Malfunction Light

[EllaPovey]

Hi all!

Im new to the whole forum thing so please bear with me people!

I bought a 2001 Rav4 NRG literally one month ago to find the malfunction light coming on less than a fortnight after bringing it home :(

I took it into my local independent garage who said it was showing a fault on the cat. They reset the light and said to go back if the light came back on (which it did last week!)

Anyway , I booked in in for a service (which it was due) on Monday (same garage), and asked the garage to investigte the fault further.

Result is the emmisions are fine (would pass MOT) and all the senors are showing as working fine. The garage have advised to just see how it goes as they dont want to go down the line of replacing sensors, cat etc., to discover that there is another underlying problem. Their theory is that when (or if) the car looses power or has obvious problems, the cause will be easier to identify.

My question is, does this sound familliar to anyone or can anyone give me any advice? I am starting to regret gettting rid of my 15 year old Suzuki Vitara!!!

I feel I have been slightly conned by the car's previous owners!!!

[rambler]

hi ella

firstly welcome to the club

i had a black 51 reg rav4 2.0 petrol about 6 years ago now...ish,was good as gold,malfunction light did come on driving down the A1 once coming home from holiday.

rav still driving well,no problem at all...but i did stop,just in case.

i called the AA out,they said that it indicated that it wasnt running quite 100% perfect......near enough but not quite 100%,so he reset it by plugging his laptop into a multiplug just under the dash in the drivers footwell.

light went out,..i drove home....further 150 miles or so to go,no more problems.

others here may have more info for you,but i had no more troubles

rambler

[anchorman]

Welcome to the club.

It is fairly common and it it is down to the Oxygen sensors. The thing is that it can be caused by one going slightly out of range and doesn't really affect how it runs. In that case it puts the light on but isn't really a problem..However, if you go back to your garage or phone them and get the fault code (it is stored when the light comes on) we might be able to tell you which sensor of 2 is causing problems. It usually costs £150 - £200 and don't worry you have a far better vehicle than a Vitara.

It could well have been the reason why the last owner sold it but it might not be so bad.

If the garage is charging you £30 a time for reading it let us know because you can buy a reader and do it yourself..................