OK, I had to drive my wife's car the other day, as she had mine. When I was ready to go home, I was facing a huge obstacle. I had to drive down about a 300' driveway that hadn't been cleared, to get to the road. My choices were wait a couple of hours for the plow to arrive, try to clear the driveway with no shovel...or just go for it.
I accelerated rather aggressively down the driveway. Snow was deep enough that it was rolling in a wave up over the hood, windshield, roof...and falling off behind the car. When I finally got to the road, I was pushing a HUGE pile of snow into the road. I kept going to the other side so that most of the snow would end up in the breakdown area.
OK, so I'm impressed that my wife's car appears to be a rather competent snow plow. I'm surprised (very) that I didn't high-center and get stuck.
Now the problem. As soon as I started driving home, I had a service engine soon light on the dash. I took it to my mechanic, they hooked it up to their computer and it said it was an evaporative emissions error code. I was told that this is usually caused by a leak in a vacuum line or elsewhere.
Considering when the service engine light came on, I'm guessing I damaged something by plowing snow with the Buick. Logical guess... a vacuum line or something else that's part of evaporative emissions, and probably located down low in the engine compartment.
The mechanic was going to charge me over a hundred bucks just to try to diagnose it. That may be a fair price. But we have like literally NO money right now. So I was hoping somebody could make me a list of parts/connections to check. It would be helpful to be as detailed as possible in describing how to find (whatever) to check.
I wouldn't worry about it at all (car runs fine!) but it's due for state inspection, and won't pass with the service engine light on.
I accelerated rather aggressively down the driveway. Snow was deep enough that it was rolling in a wave up over the hood, windshield, roof...and falling off behind the car. When I finally got to the road, I was pushing a HUGE pile of snow into the road. I kept going to the other side so that most of the snow would end up in the breakdown area.
OK, so I'm impressed that my wife's car appears to be a rather competent snow plow. I'm surprised (very) that I didn't high-center and get stuck.
Now the problem. As soon as I started driving home, I had a service engine soon light on the dash. I took it to my mechanic, they hooked it up to their computer and it said it was an evaporative emissions error code. I was told that this is usually caused by a leak in a vacuum line or elsewhere.
Considering when the service engine light came on, I'm guessing I damaged something by plowing snow with the Buick. Logical guess... a vacuum line or something else that's part of evaporative emissions, and probably located down low in the engine compartment.
The mechanic was going to charge me over a hundred bucks just to try to diagnose it. That may be a fair price. But we have like literally NO money right now. So I was hoping somebody could make me a list of parts/connections to check. It would be helpful to be as detailed as possible in describing how to find (whatever) to check.
I wouldn't worry about it at all (car runs fine!) but it's due for state inspection, and won't pass with the service engine light on.