My first CEL experience

[FunElan]

Hi all,

So I come from a 1968 2002 which has no CEL, so this stuff is a bit foreign for me. Yesterday I drove from LA to Tucson, AZ. Averaging 77 mph (I know, a bit fast) I got 28.5 and 26.5 on my two fill ups. I thought it would be higher for some reason.

Anyways, while in the middle of nowhere on highway 8, my CEL popped on. The car drove the same, and the temp gauge stayed right in the middle. I still pulled off and popped the hood to make sure all looked fine. I noticed some fluid had seeped out of the radiator cap, but besides that, looked fine. I kept on driving until I got to Tucson. Pulled off to fill up, and the CEL went off, and hasn't come back on since.

I still did the M42 CEL gas pedal stomp thing to see what it would say (video here!- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6mUpjE9SB8). To me it says 1226, knock sensor 2. There's not too much about these things on here, but from what I gather, it's a sensor that tells you when the timing is off. This means I can keep driving it, correct? The car drives fine still. I'm planning on taking the intake off soon to do vacuum hoses and clean the icv so perhaps it would be easiest to change this then?

Thanks for reading, and happy new year!
Matt

[FunElan]

Anybody?

[Iridebikesalot]

Hey Matt!

I've been having issues with my '95 Ti as well and I just did the stomp test that gave me "1226" too.... Did you ever have any luck figuring out if it was the knock sensor? Or something else?
My car runs great and then out of nowhere when im driving on the road all the gauges go to zero and it dies completely. Ive replaced the camshaft sensor, O2 sensor, and all intake boots. Has any of that happened to you?

Sorry that I don't have any advice to give you! But since we sort of have the same problem and ran the same code, maybe we can help each other out.

take care!

[1996 328ti]

IDK, maybe this?
http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthread.php?t=30041

[FunElan]

I kept driving it and attributed it to bad gas that I purchased in the middle of nowhere. The car has ran perfectly except for getting bad city mileage. I did not have any of the symptoms you described.

This morning I went to go clean the ICV and when I moved it to the driveway it was idling like crap for the first time- after we finished the job it idled fine.

I want to try resetting the cel to see if it comes back. That should really tell me if it was bad gas. How do you do this on an M42?