the US. Post the entire code here and we can advise. It should be in the form P0123
Most modern engines have rev limiters to keep from over revving them and most modern transmissions are electronically controlled and will automatically upshift if the electronic governor ask for it, to keep these things from doing damage… That being said it doesn’t mean he didn’t drive it right under the limits for much too long and damaged something… Time will tell, but probably didn’t hurt anything…
As mentioned, post the codes here and we will go from there…
Yeah get the code read. Two stories: I dropped my wife off on the way to work so;she could pick our new car up. She said it was making a lot of noise and discovered it was in low gear. Same thing, maybe ten miles. Never had any trouble with it, but didn’t have a check engine light.
Before check engine lights on December first, from one ramp to the next, maybe seven miles, the rain turned into pure ice. Maybe 50 cars in the ditch. I put it in low gear and crawled about a mile up the nearest ramp to wait for the sanding trucks. It wasn’t more than a month or two that I needed a transmission overhaul. No idea if it was related or not. Kinda doubt it since I never got over ten mph. But yeah check the code.
My guess, the driving in low gear did stress something that was already about to fail, and whatever it was is now causing the CEL. However, whatever happened would have probably happened eventually in any event, so absent supporting evidence, me, I wouldn’t place the blame for the CEL on the son.
My thinking, if the son is to blame for the CEL, the cause is probably something else he did.