It is that time of year again. My check engine light came on in my
1994 Mercury (Ford) Cougar. My wife said she could hear pinging
although the car seemed to be running fine.

If I did not have my Car Comp software (CarComp Inc. 1936 Redbud Drive,
Ellettsville, IN 47429 812 876 8081) and my wife's notebook computer 
it would cost me big bucks to take
the car into the Ford dealer and pay them $90 for them to tell me what
was wrong, let them fix it and turn off the check engine light. It won't 
pass smog even if it is not emitting anything if the check engine light is on. 
Cutting the wires to the check engine light is not that easy.

I guessed what was wrong before I hooked up the notebook based on
what happened a year ago. I took out my trusty anti tamper screw
driver set and took apart the mass airflow sensor. Sure enough another
speck of dirt was stuck on the hot wire. Sprayed a little contact cleaner on it
and checked it with a jewelers loop. Now clean as a whistle.
Put it back together and the engine ran better but the check engine
light did not go out. Hooked up my wife's notebook computer and ran the Car
Comp software. Deleted the freeze frame data and the check engine light
went out. Just saved myself about $400 by not taking it the the 
silly Ford dealer and letting him screw me.

Here is a very small sample of the real time data saved on disk by the Car Comp
software. You pick the parameters you want to save out of a list of two
dozen or so. I choose these just for this message.


"Time","Engine RPM\r/min","Vehicle Speed\MPH",
"Intake Air Temp.\F deg.","Throttle Position\%"



10.71094,676,2,66,19.2
10.91094,676,2,66,19.2
11.48047,736,3,66,19.2
12.25000,788,5,66,19.2
13.02344,812,6,66,19.2
13.73047,824,7,66,20.8

BTW I called the Car Comp Inc. number and it has recently been disconnected.
I suspect government/EPA/CARB  fowl play. I will look into it further
and find out what happened. If anybody lives near there please stop in
and find out what happened. If he went out of business tell him I am interested
in buying the source code to the software and the skematic of the adapter
cable and any OBD II connectors he has left over.


Paul Lamar
 
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