CEL question?

i have an 03 wrx with a lot of mods. car was tuned by jorge. every once in a while check engine light will flash like 10 times then go away. i scanned it with the cobb access port and no codes any ideas?
I did an 07 sti tranny swap so there is no abs and the light for that is on all the time.

 

no codes? that's strange

 

yea, i just talked to my buddy and he said that the access port only reads active codes so hes coming over with a diff tool that reads the stored ones so well see...

 

when a CEL is flashing it means that the problem with your car is happening in real time, a solid cel is past occurances. so i think that it may be just your ecu thinking that something is wrong and then correcting itself...thats all i can think of

 

A flashing CEL that just flashes and goes away like you describe means a misfire. Guess I would recommend you check your plugs, wiring, coil packs, etc.

 

yea but if it was a misfire the cel would illuminate completely, thats what happened when i had a misfire. his cel flashed then dissapeared.

 

No, not necessarily. I'm not sure what logic it takes, or how many misfires it takes, but the car can misfire and not have the solid misfire CEL in memory.

 

what? my last flashing cell was intake leak....P0171. It would come and go....I'd get it two or three times per week. Finally figured it out. I was the stock air box not sealing and a slight (very very slight) leak right behind the after MAF hose

 

correct. I've had that tooo:laugh:..:emo: due to an injector issue. cell would flash a couple times and disappear. no code stored....:eek3:

 

how was the car driven when it happened? light cruising, full throttle, normal accelaration?
Give us a scenerio.

 

Yeah, I should clarify:

The main type of CEL is the typical CEL. This is when you get the solid CEL with the cruise flashing (or the equivalent 16bit version). If you get this type of CEL, and it is triggered by a temporary phenomenon that fixes itself or becomes fixed, the CEL will go away after a number of ECU restarts (IE, when you turn the car on and off), I believe it's something like 5-7 times.

Yup, this is the one I'm talking about. If the CEL is flashing on and off quickly for a short period of time (typically like 1-5 seconds), that indicates a current misfire.

 

Anybody tune Evo's? I drove Derek's Evo the other night the cel was flashing more then Rudolph's nose on Christmas. I assume its not a good sign...

 

Well, I don't have a ton of experience outside of Subaru, but I'm fairly sure that the flashing CEL to indicate a misfire is fairly common across many car models and ECU's.

I've also heard/seen other standalone or stock ECU management solutions that have code written in to the logic that flashes the CEL when the car detects knock.

 

well i just got the car back from the shop with the new tranny, so i have been driving extremly nice to break the clutch in. i put in new spark plugs when i had it tunned in march, and drove it for a month or two and blew the tranny... im just a little confused because as far at i know ive never had this problem before