Check Engine Light Ruined My Trip

So I've been planning for a few weeks to go fishing down at Sebastian's Inlet here in sunny Florida, and this morning when me and my buddy were headed to Walmart to fill up our cooler, my check engine light came on. And since I was wearing sandals I noticed that there was a lot of hot air blowing on my feet. I thought this was a bit peculiar seeing as I hardly use my A/C, I usually just have the windows down. I did have the windows down and I could still feel the excessive heat on my feet. I checked all the fluids just in case and all of them were just fine. So since I'm not going to drive 2 hours there and 2 hours back with my check engine light, on I'm super pissed that I had to cancel this trip. I'm going to go later today to get a diagnostic, and I'll update this thread with the result. In the meantime I was wondering if y'all had any ideas as to what this issue could be.

 

Exactly, we'd be like the blind leading the blind in a dark room. On another note, you need to get one of these. The one I have is this exact model, an Actron pocket code reader. If you had one you might have found out that the CEL was something non-essential which it almost always is, and continued on your trip. Plus these are good to have anytime anywhere that way you can always know what's going on with your truck. I keep mine handy in my glove box.

 

P0420 and a P0401.

I know that the P0420 can often times be a load of crap. And I've had the CEL come on for that before. The P0401 however I've not had before so I'm not sure what the deal with that is.

Now that we know what's probably going on... any ideas on how to fix it?

 

420? You can still drive like that no problem

 

It's the 401 I'm worried about. I don't know anything about it.

 

Here you go:

http://www.obd-codes.com/p0401

 

fyi, more often than not, when your check engine light comes on and stays on, you will be fine if you continue to drive it. if it's flashing then shut it off right away and have it looked at by a qualified mechanic.

check out this thread: http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/4-cylinder/97446-please-help-p0401-code.html

 

Depending on where you live, a local auto parts store like Auto Zone can lend you a tool to read the code/read it for you .This is all free as well.

 

If you buy the egr valve, make sure to buy the pressure sensor if it has one. They both work together and I've seen tons of people buy only one and a week later they end up buying the other one either way because the light still came back on. Check your hoses spray some carb cleaner around there and see if the idle drops then rises, you could have a small crack in,one of the hoses that you can't see. Vacuum leaks are a bitch to find, and somethings you end up changing all of them out either way. Good luck OP

 

Speaking of which I found a vacuum hose with a particularly large cut in it. So I replaced that immediately. Over the next few days I'm going to Slowly replace all of the hosing.

 

unless you live in california .... bastards cant do free scans anymore

when i had my 99 mazda my cel popped on during a trip to az ... was already more than halfway there so got it scanned when i got to az ... turned out to be the throttle position sensor .. bought a new one for $30 and installed it at my buddys house and never had any probs after that

 

They did for me here in Florida.