I had an engine light on in my 2004 Odyssey EX-L, and went to get it checked at a shop where I had thrown them a few thousand dollars of business over the years. I went there because I had been impressed by their big-daddy code reader in the past- the size of a 6x9 tablet, not just a handheld reader like at the 24 hour auto parts stores. The guy read the code, saying the car needed a new knock sensor. “Okay, fine, thanks, the car’s running great but I’ll bring it in in a week or so when it’s convenient.”
I drive my car away, and I notice that the SRS dash light is on for the first time ever in 13 years of owning this car. I turn around and am back in the shop within 3 minutes and I tell the guy who runs the shop. I ask him, “Could it be that somehow your code reader triggered this SRS light to go on?” The guys says, “Nope, no way, that couldn’t happen, and we don’t even have a way to reset that light.” (What? That’s irrelevant.) He refused to have anything to do with me, and refused to entertain the idea that what he had done 3 minutes earlier had had anythign to do with this light going on for the first time in 13 years. The next week, I got the knock sensor changed elsewhere. That was a month ago, and now the SRS light goes on about 1/2 the time I drive the car.
Do you think him using the code reader somehow triggered the SRS light to flake out on me, or do you think it is just a coincidence?
That “big daddy code reader” is probably a high level scan tool capable of much more than any DIY model.
There is no function on a scan tool that will let anyone ‘trigger’ the SRS malfunction light to stay on. I do question why they didn’t do a quick check and at least find out what the fault code was. I would have at least done that and said “It looks like there might be trouble with your seat belt pretensioner. We can look into this further for $114.”
You’re driving an old car and at almost 17 years anything can break at any time. What if the SRS came on as you were turning into his driveway? Or the day after you were there? Would you still suspect the garage of tomfoolery?
Yes, I’ll bet they put out the big bucks for the high-level scan tool, which is why I went there.
I’m not supposing they triggered the SRS light deliberately or nefariously. It just seems like in the 13 years that I have been almost the only one to ever turn the key in this car, that when a new light goes on for the first time ever, immediately after a code reader has been hooked up to it, that the odds are it has something to do with what they’ve been doing, and not that it was pure coincidence. The odds of this light going on upon leaving this shop being a random coincidence, in the 30,000 times I’ve started this car, are, I guess, 30,000 to one. Long odds. 15,000 to one, if you count the time I went in the first time I saw their cool code reader.
The odds are not even over time. The odds go up as the car ages. How many times has the engine light come on in 13 years? Maybe it’s just getting to that age where things start failing…
It’s not very fancy if it can’t read abs codes. I suspect it can but he sensed someone possibly fishing. Why guess at this point. Have someone pull the codes and see what might actually be wrong. Do your steering wheel controls still work?
Sheer coincidence on a 17 year old car. As mentioned, as the car ages those odds every year deviate more and more from a 50/50 proposition.
A few years back the SRS light in my Lincoln came on suddenly and years before that after doing an oil change at home on that Lincoln I noticed it felt funny backing out of the drive. The simple act of jacking the car up for the oil change caused the left front strut (only 40k miles on it) to fail. The car was bouncing like a ping-pong ball. Per the old saying; xxxx happens.
I have had the airbag warning light on customer’s vehicles illuminate after an oil change or other work.
The cause; a poor connection in the side airbag squib connector. It was fine before the seat was moved to accommodate a taller person, must be the technicians fault.
Funny thing you mention the steering wheel controls: the volume and change station buttons on the steering wheel have always worked in the 13 years we’ve had the car, BUT sometimes the volume and change station buttons switch functions. Kinda fun, coz you never know if you’re going to switch stations or just make the station you don’t want to hear get louder. That happens about half the time, and the next time you drive the car, or maybe hte time after that, normal functions return. But in 13 years of that, the SRS light never went on until the minute I drove away from that shop.
No, it would not make sense to suspect the mechanic’s actions had anything to do with the SRS light going on before he got to the car, or the next day, after having started and stopped the car 5 times.
But I do think it’s reasonable to ask if his actions may have triggered a response that followed immediately. I don’t know anything about code readers so I asked the forum, and I did not accuse him of intentionally tripping a dash light (why would anyone do that?) or accidentally, but I just asked him. He didn’t offer to read the code to see what had changed.
That time I drove away from a shop and heard something funny coming from the engine and pulled over and found a file grinding away at the top of the engine block, just about to drop into the fan or the serpentine belt and really screw things up- I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave that file there before I took the car in. I had a moral quandry- should I have gone back to the shop, shown them where they left the file and the marks it made on the engine block, and shame them for their sloppy work, or just keep the file and put it to use? It’s been a good file over the years.