How long will the Check Engine light stay on?
 

I was driving home last Tuesday from work and the check engine light came on. It's a steady light (doesn't blink) according to my manual it has to do with emissions. I checked the gas cap and the gas cap was loose! So I put the gas cap back on making sure it clicked several times (I could have sworn I did this when I filled up last).

Anyways how long will the check engine light stay on? I've had 12 (15 min) trips with the car since the check engine light came on, and it's still on.

I'm not looking forward to driving two hours north to the dealership I bought the car from so they can look at it.

Unhook your battery & that should clear it

If that was the fix to your problem, it will go away. That's a good test to see if it's actually it, and not something else completely, like a clogged cat or something along those lines.

CEL's don't just magically go away. The only way the CEL will go away is be fixing the problem and then hooking up a scanner and clear the DTC (Diagnostic Trouble Code). You can try the battery thing, but like already mentioned if it's not the problem then it won't do anything. Also, CEL in OBDII+ typically don't blink. OBDI codes would blink, but there hasn't been a car with OBDI since 1995.

The good news is that it's EASY to find out what the DTC is and also clear the CEL. All you need to do is go to a auto parts store and buy a code reader. That will let you find out what the DTC is and also clear it. If you don't want to buy one, I know that Autozone checks and clears codes for free and I have also heard of other auto parts stores doing the same.

So go and have the CEL checked. Until you find out what that code is, it won't go away. You might have a BIG problem, or a simple one. Hopefully it's the latter :)

I know O'Reilly Autoparts you can "rent" a scanner, you give em your drivers license and they give you the scanner to go read your car.

Actually, if the gas cap was the problem, the CEL should turn off after 3 drive cycles but wouldn't get erased from the computer until either 40 or 80 trips. Got this information from the manual for my Innova 3100e code reader. Before I bought that I tried the battery disconnect method but it didn't work unless it was disconnected for several hours, 15-20 minutes didn't clear anything on my 2001.

Update:

I decided to be safe and take it to the dealership. I actually took it to another Winner dealership instead of the one two hours north of me (where I bought my car). This other Winner dealership is only 45 mins north of me. Anyways I told them the same thing I posted here. They checked it out with a scanner, found out it was due to the gas cap and cleared the code.....and it was free.

Anyone else have problems with getting there gas cap to stay on? I filled up today and the gas cap (after turning it and hearing several clicks) was not "screwed" in. I could pull it out. It took three tries for it to "screw" in.

40 to 80 trips? Good to know, it would take me awhile to reach 40 to 80 trips in my car, as I don't put alot of miles on it.