CEL at the track day

[Rick R]

Today I was doing an HpD event at Palmer Motorsports. The car ran great. After the third session I noticed i had the check engine light on. The car had performed vey well through the sessions. No limp mode, nothing seemed out of order. Temperatures were fine, in the low 200s, another guy with a 350 was there and he said his read pretty much the same.

I had a couple of jerky downshifts on the track but nothing dramatic and nothing I can imagine would have any effect on the engine. This morning I noticed I was running a bit low on oil so I topped it up and that was it, again I can't think it would have had any effect but I'm trying to think of anything different from usual.

I tried waiting a half hour and turning on again but nothing changed, light stayed on. went to an advance auto parts but they said they dont read the codes anymore. The engine idles smoothly, no knock or other ugly sound. Clearly I haven't tried to do hard pulls but it felt like it ran exactly like this morning, with just as much power.

Any guesses?

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[AMpowerJ]

Probably something emissions related. Maybe an O2 sensor went out.

 

[jasonstang]

Can't you enter the engineering mode in the dash to read the DTC?

 

[combustor]

https://www.scantool.net/scan-tools/smart-phone/obdlink-mxbt/

Just get one of these, $80, interfaces with your smartphone. If you do regular track days you'll want to be datalogging anyway. So cheap and useful you'll wonder why you didn't have one earlier.

 

[Rick R]

Can't you enter the engineering mode in the dash to read the DTC?

How do you do that?

 

[jasonstang]

How do you do that?

[ame]

 

[Donkey]

I'd probably take it to the dealer and use my warranty..:shrug:

 

[302toVoodoo]

So you topped up the oil and the CEL went out right? Just me thinking out loud here...but there's gotta be a sensor for low oil. You probably tripped that which caused the CEL, topping up reset it to normal. How much oil did it take? In a high strung high performance motor I think using oil, especially under track conditions, is going to be fairly normal. Had a bored out high compression low tension piston ring high strung Ducati motor that needed to be fed a half quart every so often...I expect my 350 to have similar idiosyncrasies.

 

[50 Deep]

Gotta get the code read with a scanner or some other method. Trying to guess why a CEL is on without knowing the code is an excercise in futility

 

[Rick R]

I'd probably take it to the dealer and use my warranty..:shrug:

Of course I'll do that, that will have to be in a few days though so wondering if people had heard of sthg like that.

So you topped up the oil and the CEL went out right?

Nope, sorry, I wasnt clear. Topped up in the morning, all looked good, then light came up in the afternoon.

 

[mattlqx]

A CEL can be anything. Nobody on the forum can accurately guess what it is. Get an OBDII reader or just take it in.

 

[Helmet]

The GT350 has an option to run a CEL diagnostics and display the results on screen, I did it before but forgot how, LOL

 

[AMpowerJ]

A CEL can be anything. Nobody on the forum can accurately guess what it is. Get an OBDII reader or just take it in.

I can. I have a 6th sense when it comes to CEL and their causes especially for cars I've never encountered.

 

[Rick R]

Turned out to be 0128 COolant below the temperature bullshit. I ignored it and ran all day. I see there's a thread specifically for that code.

Interestingly two other things happened today, the oil pressure gauge reads high (doesn't go below 50 when idle) and I got locked out of the driving mode selection after trying to select Race mode, but that's for another thread.

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