Engine Management light

[Nolski]

I'm brand new to this forum so be kind.

My wife drives a 05 Ibiza, 1.4 petrol, (22000 miles)

The engine management light came on today, the manual states that this could be a problem with the engine electrical system;

is there any suggestions of what i could do in order to solve/troubleshoot this issue, before i contact the dealer?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bondiblu]

Hi there and welcome to SCN. I would suggest using the forum search function at the top of the page. This has been covered over and over.

A common cause of the engine management light being displayed is the brake light switch under the pedal (check the lights work properly), but it could be any number of things. A diagnostics needs to be done by either using VAG-COM on a laptop or by a garage/dealer.

 

[RUM4MO]

I'm afraid that you will probably not be lucky enough to have a failed brake pedal switch, that failure prompts the appearance of many other lights.

It could be a "ghost" failure - ie one that is not relevant to your car engine. Remember that if this failure was a "one off", then the warning light will go off after about 6 or 7 engine starts, but the logged code will still be held in memory in one of the controllers.

If you are planning to need to work out what these warnings mean, maybe you should buy a code reader, made for use with VAG cars from Gendan (see their site) it costs only £40 delivered. It fixes nothing but either lets you try to sort things or work out if its a trip to the garage.

The only way to see what has happened is to get the fault code read - but if you are outside warranty that costs more than the scan tool I was talking about - its your shout!

 

[tkjeeves]

welcome!

one question would be, does the engine run fine? or does it stutter? lose power?

If you are indeed wanting to know what the issue is yourself then yes i think it would be beneficial to get some diagnostics software. I managed to purchase a cheapo cable from ebay and used a recognised VAG software installed on my laptop to readout various readings.

When my CEL came on was because the engine was intermittantly misfiring, a dying coilpack was the fault (a common problem it seems).

 

[Nolski]

Sorted I think

Thanks for the replys.

I took it to work this morning, and had read elsewhere on this forum that the fault can reset itself after several engine starts, thankfully thats what it has done.

The car itself is running fine, no stuttering or any other performance issues.

Thanks again, and I'm sure I'll pop onto this site from time to time, to keep an eye on things/issues with the motor.

 

[RUM4MO]

For the £40 that the Gendan tool costs, you can find out why this light came on. If its something like a failing Lambda probe, early diagnosis is handy as it will save the cat. Remember that as some things fail they give early warnings before they become a hard fail - fore-warned is fore-armed (as they say). Your car could just end up getting a hard fail that you are being warned about, at a very inconvenient time - try to make life easy.

 

[malky39]

This happened to my car yesterday, just been in for its first service on monday everything was fine until i went to drive it yesterday afternoon ant the engine management light was on, so it was into the stealers today to find out whats up