Rep Power: 0

2005 Honda Civic Hybrid - long-ish story: Last year noticed the CEL lit for the first time. I have Metromile car insurance - basically they set your monthly premium based on how much you drive in a given month. They give you an OBD sensor to track you via GPS, and it also doubles as a code reader. The code reader said I had a faulty oil pressure sensor and O2 sensor. The codes remained active in my Metromile app even though the CEL would intermittently go on and off. Anyway, eventually got those fixed. Then in early January, got a new CEL and error codes that the hybrid battery and the IMA was malfunctioning. This time the CEL stayed constant until I got it handled. The company doing the work replaced the hybrid batter and the ECU (the latter was something they mentioned for the first time during the install - I believe they said if I didn't get it replaced, it would throw random error codes. The ECU cost me $200 - which upon further research strikes me as pretty inexpensive for this particular part - so possibly it was aftermarket/refurbished?

Anyway, the next day after the hybrid battery/ECU install, I'm driving to work and I see a brand new CEL - this time a P0420 - my cat going bad. Car has no performance issues, but the deadline to pass my emissions test (California) and get re-registered is next week, so I bought a bottle of Cataclean to see if I could perhaps improve things enough to pass my smog test and punt the problem down the road a bit when I've had some time to stack cash. I drove it for about 60 miles, and then the CEL went off. By my Metromile app is still showing the P0420 as an active code.

So really I have a two questions - given the timing of the new code, one day after the ECU install, I'm wondering if the P0420 could possibly be a faulty code from a gltichy aftermarket part? But also, if the CEL is off (and not malfunctioning in itself), does that signal the error code is no longer active? I'm thinking of going to Autozone and asking them to run an OBD scan and see if they catch the code without the CEL on. But I'm curious if anyone else has experience with an intermittent CEL light.

 
Rep Power: 367

reset ECU

 
Rep Power: 222

Get an actual scanner and not whatever the insurance company thing is.